JAL A359 at Tokyo collided with Coast Guard DH8C on runway and burst into flames
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- Crazy how well the carbon fiber A350 held up given that it seems to have landed pretty much directly on a Dash 8 (RIP Coast Guard team). Looks like trading long term flammability for initial rigidity lived up to the design intent.
- Excellent evacuation job, especially as it looks like on some videos that the crew was unable to shut down the right engine, rendering the entire right side unusable (severed lines given the severe belly damage?) UPDATE: they actually did use the front right exit nevertheless https://x.com/tanakamaru1999/status/1742132422005981578
- Don’t have headphones with me and in a public space, but landing / takeoff clearances should be somewhere in https://archive.liveatc.net/rjtt/RJTT-Twr-TCA-Jan-02-2024-08... if someone wants to try and find them (timestamps towards end of url come in 30 minute increments).
While there many silly reasons to force people to shutdown electronics and such on planes, I think forcing people to not have any distractions during take-offs and landings is a good thing.
Over 50% of incidents (fatal and hull loss/non-fatal) occurring during landing:
* https://accidentstats.airbus.com/statistics/accident-by-flig...
* https://www.1001crash.com/transport-page-statistique-lg-2-nu...
With take-off and descent/approach being the next two more frequent phases.
(I expect if you compare that to the number of people inconvenienced by the rule it's a terrible trade off.)
As of today: 379.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5jSyaj_JwE
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_358
The FAA mandates that aircraft are able to be evacuated with-in 90s:
* https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/...
Even for something as big as an A380 in its 800+ passenger configuration:
* https://www.flightglobal.com/airbus-a380-evacuation-trial-fu...
* https://simpleflying.com/aircraft-90-second-evacuation/
The difference between 180s and 90s is 90s: if (e.g.) ~30 people out of ~350 passengers (<10%) take an extra 3 seconds each because they are not aware of their surroundings, that time is eaten up.
Seconds matter.
1. Passengers on JL516 were not permitted to use their phones during landing.
2. I'm proposing that we start allowing them to use their phones.
3. If we did that then all 379 passengers would have died [1] because evacuation would have taken longer than the time before the plane was engulfed in flames [2]
Except #1 isn't the case: passengers were allowed to be on their phones and were doing so. And so #2 isn't the case either: I'm proposing maintaining the status quo.
And even if we had granted #1 and #2 I don't see how you get #3 because even if the extra time were entirely eaten up by 30 distracted passengers this wouldn't get you 100% dead: people don't leave in a single batch determined by the speed of the slowest person. There are multiple parallel exits, and each exit operates serially.
You are right that it does not necessarily follow that 100% would be dead. AC 797 had a flash fire after 90 seconds, and only about half the people died. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Incredibly, people can walk and chew gum at the same time. This includes the ability to refocus their attention when they experience unusual events.
You're not allowed to use laptops or have the tray down.
For example, I wouldn't take a $10 cheaper flight which prohibited using my phone, but I probably would take one that gave me a 1" narrower seat.
No. They can't. That 'refocus' you mention is proof of that.
it's getting old having to say over and over again that this isn't actually the case : humans switch contexts and lose focus -- you're not as good at multi-tasking as you think, nor is anyone.
So , people can walk OR chew bubble gum , and if these choose to they can pay contextual switching costs between the two to make outside spectators believe that they can do two things at once.
Don't fall for the ruse, there is a cost even if it's a small one.
Similarly, in a disaster i'd rather be surrounded by fit young soldiers without cell-phones -- alert and aware -- than I would be surrounded by the typical multi-variant airliner crowd that must have their attention drug away from the device by the sound of crunching metal.
It's obvious to me that a group of alert and ready people will outperform 'the other group' in an escape in nearly every metric, i'd hope that the same would be obvious to the other humans trying to escape fiery wreckage alongside me.
[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7075496/ [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_multitasking
OK.
I have no problem with the idea that humans can re-prioritize; but I do have a problem that people seem to think that the re-prioritization effort comes for free, instantly. We don't work that way as humans.
people seem to think that the re-prioritization effort
comes for free, instantly
1. You seem to be assuming the alternative to "using one's phone during a landing" is some sort of highly aware ready state. In reality it's probably bored snoozing or half-snoozing. It's a red-eye flight after all.
2. You seem to be assuming that "evacuating a burning plane" is some kind of split-second thing, like a quicktime event in a video game. In reality, at least for this incident, there was a span of a significant number of seconds between "impact" and "plane slows down enough for emergency slides to extend and evacuation to begin." 30, maybe 60 seconds.... I'm not sure, but there was no real positive action for a passenger to take during that time. Shifting attention away from one's phone certainly has a nonzero time cost, but not remotely comparable to the time it took for the plane to come to a full stop.
Again, you're dealing in hypotheticals, while the actual reality of this incident (phones in use, orderly exit achieved, all lives saved) contradicts whatever it is you are imagining.
Likewise, the chance of someone being in an aviation accident is close to nil (you're more likely to be in a car accident), but you are either going to be in an aviation accident or not (a 50% chance) and you're going to be either dead or alive from it (a 50% chance).
So you might as well at least not have your epitaph be "Killed by some bozo in the aisle TikToking" if you do end up dying.
I think this is rarely a productive way to think about it. For example, the chance that I might die in the next year is somewhere between 0% and 100%, and actuarial tables put it somewhere around 0.3%. [1] Should I refrain from having a kid because I'd have a "50% chance" of leaving them without a dad before they turned 1?
...obviously this "math" doesn't quite work out.
Which is not to say that you should not plan for extremely rare events, but you certainly should not make decisions assuming they are likely to happen.
My chances of being killed by a shark is basically 0%. But, if I'm in a shark cage surrounded by sharks the idea that some global probability is 0% isn't relevant. Something like that?
I've since extrapolated that to meaning that objective measures cannot always tell or respect the whole story, because personal perspectives can bowdlerize everything down to life or death or a 50% chance.
To put it another way: Telling someone they have a negligible chance of being in an aviation accident is worthless comfort if they end up in one.
It's significant comfort in all those flights where no crashes occur, and for most of the time up to and during those that do end in crashes.
Anyone who really believes they are about to embark on an activity having a 0.5 probability of killing them should put their affairs in order, but then, by the same reasoning, there's a 0.5 probability of dying while doing that!
I believe the fallacy here is using an uninformative uniform prior when a much better, empirically-verified one is available.
Sure. It’s also callous and insensitive, which is why we don’t tend to do that. But saying to the vast majority who are never going to experience a plane crash (a number larger than the number of victims by a few orders of magnitude) that it’s a coin toss is at least not very smart.
Suppose a friend is afraid of crossing the street. Would it be more helpful from a personal perspective POV to tell your friend the odds of being hit by a car, or to make up the fact that you are just as likely to die today crossing that street as not dying? Because the latter strikes me as unhelpful from either an objective perspective or a personal perspective.
And an analysis of the scene: https://puzzlewocky.com/fallacies/the-50-50-fallacy/
I was going to say 'chance of death on that day' but apparently rail transport is remarkably safe and in micromorts, you're as likely to die in one day at 20 years of age as in 10000 km by rail, or (only!) 1600 km by air.
Now, it appears that 1600 km is also nearly the distance of the average passenger flight (a disappointly difficult datum to discover on the internet in 2024). Is this a counterpart to the reassuring quips comparing the chances of death by lightning: that boarding a plane doubles your chances of dying that day?
This makes sense, because air travel is the only way to make voyages over this distance. But it also doesn't make sense for the same reason -- it's stupid to compare a 6000 mile holiday flight with a 6000 mile holiday road trip, because people don't routinely make those. You're still more likely to get injured on an eight hour car ride than on an eight hour flight, but the difference isn't a factor 600.
In much the same way, air travel is also arguably moderately efficient in terms of CO2 per mile, except that it's also a super easy way -- in fact, practically the only way -- to accrue tens of thousands of miles every year, so the efficiency is kind of irrelevant.
It's not particularly relevant to an international flight into Japan, but the extent to which increasing annoyance/instilling fear of airline passengers causing people to drive instead must be weighed against the small safety benefit resulting from a policy of telling passengers "we think this phase of flight contains the most highly concentrated risk, so for the next 15 minutes, please put away all of your distractions, prepare for a possible crash, and try not to think about the fact that we could turn this aircraft into a tumbling, burning ball of wreckage at any moment."
Something similar was the primary justification to support the continuation of "infant in arms" travel by passengers under the age of 2, with an expected 60:1 ratio of lives that would be lost if infants were required to occupy ticketed seats vs being carried in arms.
https://www.ntsb.gov/news/events/Documents/child_safety-Clau...
1/2 hour to the airport + get to the airport 2 hours before flight + 1 hour direct flight to Denver + 1/2 hour to deplane + 1/2 hour to get bags + 1/2 hour to get rental car + 1 hour drive to Fort Collins. Total 6 hours. Seems like it actually totalled 7 but I don't remember where the extra time was.
Versus 7 hours drive time from Salt Lake to Fort Collins.
And if two people are going, you only drive one car, but you buy two plane tickets.
And my car has more legroom than a coach seat.
So, yes, flying is safer per mile, but the "under 8 hours" crowd also have a point...
I would rarely do 8 hours driving in a single day, let alone 12. Certainly couldn't do that for work, would be massively against policy.
Then the airline lays off those people because nobody wants to fly.
The cell-phone "ban was put in place because of potential interference to wireless networks on the ground" [1]. The distraction argument started making its rounds after the interference hypothesis was debunked.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120110081053/http://www.fcc.go...
Along with the "no newspapers" rule? And no sleeping?
For obvious reasons, ordering the evacuation, in conjunction with criteria such as which side and which doors is the Captain's job, or if the Captain is incapacitated, the First Officer. They will have access to far more data than the cabin crew will (e.g. whether the engines are safely shut down, circumstances on the ground thanks to radio contact etc.).
The Cabin Crew will not make the decision themselves unless they have been unable to establish contact with the cockpit (i.e. both flight crew incapacitated). In normal circumstances the Cabin Crew are only there to action the Flight Crew's orders.
Communication is key, but comms might have been down, too. In cases like this the cabin crew have to be prepared to initiate an evacuation on their own, and they have to be prepared to choose which doors to use.
Re-read my post, because your conclusion is saying exactly what I already said with your words "be prepared to".
To repeat what I said, but in simpler terms:
In an ideal world, the Flight Crew have the responsibility for ordering evacuation and the associated parameters. End of story, no argument.
BUT there is a well rehearsed, well practiced, protocol which surrounds this !
So, at one extreme, if the Cabin Crew cannot communicate with the Flight Deck, then the decision is clearly theirs.
But before the extreme, we have the obvious scenario .... Cabin Crew act as additional eyes and ears for Flight Crew.
BUT in this scenario we are back to my main point ... the buck stops at the Captain to make the decision !!! The Cabin Crew are telling the Captain what they see, its ultimately his call.
> They will have access to far more data than the cabin crew will (e.g. whether the engines are safely shut down, circumstances on the ground thanks to radio contact etc.).
This is not remotely guaranteed. It would be more accurate to say that the pilots will have access to information that the cabin crew don't have access to and vice versa. If the cabin crew sees that the plane has stopped, there's a fire on board, and instructions are not forthcoming from the pilots, the cabin crew absolutely must initiate an evacuation sua sponte. Heck, if the cabin crew won't do it then the passengers might. People can and do freeze in the face of emergencies. When you have a fire on board all bets are off, and someone had better step up and begin the evacuation -- better that it all be orderly than not, but also better that it happen at all than not.
>In the meantime, the cabin crew had been attempting to get the pilots’ attention using the emergency call button, but all the pilots were so focused on the failures that they initially didn’t notice. Only now did they send Second Officer Mark Johnson to assess the situation in the cabin, whereupon a Qantas pilot riding as a passenger in the upper deck drew his attention to the in-flight entertainment system, which featured a live view of the aircraft from a tail-mounted camera. The digital stream clearly showed a much more literal stream of fuel pouring from the left wing and into the aircraft’s wake, which was also visible with the naked eye from the lower deck. Johnson proceeded down to check for himself, at which point he also observed for the first time that there were two gaping holes in the top of the left wing, surrounded by jagged metal, where the turbine disk fragments had exited.
I don't think there's any good way to ensure people are paying attention to the whole long landing and take-off sequence when it's basically always boring.
Also looks like all C hold short lines have embedded guard lights - ie the stop "bar" on the way to the runway should have been flashing brightly.
* https://www.anaas.ana-g.com/img/business/general_aviation/pd...
It's also possible that there was more ATC communication that was not recorded. LiveATC comes from feeds provided by volunteers, whose receivers may be some distance from the airport and which may not receive signals 100% reliably. The investigators will have access to the official recordings made by JCAB (the Japanese aviation authorities).
Line up and wait sounds like something you tell preschoolers to do :-)
It could also be used while other aircraft/vehicles are crossing the runway at other intersections.
It is not “hey, multiple airplanes get yourself into a queue on the runway”.
It's used quite regularly at any moderately busy airport to reduce delays.
Examples where I've seen/heard it used in ATC comms:
Aircraft departing in sequence. eg A, then B. So: "Flight A (already lined up on runway 35L), cleared for takeoff runway 35L." (some short time later while Flight A is still in the process of taking off) "Flight B, runway 35L line up and wait"
Aircraft departing after an arrival. eg "Flight A cleared to land, 35L", and right as flight A has crossed the threshold: "Flight B, runway 35L line up and wait"
Also, as mentioned by others, when there are other movements to cross a runway between departures. eg "Flight A, at Foxtrot 5, cross Runway 35L. Flight B, runway 35L line up and wait"
https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/aim_html...
Because it can be confused with "take off" as in "turn off"?
Point was that if the taxi clearance didn't include "hold (short of 34R)" it might be seen as contributing factor in line with ICAO[1] or FAA recommendations.
Also quite terrifying that, given all the equipment at Haneda and according to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NbVdIoJsHY, around 2:45, with taxi lights fully visible at 2:53, the DH8 was lined up on the runway for more than a minute before being run over by the A350.
But as you say, preliminary report should already have a clear timeline of the tower tapes.
1: https://www.icao.int/safety/runwaysafety/documents%20and%20t...
The word "clearance" is used uniquely in the context of landing and departing exactly to avoid mistakes and has to be repeated again by the aircraft before ATC confirms.
The word "cleared" is often used for IFR clearance delivery as well which gives you permission to navigate via a planned route to a particular point, so it's much more common than just takeoffs and landings.
They were out of service:
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/police-probe-poss...
13:13 JL516 continue approach. 14:53 landing clearance. 15:01 readback. 15:13 Japan Coast Guard JA772A taxi instructions. 17:35 fire reported on 34R.
What if a plane catches fire in midair?
The accident became a watershed for global aviation regulations, which were changed in the aftermath of the accident to make aircraft safer. New requirements to install smoke detectors in lavatories, strip lights marking paths to exit doors, and increased firefighting training and equipment for crew became standard across the industry, while regulations regarding evacuation were also updated. Since the accident, it has become mandatory for aircraft manufacturers to prove their aircraft could be evacuated within 90 seconds of the commencement of an evacuation, and passengers seated in overwing exits are now instructed to assist in an emergency situation.
This will be the real story to come out of the incident. It was still an open question as to whether composite airframes were a good idea for civil aviation due to the fire risk. I imagine Airbus marketing teams started popping champagne corks the moment all passengers were safely accounted for.
This couldn't be further from the truth.
From what I've read, this was handled terribly. There was confusion and no evacuation was ordered by the crew over the PA. The passengers managed it themselves. If it were a crew-directed evacuation they would have blocked the door leading to the still-running engine as you pointed out.
It took the firefighters over six minutes to respond to the site of the burning aircraft. In the US and Europe this would be unheard of, the fire brigade would be rolling as soon as the aircraft hit the ground.
The only reason hundreds of people are not dead is directly attributable to the Japanese being an overly polite and orderly culture.
If this were China or elsewhere in Asia there would be hundreds of people dead right now, trampled over in the chaos, while the remaining hundred or so survivors would be exiting with their roll-aboard bags in tow.
Source: 14 CFR 139.319:
Within 3 minutes from the time of the alarm, at least one required aircraft rescue and firefighting vehicle must reach the midpoint of the farthest runway serving air carrier aircraft from its assigned post or reach any other specified point of comparable distance on the movement area that is available to air carriers, and begin application of extinguishing agent.
I read that to mean “in a planned test, must have a 3 minute alarm to application time”. That means it’s the intended performance target but a 3m30s response to an actual crash will maximally get a request from the Administrator to demonstrate a 3:00 time, rather than a revocation or lowering of ARFF Index of the airport.
Here is an in-flight video. It appears that the passengers did not manage the evacuation.
They got nearly 400 people out with only 14 minor injuries.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-67879308
> "Right after the plane touched down, the pilot felt a sudden shock, and lost control to stay in the runway. A fire took place but the pilots didn't recognise it in the beginning and learned about it [through the] cabin attendant," the JAL spokesperson said.
> There were three pilots and 12 flight attendants on board when the incident took place. The aircraft's announcement system was damaged, leaving the crew to use megaphones and their own voices to shout instructions.
> "The first thing cabin attendants did [after they realised there were] passengers who recognised that their plane was on fire, was to make them stay calm and not to stand up, which could make the escape very difficult. The announcement system was unusable so these instructions were made without it."
Let's wait for facts (ie. the accident report) before making such statements.
> There was confusion and no evacuation was ordered by the crew over the PA.
Of course there was confusion, that is inevitable. Again, we do not have solid information on what PAs were made, but from the looks of the damage and the likely accident sequence, the main avionics bay was pretty much completely destroyed. It's fairly likely the pilots were not able to make any evacuation order by PA on account of half the plane's electronics being on fire a kilometre behind them.
> The passengers managed it themselves. If it were a crew-directed evacuation they would have blocked the door leading to the still-running engine as you pointed out.
Video clearly shows an orderly evacuation, supervised by cabin crew, who can be seen directing from the exits with flashlights and leaving last. I don't know where you got the idea it was passenger managed from. It appears that the exits facing the worst of the fire were not deployed which is additional evidence of a properly managed evacuation. I don't know their SOP wrt. running engines, or if this engine was even 'running' and not just freewheeling (it doesn't seem to be producing meaningful air movement), but it appears they made a rational decision to use the R1 exit, since everyone survived and the evacuation was pretty quick (~2 minutes).
> It took the firefighters over six minutes to respond to the site of the burning aircraft. In the US and Europe this would be unheard of, the fire brigade would be rolling as soon as the aircraft hit the ground.
I haven't found video of the very early moments after the aircraft stopped, but there appears to already be foam laid down under and on the aircraft and at least two trucks attending during the late stages of the evacuation, so I don't know where you got this 6 minutes from. Given the circumstances, the crew waiting 6 minutes to begin evacuating doesn't sound reasonable.
> The only reason hundreds of people are not dead is directly attributable to the Japanese being an overly polite and orderly culture.
Yes, the passengers are also an important part of an effective evacuation, and it is why you should not ignore the safety briefing and follow the instructions of the crew. Good on the passengers for effecting a successful evacuation in this case. You might well be right it would have gone down differently elsewhere, with the eventual report yet again espousing the importance of leaving the baggage behind and maintaining order. This is reason to praise the passengers' behaviour and learn from it, not somehow criticize it as 'overly polite and orderly'.
I am sure there were things that could have been done better, but this was a successful and quick evacuation. It's far too early to decide what went well and what could be done better, but it's pretty clear that it was a good job - everyone got out quickly and with minimal injury.
Contrast this to the South Korean ferry disaster [1] where hundreds of Koreans (inb4 someone pops me with "Japanese and Korean are completely different countries..." - yes, I am aware) died as a result of being orderly and compliant. It's just an interesting counterexample where people not speaking up or questioning leadership led to their deaths.
There are aircraft incidents where the evacuation led to deaths that wouldn't have happened otherwise (stuff like fire engines striking evacuees, parts falling off the airplane, fire, etc.). An evacuation is something always considered/discussed and not automatically undertaken.
Japan’s national broadcaster has a video of the moment of impact.
Impact: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20240102_302/
All ~400 airbus passengers safe.
Coastguard plane in earthquake relief efforts hit airbus (see video). 5 of 6 passengers unaccounted for.
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20240102/k10014307191000.ht...
It's not really a miracle though. Just the system working as intended, and the many lessons learned from the lives that were lost in the past paying off.
As an example: due to this accident with many fatalities, the process for fire on the runway has been improved considerably. In that case the wind direction made a big difference in the number of fatalities, because it blew toxic smoke and fire into the fuselage while the evacuation was ongoing. Lessons were learned and procedures fixed. But it's still important to remember that those lessons were paid in blood. https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/fire-on-the-runway-the-m...
this looks like textbook runway invasion where miscommunication leads to two different aircrafts being allowed on a runway at the same time.
Reminds me of LATAM 2213, which led to the very first Airbus 320 neo being written off [1].
Essentially, clearance to enter a runway has to be expressively given and confirmed in non-ubiquitous language ("Flight ABC requesting clearance to enter runway 01").
Yet LATAM incident shows how often emergency services are often unaccustomed to thorough communication (after all they do these procedures much more rarely)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LATAM_Airlines_Per%C3%BA_Fligh...
Shouldn’t there be a universal standard to communicate clearances to the computer systems of the airplanes and other runway vehicles? And shouldn’t there be a small, well-tested core system that makes sure clearance never conflicts?
How on earth does all this still depend on skilled individuals not making a mistake?
We got over this in other domains long ago.
You might be right, but there might be a valid answer.
The maintenance seriousness in aviation is superior to an elevator, but even like that, the last human layer decision should not be avoided.
For example, bad behaving sensor feeding a fin balancing algorithm introduced by the manufacturer to avoid the need to redesign an unbalanced plane to accommodate larger motors it was designed for, and pilots unable to make the plane follow their commanding due such algorithm blind decisions priority... has crashed planes.
Total automation can be done quite safely in some domains. Between that and a completely manual/human-operated system lies the area of augmentation, which can both be a boon to safety if done correctly, or deadly if it leads to automation complacency or false expectations around the types of situations it can successfully handle.
I think the problem might not be super simple to solve through updating vehicles.
You need to update infrastructure globally (and thus you need coordination between multiple different agencies), then you need to implement the solution at both airport and vehicles level.
That's a lot of work. In case of LATAM the Airbus hit a fire truck (which would've too required such a solution). In case of the Linate air disaster, such technology would've had to be implemented on a very small Cessna Citation model.
Maybe the updates need to be implemented at the airport level alone, quickly signaling controllers of possible violations/conflicts, and in fact most major airports have both ground radars and clear ground signals to avoid these incidents.
But it's still impossible to avoid these issues as these errors may happen in a matter of very few seconds thus not giving enough time to react to any of the involved parties.
You make it mandatory in new vehicles and for airports above a certain size.
In 20 years, you can make it mandatory for all vehicles.
I understand that these things take time.
Edit: Something I try to take to heart, if I don't have domain knowledge, I assume that whatever easy solution I can think of either was already discarded for valid reasons I don't know nor understand or is already implemented without me knowing about it. Generally, people working in a particular field tend to be competent in that field, just assuke that more often than not they know what they are doing.
This is usually true for any domain. People are very experienced and extremely skilled at doing things within a certain framework.
It can still be true that there is a better way. I realise it’s hard to be on par with a century of aviation safety experience, even if the new approach is better. That’s why you need a gradual transition that focuses on enhancement rather than replacement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Airliner_accidents_an...
The ATC computer should talk to the plane computer.
[1] https://ops.group/blog/new-gps-spoofing-incident-shows-how-i...
Not as simple:
1) You need to implement it for very small airplanes too, which is far from easy. In the Linate air disaster a small Cessna Citation invaded the runtime due to fog and misscomunication.
2) You need to implement it for ground vehicles too, as in the LATAM example it was a fire truck that invaded the runtime.
3) You need A LOT of infrastructural update.
4) Even if you had computers talking to computers, this may still be far from enough to avoid collisions, as those mistakes are often a matter of seconds (as in the both accidents quoted before).
5) Automation brings its own issues. One of them is complacency where attention levels unavoidably get lower as reliance on automation increases. In turn complacency can make runways more prone to such incidents in case of malfunctions/bugs.
You don’t need to update everything at once.
If anything is able to react within seconds, it’s a computer.
While on the first hand your point sounds very reasonable, in practice it may have more adverse effects than we may think and make the whole system more unsafe.
The next big crash will change people’s minds on this.
One I can think of is an electronic runway "lock". ATC mark the runway as locked to a particular aircraft. The landing aircraft checks at minimums whether if the runway is locked to any other aircraft. It's harder to know how to prevent incursions at ground level, but it could be a beacon near the runway threshold and intersecting taxiways, flashing a warning in the cockpit of the taxing aircraft if an aircraft on final holds the lock. A pilot could still disregard it. Sometimes two planes can share the same runway, such as a plane lining up while another vacates, which adds further problems.
I'm not aware of any system like this.
The nice thing is that the entire system is ground-based, no additional equipment needed in the aircraft.
However, it's complicated/expensive, so only a handful of airports have it installed.
A great example of how an aircraft accident is almost always a result of multiple things going wrong.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/japan-airlines-flight-c...
Yes, in this case, you do need to update everything at once. At least for a given aiport. All it takes is one plane, helicopter, fire truck, or baggage transport vehicle to screw with the assumptions of the system and jeopardize safety.
No, computers aren't necessarily faster, assuming we want to achieve autonomy on the ground. Note that the average human reaction time to visual stimulus is about 250ms. Achieving this on a plane would require a great deal of cameras and sensors that would not only need to stay clean, but capable of withstanding pressure changes, high velocity winds, the occasional unfortunate airborne debris, etc. Then there is the processing power to both process each input in real-time (per plane) and train it on real-world data to recognize a variety of scenarios to act upon (per model and perhaps configuration; AA alone has about 11 active aircraft types across 953 planes). Contrast this with Tesla's investment for approximately 6 models. [1]
Achievable? Sure. Cost-effective and sustainable with current tech? Doubtful.
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/21/tesla_dojo_spending/#....
No, you don't. It's easy: just don't allow small airplanes at airports with large commercial aircraft. No one needs them anyway; they're just a luxury for rich people. The only place they make sense is for very remote locations, like Alaska, where there's a need for people to pay for carriage on such a small aircraft. For normal airports that carry jumbo jets, there's no reason to have small planes sharing the runways. For exceptions like coast guard jets such as this one, these are government-owned so they can afford the upgrades.
Which cuts right to the heart of the B737 MAX issue - Boeing substantially changed the design, then added sensors & software to make the changed airframe handle similarly to the old 737 airframe and claimed that this meant the pilots did not need retraining
If Boeing had been upfront about MCAS, and required that pilots were trained in what it did and how to override it then the crashes probably would not have happened.
There have been some developments of a replacement of, or at least a supplement to, simplex radio. But none are as cheap, quick and reliable as verbal communications with readback.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controller%E2%80%93pilot_data_...
Just in relation to (2), I can't really think of anything worse than having two communication systems on operation at the one airport - everyone must be using the same system.
Nobody in aviation is conservative about automation due to a lack of a desire for safety; quite the opposite. But it's just a fact that e.g. an automation system that can prevent a type of human error entirely in 99% of all cases can lead to more accidents in total, if it means that humans aren't regularly exposed to these 99% of cases which in the end train them for the 1% that the computers can't handle.
And this is, as are so many things in aviation safety, learned through blood.
In contrary to what you're implying, "we've always done it like this" is not a principle of aviation safety.
Indeed you'd be hard-pressed to find any other globally coordinated system that is so dedicated to and successful at the gargantuan task of continually improving itself, a trillion dollar industry, and regulatory bodies all over the world. A five decades long track record of drastically reducing fatalities in the face of rising passenger miles speaks for itself.
To put it a bit bluntly, I'm pretty sure they don't need to be told that it would be "just as simple as (...), because that works for an elevator".
It was in a project related to ATC and area control / FIR services backup systems.
Unfortunately it’s expensive and so only runways at the busiest airports have it so far.
Note how no one did anything wrong really in this case:
https://onemileatatime.com/news/american-777-delta-737-nearl...
ATC entering instructions into a computer, then pilots reading and interpreting from their computer, and then operating their plane, probably is slower and the context switches between the computer screen and what's outside the window may lead to errors.
There are over 100,000 commercial flights each day (worldwide):
* https://www.flightradar24.com/data/statistics
* https://news.paxeditions.com/news/airline/radar-shows-record...
* https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/12/9/visualising-the-...
What is the error rate of runway incursions and such?
> How on earth does all this still depend on skilled individuals not making a mistake?
Flying aircraft in general depends on "skilled individuals not making a mistake". Unless you think we should get rid of pilots completely?
Other things that "depend on skilled individuals not making a mistake": driving cars, cooking food properly (to avoid poisoning), surgery, etc.
As an aside, humans are not doing a good job at driving cars and should leave that to the computers.
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/googles-waymo-safe...
Of course there will be locations where humans are required, but we can already start using computers in those locations where they perform better.
This is also something happening all the time where I drive. And tons of other understanding-the-traffic cases.
Self-driving systems only follow the rules. That is not sufficient. When general artificial intelligence eventually arrives - that's when we get self-driving cars better than humans, in any other cases than for trivial cases. And yes, computers could drive cars in trivial places, it's just that those places are pretty much non-existing where I live and drive.
Uphill in snow maybe you’ll have to take the wheel, I’ll give you that.
(And yes, even airliners will sometimes land at small regional airports.)
So again, while I think ultimately the automated systems should also do what you're talking about, right now, if the other article is true in its claims that Waymo is safer, it seems sufficient to follow the rules to achieve a certain level of safety.
Edit: And the point is really that strictly just following rules (i.e. just drive if you're in the right and the signs say so) will cause accidents and worse. For others, not necessarily myself. On my commute and nearby.
Is that data controlled for environment? I.e. it must only compare Waymo driving with human drivers in exactly the same environment. Same road, same conditions, same time, etc. Waymo doesn't take any difficult routes.
What I give these cars is their ability to react "instantaneously" to emergency situations like automated emergency braking when there is an obstacle in the front of the car or the car in front suddenly brakes.
And of course Waymo is going to milk as much as possible from their study, we just shouldn't trust it blindly.
Besides this comes from Waymo, they didn't release the data used in their study.
Of course Waymo will try to paint their cars in the most favourable light possible. Maybe they are being honest, but that's not the point. The point is that public policy shouldn't trust the allegations of a private company at face value.
Openpilot, while primarily lane keeping, does it way better than any human can.
Driving doesn’t require an advanced degree in physics. It’s mostly a mish mash of fairly mundane tasks.
Generally not wrong, but when it becomes non-mundane, it can become so in a hurry.
This is why I'm sometimes skeptical about statistics that say "x% of airplane crashes are human error". Well maybe, but by the time the humans get involved the automated systems have often thrown up their proverbial hands and digitally exclaimed "Jesus take the wheel".
I think having computers take over the mundane parts may help collision rates as people can get numbed and bored by the monotony.
One has to be careful about having the right level of automation and control for the given situation, as per the famous "Children of the Magenta Line" presentation:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ESJH1NLMLs
> “Children of the magenta line” has become shorthand for pilots who manage and monitor systems but lack the stick-and-rudder skills to fly the airplane with authority. You may hear it wielded as an epithet in a discussion of “real pilots” versus “kids these days.” But in many cockpits today, automation illiteracy may be as dangerous as automation dependency. Vanderburgh’s insights shouldn’t drive us to reject automation altogether, but rather put it in its proper place in our pilot toolkits. Just as you should hand-fly regularly to keep your stick-and-rudder skills sharp, you should also practice using the technology available in the aircraft you fly.
* https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2023/march/flig...
* https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magen...
* https://skybrary.aero/articles/cockpit-automation-advantages...
* https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/sp/2015/05/msp2015050...
[1]: https://ckrybus.com/static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica...
A plane's autopilot can beep and bail out to a human with a few seconds for them to get oriented and take over; a car doesn't always have that luxury.
"Is this a person walking into my lane or just a shadow?" isn't a question that comes up in the air. Until a self-driving car can minimize the probability of that detection going wrong to below human thresholds, I wouldn't feel comfortable sitting in the driver (or maybe even passenger) seat of one.
Which only activates on roads mapped extensively by Mercedes.
It might make sense at some point in the future where an autopilot system knows how to taxi, take off, troubleshoot issues by itself during the critical phases of flight and so on.
And like others said, aviation is one of the safest industries on the planet.
What makes you think so?
A runway may be clear when given the clearance to land. And that happens about 4NM from the RWY threshold. In the meantime a incursion might happen. Given low visibility you may not see it as you land a big airplane whose nose is a bit high up because of the flare. And even if you see it, it takes a few seconds for engines to spool up to full power in order to do a go-around.
Why? Human to human leaves room for error and misinterpretation.
Think of the 737 Max whose computers crashed two planes because of incorrect sensor data being fed to them. The pilots there tried to rescue the planes while the planes were following their logic, which was flawed.
Except when they don't, and confirmation bias themselves into doing the wrong thing. The most likely cause of a plane crash is pilot error, and runway incursions happen shockingly often [1][2][3][4]. The only reason there hasn't been a Tenerife-style disaster is sheer luck.
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b26NcJCLZl4
2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AbpxqtXcPk
3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI2rJhdvguc
4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPJjw68RI2w (the pilots did everything right here, it was the controller who screwed up!)
Computers are not infailable either. So while they add a lot of safety features and ease the workload of the pilots, they should not have final authority over pilot actions. 737 Max is a prime example of why.
“Communicating clearances” would actually be the easy part. The hard part is making sure that there actually is clearance. The system would need to be able to “see” the runway and to “know” about the flights that are permitted to use it in real-time. It would involve many computers, some in the air and some on the ground I assume. If the system failed the pilots would have to fall back onto something else, perhaps what they do today, so they’d still need training and practice. If a pilot made a mistake the system would need to be able to detect that and update everyone.
But you know the real reasons it’s old.
1) corporate greed and no regulation
2) legacy… it’s always legacy holding us back. All the third world countries, Russia, etc would not adopt it.
How does the incident/accident rate in these other domains look like, then?
> How on earth does all this still depend on skilled individuals not making a mistake?
Everything safety critical always depends on skilled individuals not making a mistake, as long as there isn't full automation (in which case it depends on the people designing and implementing the automation system).
Until we do have that, mixed automation can actually make things less safe if it isn't done very deliberately and carefully, with people in operations relying on an imperfect system, and system designers on ops to catch complex and edge cases.
you mean incursion
Incursion and Invasion have military links, Incursion would be brief and limited in scope, invasion is more full on long term. Both terms imply a subtle but a conscious choice in the crossing of the barrier, while intrusion is more neutral in attributing agency to the action.
> Runway incursion. Any occurrence at an aerodrome involving the incorrect presence of an aircraft, vehicle or person on the protected area of a surface designated for the landing and take-off of aircraft.
Ambiguity while correcting someone else is not ideal.
My aim isn't to critique the English proficiency of non-native speakers, especially those from non-Proto-Indo-European linguistic backgrounds. As a non-native English speaker myself, I understand the challenges.
However, I found it trully hard to comprehend the airport's side of the communications due to heavily accented and unclear pronunciation. Shouldn't there be a greater emphasis on air traffic controllers improving their English skills, since English is lingua franca (pun intended) of aviation.
Or perhaps this is irrelevant, considering aviation's global nature. Are pilots expected to adapt to and understand communications with strong accents?
From my comment in part of the discussion thread[0]:
--
For the ATC, see:
* https://archive.liveatc.net/rjtt/RJTT-Twr-TCA-Jan-02-2024-08...
* Via: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/35868205-post57.html
13:13 JL516 continue approach. 14:53 landing clearance. 15:01 readback. 15:13 Japan Coast Guard JA772A taxi instructions. 17:35 fire reported on 34R.
* https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/35868237-post67.html
The recording quality isn't very good, perhaps because of the location of the receiver.
--
The ATC quality of my local airport (CYYZ Tower) available through LiveATC is much better. I following some flying/pilot Youtubers, and their recordings of ATC are also quite good, so I'm not sure why LiveATC at HND is as statically as it is.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38839885#unv_38841161
That explains it.
The volunteers running the feeds around YYZ are at the airport, IIRC. I'm in Halifax now, and the (single) YHZ feeder has had a really hard time finding a new place to set up after he lost his previous location.
There's a "feed setups" thread (or a whole forum) in the LiveATC forums, it's interesting to see how big or small the feeders' setups are!
But I know one can improve understanding with practice, so maybe pilots are just better at it.
If you ring up ATC and tell them “I’m eating a ham and Swiss sandwich” (an entirely non-standard transmission), you’re very likely to get “say again?” regardless of the quality of the radio link or native English pronunciation and accent.
Even transmitting the ordinary items in a different sequence (altitude, route, code, destination, then frequency rather than the expected destination*, route, altitude, frequency, transponder code) will cause confusion.
* technically, clearance limit, but that's most commonly a destination.
It's a case of AM being the long-term standard, and also being physically suited to the task.
Planes to ATC and planes to other planes don’t really have line of sight issues.
Given that JAL516 was a domestic flight, it probably was not the case here though.
FWIW, C1 and C5 are not runways, but taxiways leading to the runway.
But those French-speaking pilots probably heard their own instructions clearer than if they'd been in English.
* https://archive.liveatc.net/rjtt/RJTT-Twr-TCA-Jan-02-2024-08...
* Via: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/35868205-post57.html
13:13 JL516 continue approach. 14:53 landing clearance. 15:01 readback. 15:13 Japan Coast Guard JA772A taxi instructions. 17:35 fire reported on 34R.
* https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/35868237-post67.html
The recording quality isn't very good, perhaps because of the location of the receiver.
These unofficial ATC feeds are usually captured by volunteers or at least companies not directly affiliated with the aviation industry (similarly to services like Flightradar24), sometimes some distance away from airports, which makes ATC and aircraft on the ground really hard to hear.
What also helps a lot is that the formats of messages relayed are pretty standardized (ICAO phraseology), and knowing what phrases to listen for can help a lot.
On the other hand, it can unfortunately also cause people to hear what they are primed for – such as a landing or takeoff clearance... (Not implying that this happened here – I can't make out what's being said on the tape myself!)
Or there's too much other flashing lights around the runway? Or the pilots were busy monitoring the displays?
All passengers and crew evacuated from the Airbus, thankfully.
1. Domestic flight, with people less likely to be hauling around lots of belongings, although in Japan people already bring much less onto flights with them.
2. The well-known social expectation/procedure-abiding inclination of everyday Japanese people kicking in to enforce an orderly (and no bag-carrying) exit.
Others may have observed similarly when flying in Japan. They can regularly board a widebody plane in 15 minutes, whereas 30-40+ minutes for the US still produces departure delays. I am guessing this efficiency factors into the evacuation as well.
Versus other evacuation videos I have seen where people are actually exiting with their rollaboards. Really shocking.
It's also the first hull loss of an A350. Seems to be an amazingly safe plane considering this.
https://www-svt-se.translate.goog/nyheter/utrikes/svensk-fam...
A second take-away - emergencies are no excuse to ditch procedure and thinking about Safety. The SFO incident where a passenger was killed after exiting a vehicle by a vehicle rushing to the plane is another example.
Their last concern is that far more people get injured in tests than in reality, which was a fair point - but there were questions about the particular configuration that Airbus proposed.
Also, Airbus never sold the A380 to any major US carrier, and no carrier was ever able to fill that many seats on the A380 sustainably. So maybe Airbus was right, but for the same reasons that eventually doomed the project.
Emirates would disagree. As per their CEO, and just one of those pairings, they have 6 daily flights London-Dubai, all full.
At the end of the day the A380 was airbus trying to out-America (bigger, faster) Boeing, while Boeing stole Airbus’s big twin strategy with the 777.
What do you mean? Emirates' CEO has said they fill it up quite often (it being an A380 in between 2 and 4 classes depending on the route).
> new build freighter build
The A380F was never viable because the floor in the middle is structural, so the volume is quite limited.
Comments get more informative (and informed?) down the thread.
For planes on approach, the existing ILS antennas can be reused but I'm not sure whether that will work on the ground - do the ILS antennas cover enough of the ground to accurately target a plane that's approaching the runway perpendicularly (off a taxiway, etc)?
In larger airports with an automated system, the system monitors the runway occupancy and approach sector. If the runway is occupied or an aircraft is on final within a certain distance, the system throws an alert before the stop-bars can be turned off.
On top of that there is also an autonomous version of this system that will use red lights to indicate a dangerous runway status (e.g. aircraft on approach) at each entry point. And the other way around, an aircraft line up for takeoff (but holding) will get red lights if any of the entry points further down the runway are crossed. More here: https://skybrary.aero/articles/autonomous-runway-incursion-w...
[1] https://www.indracompany.com/sites/default/files/indra06-nov...
"a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency."
Or, if you’re an economist, just anything mildly unexpected.
It was the intended, purposefully engineered outcome for precisely such an event. Not even remotely a miracle. The airframe designers at Airbus saved those lives, not divine providence.
There is a lot of variables in an accident like this. If some of those variables were different, this could have been much worse, despite the hard work of the engineers at Airbus. That's what makes it a "miracle".
In general, I disagree that calling something a 'miracle' implies or withholds credit from those responsible for the outcome. It's very pedantic.
That's 379 lives saved, is the number not important, or is it the ratio?
Depends on your definition. From https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/miracle
miracle
1. an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs the healing miracles described in the Gospels
2. an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment The bridge is a miracle of engineering.
3. Christian Science : a divinely natural phenomenon experienced humanly as the fulfillment of spiritual law
Most of the people surviving an event where they would have been expected to die certainly qualifies as "an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment".
It serves under the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism; unlike the JSDF which serves under the Ministry of Defense.
USCG is part of DHS and considered a military branch (despite not being in DoD alongside the other military branches and having a primarily law-enforcement mission).
* https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/ja722a
* Via: https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1742136715253313938
* https://www.planespotters.net/airframe/de-havilland-canada-d...
https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=867bee&lat=36.840&lon=1...
Clearly, as usual, accidents like this require a number of things to all go wrong at the same time.
Edit: seems I was wrong. The airbus was landing.
Unfortunately, you have invented this narrative. There is video of the Airbus landing and striking the other plane.
AV Herald link: https://avherald.com/h?article=5132b9fe&opt=0
The Coastguard plane was cleared to hold short at C2, but entered the runway instead from C2 as if cleared to position and hold (Edit: Or maybe they thought they were cleared to take off, but that's far less likely).
Maybe the coast guard pilot thought he had permission to line up, but not to take off? Anyways, it's also pretty easy to see that it would have been difficult for the tower staff and the A350 pilots to notice the incursion and avoid the accident.
It seems as though it should be possible (though perhaps not easy) to automatically detect an aircraft on runway and relay that to the approaching aircraft.
With all respect for the coast guard pilots who died, I would say this incident is the "best case" scenario we could hope for when two large aircraft crash on a runway. Had the other plane been carrying passengers the casualties could have easily been in the hundreds.
It seems odd to me that with all the safety advancements in aviation we don't have the technology to prevent this.
Contrast this with evacuation footage of western passenger planes..
Heh. Imagine surviving a plane crash. Everyone is busy calling their loved ones, and I'm busy setting up my new Linux distribution on a laptop bought in duty free, using the Linux image in my pocket.
But you might just die in the fire yourself, prioritizing a hypothetical emergency over a real one. There would also be plenty of medical personnel present once you get off the plane, they probably won't let you leave the scene without talking to one.
The Two Failure Fallacy is a fatal flaw of human reasoning. It's almost never correct to engineer anything on the assumption of two bad things happening simultaneously. You do your analysis based on individual/uncorrelated failure modes. And only then do you make design choices (c.f. "defense in depth", "redundancy", etc...) about how much the interactions overlap and what the tradeoffs are.
In this case, duh. Positing that emergency medical personnel are somehow unable to handle an allergy attack is silly.
I’m not convinced that medical personnel would be on hand that quickly for all emergency landings — sure if you are at a major airport. But they may not notice someone who collapsed after being triaged away from the more severely injured.
Other areas of engineering aren't nearly so advanced, c.f. Fukushima, which happened because of the converse failure: the designers treated two failures (power grid failure and flooded backup generators) as uncorrelated and independent when they weren't (because tsunamis follow earthquakes).
May I introduce you to Fault Tree Analysis? NUREG 0492
https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/...
One result of that is to show that there are no double failures with common cause, rather than just assuming that to be true.
What is the probability of being stung by a bee or eating a bag of nuts between your seat, the slide, and the ambulances rushing to the scene to rescue people?
Otherwise by this logic, just about everyone has a reason to self-justify needing to get into their luggage in an emergency evacuation event.
Target to evacuate planes in an emergency is 90 seconds. Contrast with regular deplaning with luggage which takes upwards of 15 minutes. So the plane must evacuate at 10x speed in order to save lives.
The bag I have is about the size of two croissants — I keep it under seat in front of me or in my lap.
But this topic has inspired me to improve my process, so I would like to find a money belt or shoulder holster style bag to carry meds and epi while traveling. Basically body hugging.
Any help in finding something that isn’t from Temu, or some random drop shipper? I found one eagle creek bag but would prefer a shoulder style?
I was going to say a major narcissist would disagree, but they probably don't have many of those in Japan. And then you followed up:
>> Contrast this with evacuation footage of western passenger planes..
Is that for real? It would not surprise me, but is there documentation of this difference in deplaning? Or other areas?
People don't act at all the same after getting crashed into by another plane, barely making it to the ground in a plane filled with smoke and fire, as they do when those things haven't happened?
You don't say.
Would you say it's a good idea to throw yourself tumbling down the emergency slide and sprint away from the plane if those things hadn't happened?
This is not even a remotely helpful comment.
If you are evacuating out the door on a slide, something is quite serious. The trained professionals telling you to leave your baggage behind have more information than passengers in that regard. That is why they decided to deploy the slides.
Just because one can't see a fire doesn't mean there isn't an engine fire on the other side, or a fuel leak or.. etc. Planes are pretty big, you can't see/smell everything from your seat/window.
I mean here's some right here of smoking planes with evacuees hauling even wheelies..
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10055329/Spirit-Air...
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/red-pla...
Unfortunately, that's not always the case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_1492#Evacuatio...
GP said they could not imagine anybody even worrying about their language in a severe crash, yet in the case of Aeroflot 1492, people definitely did retrieve theirs:
> [...] prompted by video footage showing passengers leaving the plane with luggage in hand [...]
[0] https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20240102/k10014307191000.ht...
The other APAC A380 carriers like Singapore, Qantas, Thai use them for long haul routes, some of which may originate from islands (like Singapore).
The ATC operator chooses a command from a UI: 'JAL 123' > 'Runway 34R' > 'Clear for landing'.
Everything cascades automatically from there: ATC's on-screen maps and info, airport lights, commands to all relevant planes (including 'Runway 34R' > 'Hold short').
Transmission to planes could be digital. Given the relatively few possible commands, we're talking very little bandwidth, plenty of room to ensure error correction, redundancy, etc. - and perfectly accurate reception.
All planes would show the exact command on a screen, their maps etc would update, and they could play locally generated audio of the command.
I know nothing about aviation. (I do know that entirely rebuilding matured, critical systems for the new technology is rarely a good idea - the trick is to start with one small subsystem, work out the bugs, mature it, and grow from there.)
But having a broadcast channel accessible (for listening and talking) to all aircraft and ATC can increase situational awareness for everybody. Just look at the near-miss of Air Canada 759 [1] for an example of where it might have contributed to saving hundreds of lives:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Canada_Flight_759
While ATC controllers might be able to issue urgency text messages quickly enough on a keyboard, pilots literally have their hands full flying the airplane. Voice is their only feedback channel, and if it falls out of use, outages might go unnoticed for critical seconds.
OK, so send all messages to all aircraft (or to whatever the appropriate subset is).
> pilots literally have their hands full flying the airplane. Voice is their only feedback channel
Interesting. I wonder if the error rate of voice recognition exceeds the error rate of bad channels.
You'd have to read out all of these prompts and acknowledgements though, since pilots also will have their eyes on many instruments other than just datalink.
Definitely doable using text-to-speech, but that way you lose the original intonation (Did the speaker sound confused? Hesitant? Was it a different voice than before?) – and what did you gain?
Good point about intonation. You gain almost perfect signal-to-noise, an error-free cascade of instructions to all (if that's needed), and immediate synchronized updates of all systems.
Maybe that's not as significant a problem as it seems from the outside. As I said, I'm in IT not aviation. Thanks for answering my questions!
It's also possible that it would do a cargo run, and then do some surveillance operations (the JSDF employ the Dash-8 in the maritime surveillance role) to help with damage assessment.
Aeroflot: 41 passenger deaths, many bags saved.
JAL: 0 passenger deaths, 0 bags saved.
Contrast that with some of the Spirit/Southwest/Qantas evacuation videos we have seen.
DO NOT EVACUATE WITH LUGGAGE.
Simple rule IMHO: keep your ID/password and a credit card on your person during take-off / landing. (Probably your phone, in a pocket, as well.)
Practically speaking as long as you can ID yourself and buy things (pay-off later), there's no property that's worth your life (or the life of other passengers).
If anything else is so imminently needed to maintain the life of you or your loved ones while traveling, keep it in your/their pockets.
Past this everyone has some excuse of medical, dietary, sentimental, economic, etc reason to grab stuff out of their luggage. This contributes to loss of life.
You have 60-90 seconds to evacuate a burning aircraft. This is 10-20x faster than a normal with-luggage deplaning. If you are fumbling around with luggage, you are a hazard to yourself and others.
If you are evacuating a plane you are seconds to minutes away from a fleet of ambulances ready to whisk you away to a nearby trauma center. No existing medical condition is going to get you before the fire will.
ADDED: There probably are certain specialized critical medicines that people should carry in a vial around their necks that they’re not getting anytime soon from an overwhelmed trauma center. But that’s probably true even absent the plane crash scenario.
If it is truly that imminently required to keep them alive, they should already be in the habit of keeping it on their person.
And certainly while flying, and at the very very least during takeoff/landing on a plane. Further, absolute worst case.. with pre-evacuation warning time, reachable in under seat backpack to be moved to your jeans/shirt/jacket pocket. If you travel in clothes without pockets, now is a good time to reconsider doing so.
Lots of opportunities here to not try and lug baggage down an evacuation slide and risk your own / fellow passengers deaths.
If this is surprising to anyone reading, hope you plan accordingly now during your next travel.
At the end of the day your passport and credit cards situation aren’t critical in such a situation however much bureaucratic hell you may go through if you’re in a foreign country with no ID or money and not of a nationality where your embassy is rushing to help.
In general my approach is travel pants with zipped pockets.
I usually do this when flying for work. Wallet, passport and phone in my pocket the whole flight. Anything else can be replaced.
If anything happened I'd hope to at least send a SMS to my wife to say "I'm safe".
First, please do not jump to conclusions.
Secondly, this incident was in Japan, not the US. Feelings about US ATC should not be a factor in this situation.
Third, wasn't there a recent runway collision (wing clipped a tail) in the US where the pilot was quick to blame ATC on the radio, but it turns out that pilot entered the runway without permission? (initial conclusions are often wrong)
Disclaimer: I am a US ATC - The views expressed here are my own and not necessarily those of FAA.
Rather, the entire system of air traffic control.
It seems to me if we end up in a situation where a pilot does something wrong in a sensitive area that can lead to a catastrophic outcome, we didn’t do a good job of controlling air traffic. Full stop.
The system is amazingly safe but clearly there are pockets of very poor control/decision making around runway incursions or near misses around the runway.
FAA has this as a top priority and is publishing stats on class graduations and retention etc.
This introduces a lag of several seconds, doesn't guarantee reception in tricky situations (such as planes flying very low, as during the final approach, or on the ground), and is limited to the planes' own position fix accuracy, which is orders of magnitude too coarse for this use case.