4 ms·

Pretty much. If you have human controllers and human pilots, eventually someone's going to misunderstand an instruction. It happens every day all over the wor

by ajross 3y ago

Pretty much. If you have human controllers and human pilots, eventually someone's going to misunderstand an instruction. It happens every day all over the world. The backstop to this really can't be "give different instructions", because whatever you pick can be misheard too. Obviously the primary backstop is supposed to be the pilots. The Dash 8 should have been listening to other traffic on that control frequency and should have known that there was an aircraft on final for that runway. The pilots of the A350 (and I don't understand why this angle isn't getting more attention) should have been looking out the window and seen the lighted-and-very-visible turboprop on the runway in front of them.

krisoft 3y ago
> The pilots of the A350 (and I don't understand why this angle isn't getting more attention) should have been looking out the window and seen the lighted-and-very-visible turboprop on the runway in front of them. Because pilots know that it is incredibly hard or impossible to see an airplane lined up on the runway. By lighted we mean that the turboprop had the required lights on the end of the wings and the end of the tail. Otherwise the airplane is totally black, on a totally black runway. Simply it is very easy to not notice the extra lights among all the lights of the runway. The pattern you are trying to notice is 3 extra lights among many, and a small gap in the runway lights where they are obstructed. > The backstop to this really can't be "give different instructions", because whatever you pick can be misheard too. We know a solution for this. ASDE-X(Airport Surface Detection System) is a set of sensors (radars mostly) integrated together to monitor the ground movements of aircraft and automatically report deviations such as runway incursions. https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/asde-x https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/asde-x
CPLX 3y ago
> The pilots of the A350 (and I don't understand why this angle isn't getting more attention) should have been looking out the window and seen the lighted-and-very-visible turboprop on the runway in front of them. Have you ever flown a plane? You're essentially blind to objects directly in front of and below you. That's also true in a car of course, but there's a lot more ground below you when you're flying a plane.
- kergonath 3y ago
  From my experience, people who don’t know what they are talking about love to talk about pilot error and assign blame to the humans in the cockpit. You don’t see that often when reading experienced commenters who know that there should be 10 safety systems and features to prevent mistakes from getting catastrophic. Admiral Cloudberg’s analyses for example discuss at length the failures of all the mechanisms that allowed the crash to happen. It’s never “pilot need to git gud”. (Well, almost never, it was very nearly that for the recent Yeti Airlines crash).
user3939382 3y ago
It doesn’t help that there appears to be a, “cultural thread”? in aviation which believes that it’s a sign of your chops to talk like an auctioneer on the radio. There’s an infamous example on YouTube somewhere of this ATC telling pilots “cle te leh” for Cleared To Land.
konschubert 3y ago
If the signalling system is sufficiently modern, a train cannot drive over a red signal without being shut down. You cannot turn a signal green if there is another train on the track. Why do we have this kind of state management for trains, but not for airports?
- brazzy 3y ago
  Because you cannot stop a plane mid air to wait for confusion to be cleared up.
  - ajross 3y ago
    No, but you can sound a loud warning in the cockpit if you're lined up as if on final and the runway isn't clear. Go-arounds are a standard maneuver. It's dismissals like this that are preventing progress. I think the upthread comment was insightful and correct.
    - CPLX 3y ago
      How do you determine programatically if the runway is clear? Or more accurately if it won't be clear when you get there? That's a substantially harder problem than you're letting on.
      - ajross 3y ago
        So, just to be glib, my car reports GPS positions at about 3 Hz at all times to an app (Teslamate) under my control, which is far more accurate than needed for runway incursion detection. And to boot, it literally drives me around, autonommously, every day, in an environment (my suburban neighborhood) vastly more complicated than any mere airport. To say that the problem will require some engineering is correct. To claim it's infeasible is just ridiculous.
      - michaelt 3y ago
        With a 'runway incursion system' - https://www.atgairports.com/solutions-and-systems/airfield-control-systems/runway-incursion-systems https://www.atgairports.com/solutions-and-systems/airfield-c... You don't necessarily need a system that scales all the way down to tiny airports. Major airports like Haneda presumably already have things like stop-bar lighting, for operating in foggy weather. If we already know where each aircraft is, and whether they're permitted to cross the stop bar right now - I can believe this runway incursion could have been detected.

by ajross 3y ago

krisoft 3y ago

> The pilots of the A350 (and I don't understand why this angle isn't getting more attention) should have been looking out the window and seen the lighted-and-very-visible turboprop on the runway in front of them. Because pilots know that it is incredibly hard or impossible to see an airplane lined up on the runway. By lighted we mean that the turboprop had the required lights on the end of the wings and the end of the tail. Otherwise the airplane is totally black, on a totally black runway. Simply it is very easy to not notice the extra lights among all the lights of the runway. The pattern you are trying to notice is 3 extra lights among many, and a small gap in the runway lights where they are obstructed. > The backstop to this really can't be "give different instructions", because whatever you pick can be misheard too. We know a solution for this. ASDE-X(Airport Surface Detection System) is a set of sensors (radars mostly) integrated together to monitor the ground movements of aircraft and automatically report deviations such as runway incursions. https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/asde-x https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/asde-x

CPLX 3y ago

> The pilots of the A350 (and I don't understand why this angle isn't getting more attention) should have been looking out the window and seen the lighted-and-very-visible turboprop on the runway in front of them. Have you ever flown a plane? You're essentially blind to objects directly in front of and below you. That's also true in a car of course, but there's a lot more ground below you when you're flying a plane.

kergonath 3y ago
From my experience, people who don’t know what they are talking about love to talk about pilot error and assign blame to the humans in the cockpit. You don’t see that often when reading experienced commenters who know that there should be 10 safety systems and features to prevent mistakes from getting catastrophic. Admiral Cloudberg’s analyses for example discuss at length the failures of all the mechanisms that allowed the crash to happen. It’s never “pilot need to git gud”. (Well, almost never, it was very nearly that for the recent Yeti Airlines crash).

user3939382 3y ago

It doesn’t help that there appears to be a, “cultural thread”? in aviation which believes that it’s a sign of your chops to talk like an auctioneer on the radio. There’s an infamous example on YouTube somewhere of this ATC telling pilots “cle te leh” for Cleared To Land.

konschubert 3y ago

If the signalling system is sufficiently modern, a train cannot drive over a red signal without being shut down. You cannot turn a signal green if there is another train on the track. Why do we have this kind of state management for trains, but not for airports?

brazzy 3y ago
Because you cannot stop a plane mid air to wait for confusion to be cleared up.
- ajross 3y ago
  No, but you can sound a loud warning in the cockpit if you're lined up as if on final and the runway isn't clear. Go-arounds are a standard maneuver. It's dismissals like this that are preventing progress. I think the upthread comment was insightful and correct.
  - CPLX 3y ago
    How do you determine programatically if the runway is clear? Or more accurately if it won't be clear when you get there? That's a substantially harder problem than you're letting on.
    - ajross 3y ago
      So, just to be glib, my car reports GPS positions at about 3 Hz at all times to an app (Teslamate) under my control, which is far more accurate than needed for runway incursion detection. And to boot, it literally drives me around, autonommously, every day, in an environment (my suburban neighborhood) vastly more complicated than any mere airport. To say that the problem will require some engineering is correct. To claim it's infeasible is just ridiculous.
    - michaelt 3y ago
      With a 'runway incursion system' - https://www.atgairports.com/solutions-and-systems/airfield-control-systems/runway-incursion-systems https://www.atgairports.com/solutions-and-systems/airfield-c... You don't necessarily need a system that scales all the way down to tiny airports. Major airports like Haneda presumably already have things like stop-bar lighting, for operating in foggy weather. If we already know where each aircraft is, and whether they're permitted to cross the stop bar right now - I can believe this runway incursion could have been detected.