The simplest is placing a row of red lights in the ground at all intersections to runways. When an airplane is cleared for takeoff and until it is airborne the controller presses a button and turns all these lights red. Pilots are instructed that regardless of clearance, a red light over-rides that, and to never cross it. These lights are installed at JFK, but apparently NOT at the intersection inquisition. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runway_status_lights).
JFK also has Airport Surface Detection Equipment (ASDE). Which is essentially ground radar including transponder/ADS-B replies. Many have automated alerts when it detects a potential runway incursion. Not known if any such system alerted the controller.
There is obviously room for more to be done in this space.
Edit: thank you for correcting my damages estimate, I was off by at least an order of magnitude.
"Airport officials also inspected lights meant to indicate when it isn’t safe for planes to venture across runways and verified they were working at that particular runway, according to the summary."
If the root error of the pilot here happened not at the runway crossing, but earlier, when confusing the K and J taxiways, then that's the location where possible preventative solutions should be considered.
Because once a pilot has subconsciously convinced herself that she's at another runway, it becomes increasingly impossible to override that mental block, no matter how many lights and sirens you use.
But still, if pilots internalize via training that "if you are about to cross a line of red lights, you are entering an active runway without having permission to do so, so don't do it", that should be one more layer of safety to prevent situations like this. Of course, none of these layers are 100% foolproof, but taken together...
Traditionally every taxiway and every possible path on each intersection will be painted with a yellow line and illuminated with yellow lights.
Follow the Greens replaces that with green lights which are controllable at a very high resolution. The result is that every plane will have a path of green lights to follow, greatly reducing everyone's workload.
https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl/media/JFK.pd...
According to https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl/pet/ the lights don't illuminate until departing aircraft are at 30 knots, so it's possible Delta 1943 was just beginning the takeoff roll and the lights weren't on yet when American 106 decided to cross 4L.
I'm not aware of the costs to install it but I really wish it was everywhere. It's an incredibly handy confirmation for clearances given by ATC.
If nothing else they need to hold up in every weather and temperature big airports exist (-80ºF to +150ºF) and get run over by airplanes all day. Already that's a non-trivial problem.
To put it into some relatable context, a simple electrical switch that you might grab for a few bucks at your local Home Depot would cost at least several hundreds of dollars because of all the red tape that must be satisfied for safety reasons.
Safety isn't cheap.
You could do it a lot cheaper if you could accept them not working correctly sometimes. Like occasionally all the lights at an intersection would be green or something.
So the next logical question is 'why didn't the pilot know where they were?', and there are a lot of possible answers to that question, which could conceivably be linked to communication (e.g.: not enough signage, they were told incorrectly, their maps were written in Klingon), but the primary problem was that the pilot believed they were crossing a different runway to the one they were actually crossing.
That's... a street light.[1] When street lights become "very expensive of course" it's time to revisit our priors about how we regulate. And I say this as someone not normally inclined to libertarian rhetoric.
[1] To be clear: a proven and effective technology deployed successfully literally millions of times over the past century of traffic control!
You aren’t going to have poles or hanging lights on a runway.
It is embedded lights.
That have to work without fail in extreme temps, all weathers, with planes rolling over them all day.
They have to have certain visibility at different angles, they have to fail gracefully.
These things are rarely ‘that’s just…’
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/ita-airwa...
This stuff is happening a bit too often in JFK as of lately...
From the article: > The Italian airline, noting it fully respects all safety regulations, said in Thursday's statement that "collisions during taxiing manoeuvres are an increasing phenomenon ... especially in highly congested airports like JFK."
https://www.statista.com/statistics/639826/leading-airports-...
I remember flying from Michigan to Newark once and the ticket said “2 hours 45min” and I thought that was nuts, it’s like an hour flight.
Turns out they tack on an hour leaving and coming for taxing and waiting in line.
At least that’s how it was a decade ago.
Do yourself a favor and do a youtube search for "kennedy steve." He's famous for managing this chaos with a commanding voice and prompt instruction while maintaining a good sense of humor.
I'm just an amateur enthusiast who listens to a lot of ATC, so take this assessment with that grain of salt:
JFK has long had a unique subculture with respect to ATC (embodied most famously by the flourish and wit of Kennedy Steve, but often apparent from the entire ATC corps on both ground and tower during busy times), and strange as it sounds, it might be a part of what averted this disaster. At other airports, it seems to me that it's totally possible that this goes far worse.
The controller did a few things that are unusual in ATC, but not totally unheard of at JFK in particular:
* Completely changed tone of voice. He yelled into the mic. That doesn't happen often in ATC.
* Yelled "SHIT!" to open his transmission.
* Spoke in a way that emphasized speed and urgency even if it cost a little clarity (eg, some news outlets have transcribed "cancel takeoff clearance" as "cancel takeoff plans" because of how intense and fast the controller is yelling)
Assuming the aircraft were on a collision course (something we'll probably know for sure only when the FAA report comes out), this was less than 1.5 seconds (perhaps less than 1 second) from an impact.
A different transmission, like you might hear at say LHR or LAX, where the controller keeps a monotone and simply says, "Delta 1943 cancel takeoff clearance" might not have gotten the attention so quickly and helped the Delta pilot initiate the reject so rapidly.
I think that this incident is an example of a) how JFK's unique ATC swagger may not be just for show, but may actually be a part of the safety culture of that airport, and b) how effective voice contact with ATC is at achieving rapid response from pilots.
Ideally, this investigation prompts some study into what might seem like a silly topic: whether the "New York attitude" of JFK controllers has a positive safety impact that isn't felt elsewhere.
> * Completely changed tone of voice. He yelled into the mic. That doesn't happen often in ATC.
> * Yelled "SHIT!" to open his transmission.
> * Spoke in a way that emphasized speed and urgency even if it cost a little clarity (eg, some news outlets have transcribed "cancel takeoff clearance" as "cancel takeoff plans" because of how intense and fast the controller is yelling)
I think this was actually relatively subdued. There was a similar incident at Chicago Midway in 2015 where the ATC command was "Delta 1328 STOP STOP STOP": https://youtu.be/b26NcJCLZl4?t=82
Sp. leaving aside whether or not it's more "subdued" (they're both unusual in tone, I'm sure we can agree), the JFK controller did something that the Midway controller didn't: repeated the entire transmission including callsign, in case his first tx had been stepped on, unbeknownst to him.
He was able to do this in such a quick timeframe because he was employing the phenomenon I'm describing. Dialing deep into it: the way he allowed his full NY accent to come out ("cleh-ance" instead of "clearance", for example) delivered the full message at a very high signal to the ear _twice_ in about the same span as the Midway controller (while yes, using a louder volume) got a less clear message across only once.
I dream of being an ATC. It's something I'll do later in life in the context of a multiplayer game, I think.
So it's hard to make any kind of comparison.
It will be more telling to see how things settled after the construction is finished.
In that case, the pilot of a plane misread the taxiway number (he confused R5 with R6 [1]) and entered the runway while another plane was taking off.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linate_Airport_disaster
[1] This is what the junction between R5 and R6 looked like that day: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Disastro_Linate-02.png
Something I realized growing up, and perhaps this is a bias for others too: I always perceived of airline accidents as being crashes where everyone dies. Hence all the conspiracy silliness of “they just want to know what seat you were in to identify the body.”
But my goodness there’s so many ways to be badly hurt without a big crash.
In a way this feels akin to the highway bias: highways are far safer than city streets but a lot of people perceive them as being so dangerous.
I remember an incident involving a private jet about a decade ago. The jet was at cruising altitude when suddenly it hit an air pocket and precipitously lost altitude. This being a private jet the occupants (some Greek businessmen) were drinking champagne or whatever, fact is they weren't wearing their seatbelts. A few of them died right on the spot as the result of them violently hitting the plane's roof.
Many passengers (including me) instinctively put their hands on the seat in front to steady themselves. You could easily slide around if the seat belt were loose.
It was it worst for children whose legs didn't reach the floor, but there were none seated near me.
People really don't like it when you do that, by the way.
I never found out the reason. I thought they would have to report it and I could read it in av herald.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster
Can't agree more
ATC: "Delta 1943, are you able to taxi or do you need a couple of minutes to run checks?"
DELTA1943: "Yeah, we can get off the runway" but they're all going to need a change of underwear!!
And I thought the Brits were known for understatement!
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress."
https://avherald.com/h?article=503c9620
- "Excerpt of Aerodrome Chart, red: actual taxi path, green: cleared taxi path (Graphics: AVH/FAA):"
Two alternatives that I would think would be fairly easy to implement.
1) Google maps style directions input by air traffic control showing as well as telling the pilot what runway/path to runway to take.
2) Coloured lighting directing the pilot to the right runway via the correct path. Then the pilot only needs to know that they are following blue, and when it's time for them to move, blue comes up.
I understand this would be more work on the part of ATC, where right now they can verbally communicate, but a system such as this may also help ATC relieve some of the mental load.
Is this already happening? I can't find any links to suggest it is.
We are relying on checklists, procedures, surveillance tech, simulation training, certification, re-certification etc. etc. No other industry has put in as much thought into these problems. Except for maybe the military.
Source: I had the opportunity to meet and participate in crisis resource management training for surgeons held by a trainer from pilot training industry. Everyone’s mind was blown because surgery is comparatively in the Middle Ages.
Based on seeing and hearing about it I believe that more ideas have been studied and tested than you’d expect. Cognitive overload in crisis situations is a well researched problem. Probably hard finding links on the subject though.
Now you've added one more thing for the pilot to look at instead of actually looking out the windows.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airport_Collaborative_Decision...
These are more about timing and throughput in airports, and less about safety critical stuff, and certainly there are new fancy navigation and runway lighting systems to help with that. But what I’ll say is that airports involve a huge number of different organisations, operating huge numbers of systems from different vendors, and until about 15 years ago there wasn’t much joining it all up end to end. To the point that a killer demo early on was merely putting the airport and all the planes on a real-time map. So, it doesn’t surprise me that a lot of the responsibility still falls on humans and processes.
While taxiing, you're supposed to have the taxiway map up (https://flightaware.com/resources/airport/JFK/APD/AIRPORT+DI...), and something like ForeFlight (which many pilots, GA and commercial, use) will alert you when you're approaching a runway as well as once you enter it. Not sure what the instruments in a 20+ year old 777 will have to help with this (likely the taxiway map, unsure if they'll alert on runway entrance).
On communication: most modern flight computers do support getting your IFR clearance from the FAA (see CPDLC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controller%E2%80%93pilot_data_... and Tower Data Link System: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/flight_info/aeronav/acf/medi...). This doesn't include taxi clearance.
Looks like ForeFlight and MITRE are working on bridging the gap (take the audio taxi clearance and overlay it on the map): https://www.mitre.org/news-insights/impact-story/runway-safe...
EDIT: here's a video of the feature in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p5-7jVg8fE; looks like it's only on the most expensive plan though :/
https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl/media/JFK.pd...
ETA: another comment suggests that while JFK has RWSL, it was not installed at the intersection where this occurred.
Or this one, showing how it works in foggy condition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W2ak94xTXM
And an explanation of the system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAn1mfBDDkc
With how much can be going on at major airports, probably. If ATC routed you on one taxiway the last 10 flights, then switched it up, you could easy repeat back what they told you while still thinking of the old route. Commercial aviation's safety record disagrees with me, though.
This isn't a real quote, is it? I was surprised to read ATC losing their composure like that, but in the linked video/audio there is no utterance of Shit! that I can hear.
Standard when the aircraft is already moving: "Delta 1943 stop immediately, Delta 1943 stop immediately".
The "cancel takeoff clearance" call is supposed to be only used when the aircraft has not moved yet. Like: "Delta 1943, hold position, cancel takeoff clearance, due to xxxx"
It was very very close so monetary lapse in composure isn’t entirely unexpected
vs https://twitter.com/RossFeinstein/status/1614613794470100995
Totally. The instructions were "taxi Bravo hold short of Kilo" and "cross 31L at Kilo"; read back was correct but instead of turning right at Kilo and crossing 31L, the pilot turned left, then right, and crossed 4L at Juliet.
Edit: I figured it out, sorry for the noise. For anyone confused as me, you have to click the timestamp to see the `flag` link on the comment.
(I've done so here.)
I'm sure the outcome of this event will probably be a technical mitigation of some variety to attempt to stop it happening again.
Although there were certainly many "systems factors" that contributed to the incident, the followup treatment of the pilots is in fact remarkable. The Wikipedia summary of the incident is "near miss attributed to pilot error". This pilot error nearly killed a thousand people. The pilots failed to report the incident (even flying the return flight the next day) and thus overwrote the cockpit voice recorder for the flight.
And despite all that, the names of the pilots are not included in the NTSB's report and Wikipedia editors/moderators think they shouldn't be included in that article. Impressive job security.
I counted six other path conflicts in the space of 25 seconds, in this tiny section of the airport. With conflicts happening every few seconds, it's incredible to me that crashes don't happen more often.
Why are paths planned this way? Is capacity pressure so extreme that airplanes have to be crammed together this tightly? Is it not possible for airplanes to travel along taxi-only paths that minimize runway crossings, or wait in orderly queues and achieve nearly the same rate of takeoffs?
Doesn't help on the ground though.
It basically uses radar data to figure out whether it's safe to enter and safe to take-off on a runway. If it's not it will show red lights at the take-off position and entry points, pilots are trained not to cross those lights when red even if ATC says to do so.
There's no advantage having a predictive tool over a binary "runway clear/not clear"
"Too expensive"
WAAT? Even a 7-11 had an always on camera.
"Too expensive. How would you get it to withstand the weather? How would you run power to it?"
Me: install it in the control tower, point it at the taxiways, and plug it in.
"That will never work"
Me: Sigh.
I still don't know if they have cameras monitoring the ground ops.
I can’t say for American airports but I have been involved in European air traffic control research and I can say that using algorithms isn’t very very well received by air traffic controllers.
Computers tend to do better than humans in optimal situations, but can also completely fail in other situations. One example is the sun magnetic waves disturbing the radars. For cameras I can think of many things that can fail, rabbits eating the cables, snow of the lense, or the local cloud provider having a downtime.
So because computers can fail and humans are the backup, humans must be always present and have the best situation awareness. And to have the best situation awareness, you can’t let algorithms do the work.
Wouldn't the line up and wait call for American 185 mean that they were departing from both 4L and 31L?
They were landing 4R and 4L, departing 4L and 31L at KE. American 106 ended up departing 31L full length since that's where they had decided to taxi to and it was probably easier to just get rid of them that way rather than have them cross 4L again to depart where everyone else was departing from.
Did the B777-200 Pilots assumed the should takeoff from 4R with 2.560m length? Should be enough for a B777-200?
[0] https://avherald.com/ (may be hugged to death right now between this event and the turboprop crash in Nepal)
