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I wonder why airports don’t have actual signal lights or the equivalent. Train tracks have them, and there are fairly strict interlocks to prevent multiple conf
by amluto 3y ago
I wonder why airports don’t have actual signal lights or the equivalent. Train tracks have them, and there are fairly strict interlocks to prevent multiple conflicting uses of the same track segment at the same time.
- nunodonato 3y agoThey do. Towers can use light flashes to transmit a set of different messages both to ground and incoming planes
- crote 3y agoCost. Some airports already have "stop bar" lights (green to enter runway, red to stop), or "follow-me" lights (follow the trail of green dots to your destination). But these aren't exactly cheap (nothing in aviation is), and installing them requires shutting down runways. They'll probably become more common at larger airports over the next decade or so.
- diebeforei485 3y agoA lot of airports do have stop bar lights at the entrance to runways, and some have even installed "follow the greens" systems. They're not common in the US though. The issue here is we had two separate controllers giving clearances to the same runway at the same time. One told an aircraft to take off while another told multiple aircraft to cross. Might better technology have prevented this incident? Maybe. It would have been obvious that the runway is in use, so the aircraft crossing would likely have asked the controller to confirm instead of trusting the controller.