Incident: Wizz Air and Air Europa Planes in Near Collision over Spain | Hacker News Reader

Incident: Wizz Air and Air Europa Planes in Near Collision over Spain

avherald.com

165 pointspseudolus188 comments

Short summary: the two planes were very close, “200 feet vertical and 0.2nm horizontal,” and according to the article the main reason the incident happened is due to miscommunication and oversaturated communication channels.

Initially the Wizz Air plane was supposed to descend to FL300, but missed the first instruction, and the second one was incorrectly given and confirmed (read back by the crew means confirmed?) as FL200. The Air Europa flight was at FL290, and the Wizz Air plane got to FL292 (200 feet from FL290) before being instructed to ascend. The cause of the miscommunication was that the frequency used to communicate from the air traffic control to the planes was saturated and many communications collided, meaning multiple communications happened at the same time and were impossible to differentiate, necessitating repeating.

Edit: wasn’t misheard, instruction was incorrectly given.

'nm' is 'nautical mile', for anyone wondering

Yeah I did a double take. Close but surely not that close.

missed by a whisker -> 90,000 nanometers apart

Clearly a mistake. Abbreviations for nautical mile are M NM or nmi. I guess the author has not heard about nanometer

I guess you could take the context of the article. There would be no way to measure in nanometers in that situation. So if someone does not know that nautical miles was implied, it should be easy to infer that nm was not nanometer.

I did infer that, but was extremely confused because I didn't know what else it could be.

The source isn't really intended for general consumption. It's a briefing intended for pilots and others in the industry. The goal of these kind of documents is to help pilots and air traffic controllers to learn from their mistakes.

Sure, but that didn't stop me from thinking "nanometer" whenever I saw it. Initially, I was wondering what font screwup could turn "km" into "nm".

Same! I was wondering A) how in the world they managed to get that closr and B) how they managed to measure it.

In an aviation context, `nm` is almost universally used for (and understood to mean) nautical mile.

NM or nmi, but not nm.

Confusion in units is never a good thing.

The FAA uses "NM" (capitalized) in federal regulations.

I don't think I've ever seen someone use M, NM, or nmi for nautical mile. I've only ever seen nm. I used nautical miles a lot in a previous career, in the context of aircraft mission planning.

Telling people in the industry to use nmi or NM seems a lot like telling computer people to use MiB or GiB instead of MB or GB, or to pronounce gif "jiff". They're just not going to change.

It is going to change. I use MiB and GiB. I also use the ISO standard for dates, etc. Precisely because they are now standard.

Saying it is not going to change is what makes things harder.

The aviation industry: not exactly sticklers for metric usage.

The Apollo flights used NM on their screens for nautical mile.

[pic (right-most screen)] https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/liebe... [article] https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/apollo-flight-contro...

Also "KFPS", presumably for "thousands of feet per second"

Thanks. 2 nanometers of distance would indeed be a bit low.

It's only a problem if the planes are both fermions.

Nautical miles are a fun unit. They are one minute of arc of the earth's surface (idealized), so it makes sense why they took hold in the two forms of travel that regularly travel great circle routes.

There is a similar relationship between gradians (metric angles) and kilometres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gradian

One minute of latitude for those wondering how this works.

Thank you! I was wondering how these work around the poles!

1nm is about 1/60th of a degree of any great circle on the earths surface

(Earth isn’t a sphere so it’s not exact, but it’s pretty close)

Not nano meter :)

It was not misheard, the controller got confused and said FL200 instead of FL300

Thanks, I updated my comment.

Dont they have ADSB in on the commercial flights? They could have known another plane was so close?

Yes.

I believe that’s how TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System) works; ADS-B broadcasts aircraft data which is received by other aircraft, and an “advisory” is issued to the crew if a potential for collision is detected. This system operated in this case, for the lower aircraft of the two.

I think the parent commenter is pointing out that the descending aircraft could (and arguably should) have refused the descent clearance on noticing that it would lower them into FL290 traffic that they could see via ADS-B display in the cockpit, long before TCAS fired.

> read back by the crew means confirmed

Read back does not mean confirmed, it's basically a double check. What pilots do when they get an instruction they'll respond with the same instruction (but abbreviated).

Example:

ATC: Descend and maintain FL300

Pilot: Cleared for FL 300, XZ 123

Whereby XZ 123 indicates the flight. By reading back the instructions ATC should notice if the pilot heard everything correctly.

That's entirely different than "confirmed". With confirmed there's no double check. Further, unless there's an emergency AFAIK the pilot must follow ATC so no need to "confirm".

Fractions of nanometers close? That's some insane precision.

In aviation “nm” stands for nautical miles.

It’s usually written NM.

Regardless of what’s technically correct, I see “nm” way more often than “NM” in aviation contexts.

> 200 feet vertical and 0.2nm horizontal

So that's 375m (1230ft) total for anyone wondering.

What do you mean by 375 meters "total"? They were 0.2 nautical miles apart vertically, which is 370.4 meters, and additionally they were separated horizontally by 200 feet, which is ~61 meters.

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28%28200+feet%29%5E2+...

Presumably they plugged it into the Pythagorean theorem.

You can't really compare horizontal and vertical distances.

This is correct, and it is implicitly recognized in the vertical separation intervals being less than the horizontal ones. What matters even more than distance, however, is time, and in this case, fortunately, the aircraft were travelling in the same direction and so had a low closing speed (it was actually negative, I believe.)

Planes aren't spherical and don't change directions in all ways as easily... so taking the straight line distance isn't as helpful as you'd think.

Wow, usually when there are reports of "near misses" the planes are relatively far apart (still potentially dangerously close, of course) - I don't think I've seen a report with the planes this close to each other before.

Planes don't actually have to strike each other to cause issues.

The turbulence from the engines is enough to cause issues for the next plane. Enough so, that turbulence alone can cause a crash, even if the airplanes never actually touch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake_turbulence

This is only really an issue for planes of highly disparate sizes and I've never heard of it causing issues (a crash or near miss) with a commercial airliner (edit: in good mechanical condition where the pilot does not make things worse from the get-go) sized craft being on the receiving end.

Wake turbulence was the cause of the second deadliest air crash in US history:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_587

And involved in this one, though the situation is harder to assess:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAir_Flight_427

>Wake turbulence was the cause of the second deadliest air crash in US history:

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_587

Funny you mention 587. That was actually the first thing I thought of. That was the one where the pilot slammed the pedals lock to lock in response to turbulence and ripped the vertical stabilizer off. Aircraft of similar size take off similar distances behind 747s all the time. The pilot really reacted badly in the case of 587 though his training was partly at fault. From wikipedia:

"The first officer repeatedly moved the rudder from fully left to fully right... The resulting hazardous sideslip angle led to extremely high aerodynamic loads that separated the vertical stabilizer. If the first officer had stopped moving the rudder at any time before the vertical stabilizer failed, the airplane would have leveled out on its own, and the accident would have been avoided"

>And involved in this one, though the situation is harder to assess:

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAir_Flight_427

427 was a hydraulic failure and any source of turbulence (e.g. weather) requiring rudder movements could have raised that issue. IT was part of a larger issue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_rudder_issues#Secon...

I originally said "Thank you from changing the wording from "implicated" to "cited" because they mean very different things." but you since edited your comment to say "cause" and "involved" which IMO is as accurate on average as "implicated" but with greater standard deviation.

I don't think it's reasonable to say that wake turbulence has never caused an issue for an airliner, when many hundreds of people died because pilots misapplied rudder in direct response to wake turbulence.

The correct systemic response is to note that wake turbulence is very dangerous for airliners because it may cause pilots to catastrophically misapply rudder.

(Sorry for my many edits to the parent, I didn't realize you'd already replied.)

I don't think it's reasonable to say that N=1 warrants a systemic change when the N in question was a human (as opposed to a mechanical failure which is as repeatable as the components and the failure conditions are).

I don't know but I suspect United did change their training after that. The fact that the pilot reacted the way he did is as much their fault as the pilots. IMO it is a training/human factors issue, not some fundamental issue with turbulence and current following distances.

But the point of systemic thinking is to see when you've hit an area that's vulnerable to human and training factors and try to do the best you can to reasonably remove the risk. There are surely hazards that have caused less loss of life that we still consider dangerous at N=0.

Do you know whether ATC large plane same-size spacing guidelines around airports have changed much over the years? I don't know whether airliner spacing would have generally increased or decreased, but I'd be surprised if it hasn't changed at all.

Edit: I read more about these flights and I think I agree with you that I'm overstating the risk to airliners from wake turbulence. I was expecting to find increases in separation distances in response to the American flight and instead it looks like the only change made was a training change for rudder control.

American Airlines' training division had taught its pilots to react vigorously to wake turbulence, and among pilots generally, there was a widespread mistaken belief that, below the maximum maneuvering speed, it was impossible to do structural damage through the primary flight controls. Now that these misunderstandings have been corrected, we can hope this particular problem will not occur again.

On the other hand, I would guess that there is still a risk of people-thrown-around-the-cabin type incidents from abnormally close encounters with wake turbulence, and I do not know if the possibility of structural damage can be ruled out, especially if this were to happen at cruising speeds. I think it is probably safe to say that any structural-risk incident would have been within a whisker of being a collision anyway, in which case the measures to avoid the latter cover the former as well.

FWIW, the dangerous part of wake turbulence is from the wing vortices, not the engines.

The Air Canada near miss in San Francisco is another one.. but the other planes were on the ground. Apparently they missed by ~20 feet and it would have likely been the most deadly accident in aviation history as 4 planes were in the path with something like 1,000 passengers in total.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGQlQFn0euI

Wiki article with the story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Canada_Flight_759

1nm is just over 6000 feet, so that is about 1200 feet horizontally. 1nm is also about 15% more than an sm (statute mile), the thing we usually call a mile outside of aviation or nautical circles.

So that means the planes were intended to be at levels 300 and 290. Is it normal to have only 1000 feet of vertical separation? It seems like the higher plane could easily lose 1000 feet in a few seconds before ATC could tell the lower plane to move away.

Yup; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduced_vertical_separation_...

A plane can ascend/descend fast, but generally stick to either 500 or 1000ft/min.

Question to people familiar with the topic: do dispatchers keep the 3D picture of planes and airways in their head or is there any computer aid for preventing things like this? Ideally the (erroneous) instructions (to drop the altitude too low in the airway) given to the A320 should have been registered by the computer and flagged as dangerous well before someone realizes there is another plane mere 200 feet beneath.

There are alerts, both visual and aural, in modern ATC setups when aircraft are within a certain distance of an intersecting trajectory in time and space, and additionally when they are within a certain proximity.

However, the intended instruction was safe. The problem was that the ATCer read it out incorrectly. I am not aware of a system that does voice recognition on what is said by the controller to check that it matches the programmed instruction!

I think it was changed that TCAS alert from the plane always takes priority over the ATC.

After this incident: 1 July 2002, Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937, a Tupolev Tu-154 passenger jet, and DHL Flight 611, a Boeing 757 cargo jet, collided in mid-air over Überlingen.

Yes, TCAS takes priority over ATC, but I didn't mention TCAS in my comment, so I'm not sure what you mean :)

GP was asking about whether the ATC controller gets alerts, and I was replying to say that yes, there are several types of alert that should trigger in this situation, in a modern ATC setup. These aren't related to TCAS but are alerts at the ATC location.

It is just an addition to whole topic of alerts that even if in some setups ATC doesn't have the alert or is overloaded to react in timely fashion that ATC it is not the only thing preventing the collision, that there are systems and procedures on the plane.

Maybe I should've replied to original comments instead but yours seemed like a good place. Sorry for causing confusion.

Wasn't this the incident where a bunch of kids died and the grieving parent of one stabbed the ATC person responsible? Sadness all around...

Yes, it was this accident.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitaly_Kaloyev

The 'Return' section is sickening. Russia has a cancerously warped morality.

""Kaloyev is a hero. Those guilty of causing air crashes often remain unpunished. Such a radical punishment is the only way to make them carry responsibility for their crimes," said Vitaly Yusko, a member of a Russian organisation dedicated to helping the relatives of air crash victims. "

Ughh that was bad to read..

Consider long and hard the case of Radonda Vaught, the nurse who killed a patient at Vanderbilt Hospital in a most dreadful manner. The investigation showed that she was overworked and stupid, and that patient safety at Vanderbilt is so bad that you should go elsewhere if you value your life.

There were no consequences for anyone, no changes in protocol or leadership; the institution covered up the nurse's error to such a degree that she still has her license. The nursing board is now looking into the case again, but that's only because of the public outcry.

There was a Gofundme campaign spearheaded by a well-known online nursing community that raised > 100 kUSD for the defense; that page mostly said that she is a nice person. (That might be at the recommendation of the defense, but it doesn't matter; there is no situational insight, consequently there won't be any improvement.) Z-Dogg MD came out in her defense as well, citing "just culture". From the outside is looks that since leadership gets off by default, consequently the scapegoat at the bottom that exposed the systemic failings should get of scot-free, too.

In the Ueberlingen case, at least someone had justice administered to him.

>Only one air traffic controller, Peter Nielsen of ACC Zurich, was controlling the airspace through which the aircraft were flying.[10] The other controller on duty was resting in another room for the night. This was against SkyGuide's regulations but had been a common practice for years and was known and tolerated by management.[10] Maintenance work was being carried out on the main radar image processing system, which meant that the controllers were forced to use a fallback system.

>Skyguide, after initially having blamed the Russian pilot for the accident, accepted full responsibility and asked relatives of the victims for forgiveness.

>Under international aviation laws,[failed verification] the compensation amount was about CHF 30,000 ($34,087) to CHF 36,000. The Swiss Federal Court turned down appeals from some relatives for higher compensation in 2011.

>A criminal investigation of Skyguide began in May 2004. On 7 August 2006, a Swiss prosecutor filed manslaughter charges against eight employees of Skyguide. The prosecutor called for prison terms of up to 15 months if found guilty.[29] The verdict was announced in September 2007. Three of the four managers convicted were given suspended prison terms and the fourth was ordered to pay a fine.[22] Another four Skyguide employees were cleared of any wrongdoing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_%C3%9Cberlingen_mid-air_c...

How so?

So a guy gets left to manage airspace by himself and was overloaded (not by his decision). A ground based collision warning system was shut off for maintenance. And he made a critical mistake and a lot of people died.

It's now "just" as a result to stab this guy to death in front of his young children? And the murderer can come home after a light punishment to celebration and acclaim? Gross, man. So gross.

It's just so absolutely misguided: "taking justice into ones' own hands," creating secondary victims in the guy's children, and further-- just chose the person who happened to be on duty and not anyone actually responsible for the policies and procedures that really created the accident.

The comment made was "Russia has a cancerously warped morality." The slap on the wrist the company received, the fighting over how much compensation to pay out, the Swiss government valuing the time they spent holding the murderer as higher than the lives of the children combined, the management who cut corners to the point dozens died. All of these are just as equal if not worse cancerously warped senses of morality. So given that as the baseline and what can count as normal (can, not should), I don't see where one has the ability to condemn that one specific part of the incident as being so much worse.

>And the murderer can come home after a light punishment to celebration and acclaim? Gross, man. So gross.

More gross than the murderers responsible for the death of dozens getting fiscal rewards by the other governments involved due to the legal systems they choose to enable? If anything, given the level of culpability and punishments handed out I would say that this particular individual did not receive the grosses treatment.

>"taking justice into ones' own hands," creating secondary victims in the guy's children

Which is why it is so important for the existing legal systems to create a sense of justice enough that people do not burn their one use of total social disregard for vengeance. When you deal with a case like this, discussions of right and wrong have little bearing on individuals who feel like they have lost everything seeking on vengeance for wrongs they do not feel were redressed. This is not advocating such behavior, only recognizing that until we achieve some level of mind control people will always have the option of throwing everything else away for the sake of vengeance. Not the right to do; the innate option and ability to do so. It isn't that such behavior is just or what is moral or what is right. It is about that (most) all of us have the ability to disregard all others and act as we desire until others use force to stop us and how society seeks to prevent people from choosing that option of last resort.

This is a factor in numerous anti-social behaviors and one reason why some behavior, no matter how much we pass and strengthen laws to stop it, continues unabated.

Well, fine, you've convinced me: if I'm wronged, it's perfectly OK to kill someone tangentially involved. As long as someone else involved did something that I consider worse, all's fair. /s

Complicated systems made out of many humans and policies break down and result in deaths. We try and make the systems better and deaths less, and look-- commercial aviation is safer than ever. But decisions made in this type of environment do not have a nice predictable cause and effect relationship like stabbing someone does.

You can be sure the next air traffic controller in similar situation (gear in service, lone shift) will voice his concerns and deny work instead of putting people in danger.

>In 2004, Kaloyev travelled to the Swiss town of Kloten, where he killed Nielsen, who had since retired from air traffic work.

>In 2016, upon retirement from the Local Ossetian government, Kaloyev was awarded the highest regional medal by that government, the medal "To the Glory of Ossetia". The medal is awarded for the highest achievements, improving the living conditions of the inhabitants of the region, for educating the younger generation and maintaining law and order.

Err... Ok.

>Russia has a cancerously warped morality.

As if other countries don't share it...

A man was recently in the news for killing a man who peeped on his daughter in a public restroom in the US.

The comments were flooded with people supporting his actions and bragging they'd do the same.

It's trivial to find similar stories with similar receptions in the US and other countries. Some people just really believe in "self served justice"

It mostly seems to stem from disenfranchisement and a belief "the system doesn't work", so it's justified to take matters into your own hands.

> A man was recently in the news for killing a man who peeped on his daughter in a public restroom in the US.

Surely we can see that there's a bit of a difference between killing someone in the heat of the moment vs. using investigators to find them, lying in wait, and then stabbing them to death in front of their children.

And you can find asshats celebrating anyone. The person in question is facing a murder 2 charge and will go away for a long time; they will not leave prison to acclaim and a cushy public job; he will not win governmental medals for "upholding law and order"; etc.

There are plenty of premeditated examples too... but it is HN so surely I should have expected someone to fixate on my single example of a trend

"Trend" --- as in you're arguing that this is something on the increase?

You're missing the main problem in your post. In the example we're talking about, it's a deplorable case of the person involved not facing real justice or proportional consequence.

You can always find people advocating for deplorable things. But in the example we're talking about, this group of people was so large as to create acclaim; to give him an important public job; and to award him a medal. Surely that's different from a few people saying "THAT PEDOPHILE DESERVED IT."

We'll never get rid of the few people saying something stupid; but we can hope that the state and bulk of the populace comes to a reasonable decision, at least (8 years in prison, in this case).

??? What???

Saying something is a trend does not imply it's increasing?

trend: a prevailing tendency or inclination

(And before you go and check, none of the other definitions imply an increase specifically either)

If you're going to nitpick, at least be correct about the nits you pick.

I'm not missing the main point, I'm intentionally calling out a hypocritical, borderline racist sub-point that wasn't even needed in the original comment.

Why shoehorn this point Russians are somehow morally flawed people, what did that add to anything and how is it even supported by the story when exactly as you confirmed you'll find people cheering for murders anyways. You're literally making my point.

> Why shoehorn this point Russians are somehow morally flawed people, what did that add to anything and how is it even supported by the story when exactly as you confirmed you'll find people cheering for murders anyways. You're literally making my point.

Yah, so whether it's one person doing it or the state doing it-- it's the same. /s :P

> Saying something is a trend does not imply it's increasing?

It implies it is CHANGING IN SOME DIRECTION. Words have a definition and a connotation; better dictionaries make this information clear in the definition.

M-w says:

1a: a prevailing tendency or inclination : DRIFT current trends in education b: a general movement : SWING the trend toward suburban living c: a current style or preference : VOGUE new fashion trends d: a line of development : APPROACH new trends in cancer research 2: the general movement over time of a statistically detectable change also : a statistical curve reflecting such a change 3: a line of general direction or movement the trend of the coast turned toward the west

We can look at etymology, too:

> Old English trendan ‘revolve, rotate’, of Germanic origin; compare with trundle. The verb sense ‘turn in a specified direction’ dates from the late 16th century, and gave rise to the figurative use ‘develop in a general direction’ in the mid 19th century, a development paralleled in the noun.

You're using the wrong definition based on context clues and trying to correct me based on your wrong interpretation of said wrong definition.

This is the most HN comment I have ever read, thank you.

Also so you don't claim I'm just dodging the slightly on-topic part of your reply: The government that mass incarcerates it's population, started wars half way across the world for bad reasons, radicalizing generations to come in the process, kills civilians indiscriminately as long as they're brown, etc. has the moral high ground how again?

Didn't we literally just pardon a man who brutally murdered people on behalf of our nation in such ruthless fashion, our own elite soldiers turned their backs on him and called him a monster?

"Whataboutism, also known as whataboutery, is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument. It is particularly associated with Soviet and Russian propaganda."

I'd swear this was a meta-satire if I didn't know humor isn't allowed on here.

I say: It's not cool to make blanket statements about a race based on the way he was treated

You say: the state was behind his treatment so that totally makes it ok

I say: Ok well our state does terrible things to, how about we not make blanket statements about races and their morality

You say: omg argumentative fallacy!

This entire thread is a near indefensible comment about a race, you trying to defend that comment on "technical" grounds, but then you want to complain about "whataboutism" as if the root of this wasn't a racist, fallacious, statement.

Thanks for the year end laugh, really.

You're going really far to defend Russia welcoming home as heroes people that have done deplorable things in the West.

Да, я! с новым годом!

>Surely we can see that there's a bit of a difference between killing someone in the heat of the moment vs. using investigators to find them, lying in wait, and then stabbing them to death in front of their children.

Enough of a difference to matter in judgments of the behavior?

For example, the entire 'heat of the moment' is the recognition that a person can be in a mental state where their actions are abnormal. In general we recognize this mindset lasts a short time (exactly how long is legally allowed and how long is socially allowed differs, but I can't think of any case that allows for more than an hour).

But, in doing so, we have now acknowledged such mental states do exist and and given them some level of justification (enough so to be different than murder without the mental state).

So, is it possible that a person who loses their spouse and children cannot be put into a similar long term mental state? If you read the wikipedia article, the man seemed to not have been in a normal mental state at all, to the point even the Switzerland courts recognized it after the murder.

>On 8 November 2007, Kaloyev was released from prison, because his mental condition was not sufficiently considered in the initial sentence.

So, while the mental states do have some difference (one lasting minutes to an hour, the other lasting years), they also seem to not be so different in the view of the courts.

So is the difference enough to counter the other poster's comment? I don't think that has been established enough to dismiss their post outright.

> Enough of a difference to matter in judgments of the behavior?

Yes. As you indicate, we have a long legal tradition in Western countries of weighing these things.

But beyond that, someone who is one of these states and kills the wrong frickin' person is not likely to be celebrated by society as a hero afterwards ;)

> So is the difference enough to counter the other poster's comment? I don't think that has been established enough to dismiss their post outright.

That is, don't confuse escaping some degree of culpability (perhaps justified in this guy's case, but not to the extent he did...) with being officially lauded (uh, no way).

I despise Kaloev for what he did, but Swiss prosecuted Kaloev, put him in jail for 8 years and released after 2, didn't they? So, for Swiss the justice is accomplished and the punishment for killing their citizen is done.

Yah, I think the Swiss screwed up a little.

The bigger issue is the celebration afterwards at home / giving a state office / medal for upholding law and order. These actions explicitly condone the murder.

Yes, the Swiss screwed up when they handed suspended sentences to Swisscontrol management who condoned working conditions at the Center in Zurich.

It's a problem that negligent management that causes death and misery to hundreds and thousands gets off as easily as Joe Random who though his negligence killed just one person. It does cause contempt for the law. At that level of responsibility you need strict liability, and the hammer needs to fall. Otherwise you end up with the 737-MAX.

Now the tricky part. Maybe, just maybe, the Swiss didn't screw up? Maybe that's their perception of events and consequences and crime and punishment: heartbroken father and husband at one side of Femida's scales and a culprit of his child and wife's death - on the other?

In that case, aren't you with your ideas of jailing Kaloev for life, or other voices talking about even putting him on a death row - are just a mirrored image of those who cheered him for vendetta and murder? Are you?

(edit: typo)

> a culprit of his child and wife's death - on the other?

The guy who died made a mistake when overworked and without the normal safety systems backing him up, and without the Russian aircrew noticing and with the Russian aircrew ignoring TCAS. The Swiss found fault with the management chain that made the decisions involved to create the situation and none with the individual controller who made the mistake.

Calling him a "culprit" isn't a great match for the circumstances.

> In that case, aren't you with your ideas of jailing Kaloev for life, or other voices talking about even putting him on a death row - are just a mirrored image of those who cheered him for vendetta and murder?

You're putting words in my mouth. How can you read "Yah, I think the Swiss screwed up a little [in releasing him so early]" as advocacy for the death penalty? You're outright trolling at this point and it's a little sad.

In a just world, he would have done 7-15 years, and then not come home to celebrations of vendetta.

Not to defend anyone, just to add some context

1) People are still practicing blood feud where Kaloev lives. I mean, for real. Not at mass scale, but anyway. And while illegal like any murder, it is romanticized in local culture like an act of supreme justice. So, while it may sound unexpectedly medieval to some people, killing someone who killed your family was pretty much what is considered right for Kaloev and his circle. This is not true for Russia in general.

2) Russian media presented events in very unbalanced way. It is more common in Russia to blame "others". Russian pilots completely ignored TCAS resolution advisory, but were never blamed for that in Russian media.

3) There is a movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unforgiven_(2018_film)

"to" and "two" are just too similar in englihs, perhaps they should use some other sign or language for nearly homophonic words

“to” is instructed not to be used in pilot/atc conversations, for this reason.

For example: descend and maintain flight level three two zero

Same goes with “for”, which you sometimes hear in readbacks like “leaving 4000 for 3000”. It should be something unambiguous like “4000 descending 3000” instead.

However “cleared for takeoff” is standard.

It is hard to see how that one can be ambiguous.

This is one of the explicitly unambiguous phrases introduced after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster#Prob... ; note that the meaning of "cleared for (allowed to) takeoff" is completely different from "leaving 3000 for (to the new level of) 2000". In essence, a different word entirely; one of the reasons it is avoided except in complete, unambiguously defined phrases.

Quoth Wikipedia: The word "takeoff" is now spoken only when the actual takeoff clearance is given, or when cancelling that same clearance (i.e. "cleared for takeoff" or "cancel takeoff clearance"). Up until that point, aircrew and controllers should use the word "departure" in its place (e.g. "ready for departure").

Does this make an ATC person a single point of failure? If that person is bad intended or is tired, can they simply cause 2 planes to crash?

In large ATC locations, no - there are always multiple ATCers involved in each position. For smaller locations, there could be a single person working each position without supervision (or the supervisor could be asleep) or even a single person in the entire location (e.g. a small tower).

That single person should still not be able to cause two planes to crash, because pilots don't blindly follow the instructions ATC gives them.

They will be aware of other traffic nearby, through ATC telling them about the traffic, making visual contact with the traffic (when in visual conditions), and hearing the other traffic on the radio (this is an issue in, for example, Spain where the radio communication is often in Spanish and many pilots flying there don't understand Spanish).

There is also a system called TCAS which will alert pilots to nearby traffic, as well as giving instructions for collision avoidance to both aircraft in the case that they are on colliding (or near-colliding) trajectories, with these instructions overriding anything ATC has instructed.

It's only when the holes in all of these systems line up that a collision can happen -- look up the Swiss Cheese model.

Thanks!

> this is an issue in, for example, Spain where the radio communication is often in Spanish and many pilots flying there don't understand Spanish

How does that happen? I was under the impression that all flight communication was supposed to be performed in English, even in countries where English is not very commonly spoken (e.g. Spain).

Many countries allow "English or the local language". Well-known examples are China, France, Russia, Spain, Germany. I've also heard it in Italy and the Netherlands.

The extent of use of local language varies - in NL I've mostly only heard it for a small amount of non-formal conversation, maybe a Dutch word at the end of a transmission. In Spain it's extremely common for entire transmissions to be in Spanish.

Obviously this is only done when both the transmitter and the receiver of the transmission understand the local language. It is (in my opinion and many other people's) a safety issue because it reduces the situational awareness of everyone else on frequency.

> Spain where the radio communication is often in Spanish and many pilots flying there don't understand Spanish).

Or this case where Flights to Bogotá got diverted to smaller airports around Colombia that don’t deal in English much.

Cali ATC’s fluency with English wasn’t great and they seemed to be ignoring the English speaking Lufthansa pilot.

Lots of holding patterns to manage the queue.

Eventually, the local but bilingual pilots on the frequency catch on and instruct ATC to let Lufthansa jump the queue and let them land first because the situation is much more complicated for them.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh9c1UyIrdg

"Wasn't great" is an understatement. Cali ATC seemed to be barely able (or unwilling) to communicate to the English-speaking pilots. Then took up precious time on-frequency to try to cover her ass when she realized her mistakes. Yes, there was a high workload due to all the diversions coming in but come on, get help if you can't communicate with international traffic.

As an English-only speaking pilot, I'd be a little nervous flying into an area where most calls are in the local language. You lose out on a lot of situational awareness that comes from listening to the other transmissions.

You're definitely even more hyper-aware than usual, paying attention to things that "don't seem right", when you can't understand what other pilots are saying.

It's unfortunately quite a common situation in Europe -- even more so for GA, because it's common for GA pilots to speak the local language with small towers even if the commercial norm in the country is to exclusively speak English.

My favourite part was Oceanair astutely switching up who's handling the radios. Errrr... maybe they preferred English so Lufthansa would know what's going on until that disabled ATC comms...

Any idea why Lufthansa wasn't able to find MANGA?

> Yes, there was a high workload due to all the diversions coming in but come on, get help if you can't communicate with international traffic.

Makes you wonder what standby ATC availability is at alternates... when everyone chooses the same alternates.

> There is also a system called TCAS

I've been on a few private planes, and I don't think either of them had this.

Yep. It's uncommon on small GA aircraft. The consequent risk is considered "acceptable".

There are displays of the planes on their airways. I honestly don't understand how airspace controllers are able to read those displays, but they do, and quite quickly.

Just like hexdumps, or any other data-dense format: humans are highly capable of learning to read and understand them, quickly and precisely.

It is amazing that in this day and age, instructions from the ATC are still spoken, not texted. (Does anyone here know if the ATC computer keeps track of the target flight level, heading, etc? If so, these instructions could probably be texted at a push of a button in addition to the spoken words. The aircraft's avionics could then be smart and alert the pilots if they're doing something different.)

Well, it is not amazing at all, as a pilot most of the time I am looking out and over the instruments, not reading texts. Even the cockpit scan is just a scan, not enough to read more than a number at a time. The radio is at a press of the finger on the stick, typing back and forth is not. Also talking is much faster than typing.

You could still duplicate the verbal instruction in a (computer-readable) text, and then have an automated alert for any deviation from the texted instructions. Also, on big commercial flights with multiple pilots, could one of the pilots have more time to verify texted information? (I thought I heard something about a communicator/navigator role). And doesn't the ATC controller already have to type in the information into the ATC computer? I'm suggesting an automated message, not literally a human typing a text.

There were in the past roles for a navigator and even a mechanic on board of airliners, but they were removed a long time ago. Now all the work is done by the 2 people in the cockpit and there is plenty for both in the take off, approach and landing phases.

I am not even sure where to put just another display in the cockpit that is already overcrowded. Or two displays, one for each station. Maybe it can be squeezed, but the efficiency may be zero or negative. Just imagine a plane is far more complicated than a car, having hundreds or instruments, gauges, buttons and lights. Even learning how to use all these takes tens of hours, adding more you can create an nightmare from a bad situation.

LE. There may be some solution, especially for modern digital cockpits, but there are hundreds of thousands of planes without a digital cockpit and with no way to upgrade them - they are not computers with standard interconnects like PCI, USB, COM and LPT ports, most smaller planes don't even have a standard cockpit layout and set of instruments. For example I piloted a few small planes of the same make and model, there were no two alike in the cockpit equipment.

I think IFR clearance is already displayed as texts in the cockpit?

https://www.aviationtoday.com/2014/12/01/tcpdlc-transitionin...

Clearance can be sent via ACARS, but you deal with it while parked on the ground. It would be much different getting messages to change altitude, heading, and/or speed every few seconds that have to be acted upon immediately while executing an approach.

What did the onboard mechanics do? Just help assess and understand the mechanical condition of the airplane?

Not really sure about that, a distant family member was a mechanic onboard AN-24 plane and was killed in a crash in 1995; I never met him personally, just his widow, I never had the chance to ask him questions about his job.

Talking is faster than typing, but reading is MUCH faster than talking/listening.

I wonder if hotkeying textual radio commands would give a good experience.

This would make it impossible to fight the yoke of your Boeing Max 8 and communicate with ATC at the same time.

Hahaha true

...iff that's the only thing on your hands. From the essentials (Aviate, Navigate, Communicate), this comes last.

Slowly but surely the system is moving towards an additional layer of communication using text. The system is CPDLC.

The major issue with using it exclusively is that anything outside of ordinary canned messages takes time to type and that’s often exactly the time you do not have time.

Go back to the Miracle on the Hudson. Their radio transmissions are very brief and concise because they are extremely busy in the cockpit. They definitely didn’t have time to fiddle with a tiny keyboard to transmit all of that information.

I think text is going to be a very important layer in the future but it will never completely replace voice transmissions.

So what's needed is a hybrid voice/text system. Preferably languge-agnostic on the text/data part.

Text for the 99.9% normal things, voice for the 0.1%.

After listening to ATC recordings between e.g. JFK and Air China pilots I have no idea how major accidents don't happen every week.

For reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NDqZy4deDI

Transmitting text from ATC would also be able to have checksums which are then played by an automated voice. Pilots would become accustomed to the automated voice, as opposed to varying accents

Regardless, if you think "I have no idea how major accidents don't happen every week" then it's likely because you don't recognize how much what you're referencing is an outlier, or you're disregarding what else mitigates issues

Thanks for finding a link to that infamous recording.

I think a hybrid scheme could work well. Transmit data in text, greetings via voice. Make sure to do the greetings every time, just to make sure people are used to using voice, for when the emergencies happen.

> Regardless, if you think "I have no idea how major accidents don't happen every week" then it's likely because you don't recognize how much what you're referencing is an outlier, or you're disregarding what else mitigates issues

You do realize you are commenting on a story that's about.. exactly that?

I'm sure something nice could be built with frequency pairs: one for voice, one for data.

It should be possible to build something backwards compatible. Use processes to fall back to voice for when data is lacking, etc.

Voice has a really strong advantage for coordinating complex tasks: it keeps your hands and eyes on the work itself.

Needs a “(2018)”.

Also worth noting that the AVHerald headline “descent below cleared level” is outdated - the text of the most recent update to the article makes it clear that ATC mistakenly cleared the Wizz Air aircraft to a lower level than intended.

I think most the article is newer:

> By Simon Hradecky, created Thursday, Jan 10th 2019 23:32Z, last updated Thursday, Dec 26th 2019 16:24Z

While the incident itself might have been a year ago, it was clearly updated on the basis of the recent report.

Yeah, but a (2018) would still make it clear that it's being posted here for some reason other than having happened recently, which would probably otherwise be the first assumption.

But the article linked wasn't posted. A different new article was posted and the link changed to this one.

So there's a couple interesting things here.

In airport areas, it's pretty common for that type of separation during takeoffs and landings, but you're under 250 knots airspeed.

This case is different. At FL300, you're flying at cruising speeds, and usually on airways. Hence the .2 nm lateral separation.

In a GPS world, you're flying the exact centerline of the airway and will have no lateral separation with other aircraft on that airway unless you "fly right."

An example of an accident because of that is the one in Brazil, where a private jet's winglet sliced through the wing of GOL 1907, a 737.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gol_Transportes_A%C3%A9reos_Fl...

So this was a pretty big deal.

Source: commercially-rated airplane pilot.

I can't express how happy I am that this wasn't referred to as a 'near miss'. That particular colloquialism has always caused my brain to short-circuit briefly while I translate that to literally mean impact/collision.

English is my primary language, and I do know how it is [near miss] intended, and I know that I should know better. But the translation always goes:

near miss -> almost miss -> didn't miss -> hit

I've always wondered if I was the only one.

George Carlin agrees with ya

The term near miss follows a very recognizable English pattern. I’m not sure why you’re reading it as non-standard phrasing.

The word miss is a noun. It means something that did not collide. So if the incident was a “miss” it was a non collision.

The word near is an adjective modifying the noun miss. So what kind of miss was it? It was a miss where the objects were near to each other. It was a near miss.

An adjective before a noun is normal.

I bought a car. What kind of car? A green car.

The incident was a miss. What kind of miss? A near miss.

Because you're thinking of 'near' in the sense of 'almost' rather than in the sense of 'physically close to'. In the latter sense the meaning is clear.

Slightly OT: Are there any good modern ATC sims/games? I used to play one called Heathrow Air Traffic Control on the ZX Spectrum back in the day and it was surprisingly fun. (https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.php?cat=96&id=2270)

This made me courius about the game and found that you can play it online on the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/zx_Heathrow_International_Air_Tr...

I wanted to ask the same question, although my memories are (only slightly) younger - I played Tower[0] on a 386 in the nineties.

[0]https://free-game-downloads.mosw.com/abandonware/pc/simulati...

Vatsim exists which allows you to be ATC for real players on flight simulator games (there are plugins for multiple)

I only know of old MS-DOS game Tracon II (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracon_II). I spent hours with it as a kid, directing tiny aircraft symbols around my screen.

It should be available for download at any decent abandonware website, and works flawlessly in Dosbox.

atc-sim.com, atcradarsim.com, VATSIM, IVAO (the latter two let you actually run ATC for flight sim players, live over the net)

Openscope[0] is a pretty good open source browser-based ATC sim.

[0]: https://www.openscope.co/

EndlessATC is available for free for Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dirgtrats.... and apparently for steam as well. It's edging towards the accurate end of the range of ATC games.

> Spain's CIAIAC released their final report in Spanish only

I've noticed that when flying from Spain the displays list the towns using their Spanish names, for example "Londres" instead of London, "Burdeos" instead of Bordeaux, etc. I've only seen this done in Spain. If I went to China and the displays listed all towns in Chinese it would be much more complicated to navigate...

it's common in airport around Italy to have the local destinations name with the English name alternating on panels and dual language vocal announcements for departures etc.

Train station around here however use local name for all local destinations in all but the largest stations, so tourist have to rely on the vocal announcements.

I always found this kind of funny. In a global sense, these European languages are very similar, so it should be completely fine to use only the local names. They remain pronouncable and legible to the English speaker. It's just that there are traditional English names for some cities, and maybe it can be confusing to have to relearn the native one. Maybe it's a small thing to ask the tourists.

Contrast this with Japan, where there are not traditional English names for anything, so the same name is heard in announcements in English and Japanese. It's hard to understand but that is just how it is.

p.s.

Penso che intendevi scrivere "airports", "stations", "names" e "tourists"

English is an S-based language :)

Not always that similar. Portuguese pronunciation has strong Arabic and other elements, and is nothing like English.

E.g. Lisbon is "Lisboa" in Portuguese and pronounced something like "Hlizshbo(a)"

(English lacks the exact consonant used for "l" in Portuguese. It's a hybrid of l, w, and h consonants.)

I don't mind local names for local destinations, but for international destinations it seems risky. Someone may never have previously encountered the word used for their own home town. It's compounded by the fact that some airports only announce boarding at the gate itself, you have to figure the right gate from the displays.

While this is obviously a noteworthy report (in this day and age, it's amazing that flight clearances are still given over voice - FM radio - liable to mishearing and interference, and generally pretty terrible for pilot workload!) - this wasn't as dangerous as the title implies. All modern airliners are equipped with TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System) which will automatically instruct pilots to avert their course and take evasive action if it detects a converging flight path: this is totally independent from air traffic control and pilots are mandated to follow TCAS above all else. The flight paths weren't converging in this case (there was just a loss of separation) but if they had been, both pilots would have been commanded to avoid each other.

Flying planes directly above each other seems like a pretty bad idea anyway given that the ATC screens are 2D

It's very common, and generally quite safe. Both the computer systems in air traffic control and the traffic avoidance systems on the individual aircraft are able to handle it nicely.

The article mentions the Embraer's TCAS alerted them of the problem, for example. Even my dad's little four seater prop plane will call out "traffic, twelve o'clock, three miles" sort of notices, and if the traffic gets too close it can additionally order climb/descent to avoid.

Vertical separation (based on altimeters) is way more precise than horizontal separation (based on radar, VHF navigation, GPS, eyeballs, etc).

I've been on a trans-oceanic flight in the middle of nowhere, checked the screen to see where we're at, and the altitude is always within 4 feet of a flight level.

It seems crazy that individual airlines are responsible for pilot training rather than a nationally regulated body. This means that successful well funded airlines like Southwest are safer than budget airlines like Spirit, since they would have more money to devote to proper pilot training. But obviously this isn’t how it should work - regardless of which airline you fly, your safety should be held to the same high bar. Why then are airlines responsible for pilot training?

Contributing factor was the saturation of the control frequency due to many aircraft contacting ATC at the same time causing communication difficulties.

I find it puzzling that airplanes still use analog AM radio for voice communication with ATC. To me the awful audio quality and interference between different airplanes sound like a serious safety risk.

The fact that AM doesn't have capture is a safety feature in this application.

Sure, analog FM wouldn't be a good idea either. But why not use something digital with proper collision avoidance and EMI resistance?

Expensive to retrofit worldwide.

Where there is an effective solution to a problem, it can be done, as with the adoption of TCAS itself.

An effective solution to never losing a plane like Malaysian Airways 370 has existed for a long time (automatic transmission of GPS location via satellite), but hasn’t been done due to cost. The cost of doing that would be far less than the cost of upgrading all radios worldwide to be digital (remember, it’s not just planes, but ATC, airports, the handhelds used by ground crews, etc).

MH370 is hardly relevant, because something like that was not considered to be a plausible scenario. My point is simply that there are historical precedents demonstrating that, when there is a sufficiently large perceived benefit, the cost of rolling out the change globally is not an obstacle preventing it being done. In the case of radio, we are currently in the situation where there does not seem to be an alternative that delivers a big enough benefit to justify making the switch.

> because something like that was not considered to be a plausible scenario.

Except 12 other planes (among hundreds in the past century) have mysteriously disappeared without recovery since 2000 alone, so maybe it should be considered before more lives are lost?

Collision avoidance is bad. Pilots want to shout "mayday!" even if other people were talking.

A professional pilot can probably speak to the importance of listening in to other communications as a part of maintaining situational awareness.

The issue of interference has also been raised with respect to the Tenerife crash, where it apparently thwarted a last-chance effort to avert the disaster. For a discussion of the issues, see here: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/36074/is-there-...

The fact you can still hear both parties trying to speak, albeit a bit garbled, is considered an advantage. Imagine if it was analog FM, only the strongest signal would be heard with no indication really of collision. Also, AM signals are generally still useable at a longer distance than FM at the same transmit power.

I clearly remember flying and landing Wizz air on a particular flight in eastern Europe. The plane flight on landing felt on unsteady wobbly on the glide path towards landing. Internally I'm thinking what the heck! After the landing the plane made a big jump up in the air and then landed again safely on the run way. I was thinking thank god to air plane engineers who made this landing safe it was not the pilots.

If you fly with for example Lufthansa or SAS they will plant the plane absolutely steady on the ground during landing and usually never with a jump up in the air again. Fact is SAS and Lufthansa used to do more than the mandatory pilot training, they would do a lot more training with their pilots than was required by aviation authorities.

After the Wizz air what I though was a very bad landing. I have pledged never to fly with low cost airlines again. Air Safety is not worth saving the last penny on the flight. I prefer a well funded airline which trains it pilots properly. Thus I am avoiding low cost airlines since they skip on cost, also on safety.

> Fact is SAS and Lufthansa used to do more than the mandatory pilot training

Citation needed?

Passengers prefer 'smooth' landings but smooth landings have the risk of a bounce because as soon as the aircraft is in ground effect it requires much less energy to stay aloft. So smooth landings are riskier. Experienced pilots prefer safety over comfort and will not try to make a perfect landing from a comfort point of view but will force the aircraft out of ground effect and if that means a harder landing so be it.

Pilot here - that’s wildly incorrect.

Smooth does not equal greater chance of bounce. Smooth is not riskier.

A smooth landing is entirely down to the rate of descent from the flare. Yes you have ground effect to contend with, but wind / gusts, your approach speed over the threshold, the flare, your crosswind technique play a far greater part in ensuring the plane sets down gently.

Some days you’ll land smooth as butter. Other days you’ll be porpoising down half the runway thinking “So this is what pilot induced oscillations are”, before going around.

Generally big jets have to get all their main gear down, and if there’s a >10kt crosswind usually they’ll always come in a crab and straighten out as the wheels touch - those will always feel rough.

No pilot purposefully does hard landings; the co-pilot / captain has a litany of jokes lined up for such a scenario.

Most runways are long enough to bleed off any excess energy, and those that aren’t - well, you go around; but most airlines / pilots have minimums to be established in a stable approach by (way before getting to the flare) - if that doesn’t happen they’re following their “missed approach” procedure and trying again.

Interesting. Ok, so the stuff related above comes from a pilot of a pretty well known airline, I know the difference between a cross wind landing and a regular one, and there is a huge difference between a 'hard' landing as defined by the book and what a passenger experiences.

I meant the second version. Also, the size of the aircraft seems to have a major effect on the kind of landing you get.

What make & type do you fly?

This is known as Airprox and I tried to report one a few years ago only to find only a pilot or air traffic are able to.

For the europeans, 200ft = 60.96m

This is a correct title unlike the usual:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zDKdvTecYAM

Url changed from https://simpleflying.com/wizz-air-air-europa-near-collison-s..., which points to this.

There are just so many planes in the sky that we need better methods to avoid such incidences

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