Near-miss between FedEx and Southwest flights in Austin
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Edit: in the tower comms the Tower asks Southwest to confirm it's on the roll just 16 seconds before the call from FedEx for Southwest to abort takeoff. Incredible the tight margins these guys play with to keep things moving at the airport. People are speculating the tower had no visibility of the runway traffic due to weather.
> For starters visibility was down to 1/8th of a mile. So tower likely never saw how close this was. Second off apparently Austin does not have ground radar. Regardless of that though this is the second near catastrophic accident we’ve had in two weeks or so here in the US alone.
We've learned the lesson once already that not having ground radar is a bad idea.
Edit: Bah, wrong comment on the chain.
Spending a great deal of money to track aircraft on the ground however is only helpful when one of the aircraft is on the ground. It’s only partially useful when visibility is low, at which point air traffic control can be especially paranoid.
Technology isn’t the only option, proper procedures can also work.
In this case the accident was avoided because aircraft could see each other long before there was a meaningful risk. It wasn’t a mismanaged zero visibility situation but rather proper procedures working.
FR24 is a combination of ground-based radar (both primary and secondary surveillance) and ADS-B data.
TCAS (as I understand it) uses the transponder part of secondary surveillance radar, but with out the bearing/ranging info, as well as ADS-B (if equipped).
TCAS is useless in the terminal environment, like while landing or taking off. If it wasn’t inhibited (which it is) it would be correctly screaming that there are about to be a dozen airplanes too close for comfort every single time it got near an airport.
It’s a system for avoiding mid-air collisions not stuff like this.
Disclaimer - PPL, fly mostly twins under IFR, in Australia (still ICAO, if anything we're more or less a copy of the FAA).
Most heavy jets are covering between 2-3 miles a minute when coming in to land. Usually a 3 mile call is to affirm to ATC that they are a minute away (or two for GA traffic).
Most heavy jets also need anywhere from half a minute to three get airborne depending on size / weight / weather.
On a clear day - you can see an aircraft lining up to depart so you can slow down a bit to give yourself some space. Usually ATC does that for you - asking one to slow down or the other to hurry up.
Sometimes the sequencing gets a bit tight, it's annoying, you just power up and go around. Depending on visibility - you can circle in the circuit area to come back around, or follow the missed approach and line up to fly the approach (ILS, RNP etc) again.
Now the hard thing here is that it was IFR weather - the incoming aircraft got visible with the runway when it was lower, and it didn't look like the departing aircraft was lifting off so they went around. It also means they have to follow the missed approach.
Everyone was (mostly) aware of where everyone was, there was no real breakdown in communication nor in procedure. Departing aircraft knew there was one incoming and thought they had time, incoming knew there was a plane leaving and knew there might not be enough time. ATC is trying to keep the ball rolling for both. It's happened dozens of times for me.
Final note - a Missed Approach procedure specifically takes you to safe place away from departing aircraft, who follow their own Standard Instrument Departures precisely because of this scenario. It's incredibly rare for these two procedures to converge / overlap.
P.s. I've gone around / gone missed for everything from slow aircraft to gliders to a snake to wind shear to kangaroos. Literally the last few things just before landing you check are that your gear is down, you have clearance to land and the runway is clear.
This post above is not correct - this was very close by all accounts. Also, recall they had something like 1000 RVR on the field. This was very close to a disaster.
Based on this I would expect goarounds to be more common but I barely remember witnessing one during my travel (not a heavy traveller but lets say about 100-200 flights total). Airport diversions yes once at least. So how often would you expect a go around in an airliner as a percentage of attempted landings?
Your wife asked you for a divorce last night and you can't focus on work? You can call out without consequences.
You just couldn't sleep and don't feel able to fly? Call out.
They understand the importance of the human factor here and would much rather have to reschedule a flight than have a potentially impaired person make a mistake.
Obviously if you're doing this regularly, you're going to have a conversation with management or the chief pilot or someone (I've no idea what the actual reporting structure is) but if you don't abuse the policy, you can call out without consequence.
I don't know specifically about FedEx but I imagine they have something somewhat similar, the FedEx/UPS pilot jobs are also considered top tier (but not nearly as top tier as a major long-haul position) with good benefits.
I do imagine, especially considering how much press this is getting, that the pilots in this case are going to spend the next week or two doing paperwork and maybe some press even. How quickly they return to flight will probably be dictated primarily by how they feel. Fact is as dramatic as this seems to us it's possible the pilots are completely unfazed and just want to get back to work. I think if they wanted a week or three off to recoup that FedEx would make accommodations. Pilots seem to be treated reasonably well at major airlines (ignoring regionals and subsidiaries, where they are cattle) and the possible negative value of negative press (FedEx fires pilot who saved plane from near-miss for asking for time off to recover!) this should be a no-brainer for them.
Pilots also have a good union behind them.
Pilots and airlines do not seem to shift fault away from themselves but seem to do a phenomenal job of identifying root causes to avoid future incidents.
The Wikipedia info box summary is "Runway overrun caused by pilot error". And indeed, the pilots were going too fast with the flaps set wrong. At some point, they indeed faced a difficult decision, but one that was caused by their own, multiple previous errors. Having made that decision incorrectly, they also failed to stop the aircraft as well as they could. From your link:
> In the end, the NTSB identified two separate decisions by the captain which led to the accident: first, his decision not to go around immediately when the plane started to float, which was inconsistent with his training; and second, his decision to finally go around after it was already too late to do so. The float itself was caused by excessive airspeed on touchdown, in combination with an ill-timed gust of wind. In a later revision suggested by the Air Line Pilots Association, the NTSB also added the “non-availability of information about the aircraft’s go-around performance capabilities” as a contributing factor to the captain’s decision.
37 people died and the pilots kept their jobs. Truly amazing job security, much like this other example where the pilots almost killed 1000 people (but didn't in fact kill any): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34395221
When you see the regular incidents that do not result in crash, that statement would be obviously regarded as false. Yes, things are mostly reliable because most of the time there are at least several safety features or processes in the way, but most crashes and incidents are still due to human error.
My understanding is that planes passing this close to each other is relatively common, as 1,000 ft is the minimum vertical separation for RVSM airspace, but I was still surprised that the other plane was directly above us and that some sort of optimization algorithm isn't used to maintain horizontal separation as well just in case there is an error in communication on the flight levels.
Edit: fun fact, you can actually hear the passing jet from the flight deck just after it has passed, a slight whoosh can be heard. Depending on conditions you can also feel a brief bump when crossing their wake (since the wake descends).
Each plane was at the exact same height, and given their digital altimeters they were at the exact same height and one planes wing clipped the one going the other way. Only the smaller plane crashed.
One minor potentially life saving standard protocol is that flights are supposed to stick to certain elevations depending on the direction of travel. Half remembering this, but East flights are to be at odd elevations (31,000; 33,000; etc) while West bound are on evens (32,000; 34,000; etc).
There are plenty of phrases in English that make no sense compositionally, but "near miss" is not one of them.
Near | Adverb
1. Close by
2. Almost
1. near (adj) miss (n) - it was a miss, but a near one (i.e. a close miss)
2. nearly (adv) hit (v) - they almost collided, but didn't
3. nearly (adv) missed (v) - they collided, but it was almost avoidable (the Carlin joke "oh, they nearly missed ...)
4. was nearly (adv to was) a hit, that nearly (adv) hit (v) us, ...
5. near (adj) hit (n) - doesn't really make sense, should be 2 or 4.
Change "near" to "almost" and see how it sounds to you: Two planes "almost hit" vs "almost missed".
I'm familiar with the claim that "near hit" ought to make more sense (and with the Carlin sketch that either originated or popularised it). But in practice, people use the phrase "near miss", not "near hit" (unless actively making the George Carlin joke), and they don't use "near miss" to mean what you claim ("almost missed, but didn't" i.e. hit). So this, again, isn't really a claim about what the phrase can mean, but about what you'd logically want it to mean. Such claims are a bit counterproductive at the best of times—language doesn't always follow compositional logic, and sometimes we just have to live with that—but here it's especially odd because the phrase means exactly what the component words say it does: a "near miss" (noun phrase) is a miss (noun) that is near (adjective).
I strongly suspect that isn't true. Can you link to an example of someone using it that way?
Sorry for the pedantry. Hope you’re having a good weekend.
Doing it "my" way would probably reduce throughput, and given that thousands of aircraft a day are cleared to land while the plane in front of them is still in the air, it must not be too dangerous. But I have always thought it's weird. (I did some googling and apparently they do it "my" way in every country except the US? Figures!)
Only one aircraft is actually allowed to depart/land on a given runway at any one point in time.
You can have clearance to land after the aircraft in front has landed or departed, but broadly two civilian aircraft occupying the same runway is a no-no if either are taking off or landing. Seaplanes is another matter entirely, and of course there are dozens of exceptions.
You can have multiple aircraft cleared for a departure or arrival or approach - but note that this is not a clearance to take off or land.
I've been given clearances to land roughly 5 seconds before my wheel touch and my hands were just about to shove power in to go around. I've been told to go around after my wheels are on the runway too.
We usually know what ATC is doing or waiting for and we can anticipate those calls.
I don't think the US is different from the RoW in that manner - they all need to conform to the ICAO regulations - otherwise we'd have chaos with US pilots navigating China or vice versa.
Me: FAA (US) & CASA (AU) PPL w/MEA + IR.
> Landing clearance to succeeding aircraft in a landing sequence need not be withheld if you observe the positions of the aircraft and determine that prescribed runway separation will exist when the aircraft crosses the landing threshold. Issue traffic information to the succeeding aircraft if a preceding arrival has not been previously reported and when traffic will be departing prior to their arrival.
Two aircraft on the active runway at the exact same time? Usually not allowed. Two aircraft one after the other? That's okay.
Clearances are for future events that lead to the latter, not the former.
What did you do?
That’s an incredible situation to be in, and one reason (having to make a decision in the moment like that) why I’m afraid to try flying
My mains had just touched and ATC called for a GA, they obviously saw something I didn't and I was airborne a few seconds later. Circled and landed with no issues.
It could've been anything from metal on the runway to an aircraft not responding or reading back in time while taxing to a priority medevac helicopter.
PS: Located in one of the most gerrymandered districts in the entire US, spanning Austin to San Antonio with a sliver of connection without constituents spanning I-35 for a distance of 80 mi / 130 km. The district looks like a broken q-tip or a lock pick.