Damn, you fixed the typo! “All those pilts” sounded like it could be a fine insult in aviation slang directed at pilots who didn’t speak English well! “Pilt” has a pretty snappy insulting ring to it! 
Was this already asked? Wouldn’t the Delta 737 crew see a 777 crossing their runway?
The same question reversed. Wouldn’t the 777 crew see a plane cued up to take off? That could be interpreted as staging but if they’re on the same frequency then they would have heard the clearance of the 737. Probably not the same frequency though.
And did the controller tell the American crew to clear the runway or read about it in the news?
The vid cited by @Richard_Pearse made it fairly clear. I suggest you take the 4-ish minutes to watch it. It seems very well done, subject to the following caveat.
The details of exact timing and positioning are fairly fuzzy, so we can’t draw too strong a set of conclusions from these quickie re-creations. We can’t say for certain exactly who was where when. Said another way, we know the radio audio, and the ground tracks of the two airplanes. We don’t know exactly how to align those three things in time. So overall everything below is a bit speculative.
The 777 crossed about 3000 feet down the 12,000’ runway. Both jets and the tower controller were all on the same frequency. That much at least is fact. The rest …
The 777 was fully out of the way by the time the 737 got to that taxiway at taxi speed, having already rejected their takeoff. There’s no evidence I saw that the 777 ever realized there was a conflict until afterwards; they did not seem to hustle off the runway. Because of rejecting the takeoff rather than continuing it, the 737 got to the intersection later in time than they would have had they instead continued the takeoff. Had the 737 blindly & deafly continued their takeoff, would they have gotten to the intersection soon enough to intersect the crossing 777 at the nose, amidships, the tail, or just miss them? We can’t say for sure. Yet.
It appears the 737 was lined up and waiting; they were cleared for takeoff from there. But at the time they were cleared to line up and wait the 777 appeared to be no factor, being on a taxiway where they apparently belonged. As the 737 began to enter the runway it was the 737 Captain’s job to look left and ensure the runway was clear. Meanwhile the 737 FO is looking right to make sure nobody is coming from that way, about to land on them. If the timing was just wrong, the 777 wouldn’t have been moving onto the runway. Yet.
From the 777’s point of view, that jog in the taxiway I mentioned meant that looking back towards the approach end where the 737 was would have fallen to the 777 FO, but would have been back at the 4 o’clock- 4:30 position as they were about to nose into the runway. On a widebody, your view aft of the 3-9 o’clock line is pretty limited. I don’t have personal experience with 777s, so I can’t say more. The auxiliary FO would be seated well back in the cockpit roughly on the centerline and would not have been able to usefully look that far back for sure.
Crossing a runway while somebody is in line-up-and-wait position is commonplace. There are common techniques about how lit up a waiting airplane should be, but there’s not fully reliable standardization on “this much lights on mean this and that much lights on mean that”. Between the various lighting configurations installed on various makes and models of jets and the various policies of the various airlines, a pilot can’t place much reliance on the lighting configuration of any airplane they see.
So now with takeoff clearnace the Delta crew turns on all their lights, shoves up the power, & starts to roll. And may have to change from Captain taxiing to FO performing the takeoff at that point. May; we don’t know.
It might be kind of hard to see a big jet in the dark athwart your runway a half-mile away. Now that substantially all the window shades are usually down, there’s no row of lit windows to see. It’s policy at most carriers to turn on many of your exterior lights while crossing a runway. But only a couple of those do much to illuminate out the side. Meantime the background beyond the runway is the various lights of random suburbia. Some carriers have “logo lights” installed on some of their fleet that illuminate the tail. That’s a huge & instantly recognizable billboard easily seen from the side = the 737s POV. If that 777 was so equipped and the pilot (typically FO) had turned them on.
We do not know now whether the 737 saw the 777 and rejected the takeoff on their own. We do know the tower controller observed the conflict and called “cancel takeoff clearance” twice in rapid succession. Which was eventually acknowledged by the 737, although apparently well after they had started slowing. Which is proper task prioritization on their part. The tower’s first comment to the 777 was well after the event, telling them they’d screwed up. Again the vid makes this real clear.
The media is saying the controller saved the day. It may well be the 737 crew that saved the day and the controller just got it on the tapes first. In any case, the controller seemed to be doing his job with skill & aplomb before, during, and after. As did the 737 crew.
Put those Pilts down!
Why are the window shades usually down? I haven’t flown much recently but I thought the attendants usually announce they should be raised for take-off and landing.
I measured it in Google maps and the 777 was about 8/10 of a mile away. If the rotating beacons aren’t visible at that distance then the 737 pilots wouldn’t see the plane.
Some airlines used to announce that as a safety measure for takeoff & landing. Not anymore that I know of.
Now that 98% of the passengers are glued to their phones or tablets every second they’re in their seats, everyone keeps the shades lowered all day and all night to avoid any light that might put glare on their screens. I expect airlines could switch to windowless airplanes and only a tiny percentage of passengers would notice, much less complain.
Would they have been on the same frequency? I wasn’t sure from the video. In my world Ground looks after runway crossings and you don’t talk to Tower until ready for take-off but understand things can be different elsewhere.
About 3800’ to the start of the taxiway turn-off, so whatever that is in miles. Some runways aren’t particularly flat either, humps and dips can contribute to visibility issues.
It is also very very important that absolutely everything at an airport has a light of some sort so that you can see it. The end result of course is that all the lights you might be interested in can be lost amongst the lights you’re not interested in.
Another factor against the 737 immediately seeing what was happening is that in the initial part of the take off roll there can be a bit of heads down time as you set and check thrust and that everything’s armed or engaged as expected and then scan the speed in anticipation of the speed cross check. It’s just a glance here and there but it can add a second to recognising a runway incursion, particularly in the dark.
Then as @LSLGuy mentioned, it’s quite possible that the 737 was well in to a reject when the tower called it.
In most of the US, tower normally handles crossing active runways. If you have to cross one that’s not currently in use to get to one of the active runway(s), ground control would most probably handle that part.
It happens that the 777’s taxi instructions, if followed correctly, were an intermediate case. They were told to cross an active runway, but behind the active portion; takeoffs were being done from an intersection downfield. Which technique (crossing upstream of departures) is increasingly common at major US airports where the layout permits. Precisely to avoid crossings in the active portion which contain the possibility of conflicts and collisions. I can’t recall how JFK might handle crossing control in that case.
The comm excerpts in the video do not include any directed frequency changes. IME JFK ground control normally directs that change, it’s not a matter of just dialing up tower’s freq passing some geographic point. So we don’t know how or when the 777 switched to tower freq. We do know that after the event the same voice that was talking to the 737 gave the 777 the phone number to call. Although it also sounded like a supervisor got involved in there somewhere too.
Agree completely overall.
It’s just shy of 3/4th of a mile from threshold to taxiway J. It happens that most of JFK is built on filled-in estuary and is very flat, net of the craptacular beat up and patched pavement itself.
Your comment about sea of lights is very relevant. Often the best way to spot other ground traffic is by the airplane-shaped black hole in the sea of lights. Doubly so if it’s moving, eclipsing an ever-changing part of the background. I’ve not done a night launch off 4L in years, so I can’t say just how “busy” the background city lights would have been and therefore how much the 777 would be blotting out something obvious. My intuition is not very.
[Story time]:
Last night was the first flight I worked since this event. This event was rather top-of-mind for me and I paid attention to how I normally launch and to how much I’m really scanning downfield for crossing traffic. I wasn’t trying to do anything differently, just to accurately mentally record in detail whatever I did do.
We did the more typical rolling takeoff from the hold-short position, so not quite the same as in the JFK event. But besides a quick check downfield before adding full power, it’s remarkably easy, at least in the 737, to be past the 80 knot check not having really concentrated on the far field versus engine gauges, airspeed checks, callouts, centerline tracking, crosswind management, etc.
At about 100 knots I observe a fire truck with all lights blazing crossing waaay downfield. I happen to know there’s an access road that does an end-run around this runway. It used to be a taxiway. Just beyond that is a busy city boulevard with an ever-moving sea of car headlights seen in profile going left-to-right and right-to-left.
Is the fire truck on the runway and legally I should reject? But it’s so far down it’ll be out of the way before I could possibly get to it. As long as it keeps moving that is. I’m already in the high speed regime where there are very few reasons to reject, with collision avoidance being one of that very short list. Or is the fire truck on the access road & no factor? I’ve not heard them on the radio, but airport fire are infamous for not always coordinating with ATC before moving. At the moment it’s about a mile and a half from me to the access road. And less of course if this truck is on my runway. And I’m heading that way fast, and getting faster every second.
Decisions, decisions, and just a second or two to do so. We continued. Based on his position on the airfield when we blasted by at 200+ feet & 160+ knots, he had been on the access road. Whew.
But it was an odd mental state to have been thinking hard about runway incursions as we entered the runway and then to have had one, sorta, 15-20 seconds later. What are the odds?
If, and it’s a large if, the aircraft positions in your cited video are correctly registered in time versus the radio traffic, the 777 was already in the wrong place, and was moving towards the runway hold short line at a pace that implied he wasn’t going to stop there, before the tower controller issued the takeoff clearance to the 777. It was one of those “just barely” timings, and it’s not clear to me how well the tower controller could have seen exactly where the 777 was or was going.
The governing procedures for tower controllers require they ensure the runway is safe before giving takeoff clearance. It’s not just an administrative call. Again assuming the vid is 100% accurate, the 777 was not on the runway either legally or physically at the moment the controller decided to key his mike & give takeoff clearance to the 737. But it was reasonably foreseeable if (that word again) the controller both looked, and from his POV had the appropriate angles to understand the 777’s motion.
If the vid’s timing is right the 777 was two 777-lengths past where he should have turned the other way. He was already a rogue by then but that fact had not registered in the tower. Yet.
Just about every time something bad happens you can locate a timing coincidence where had two separate things happened just a few seconds apart in either direction, there would not be a problem. But they happened to line up just right to let another opportunity to stop the impending problem slip by unnoticed, or perhaps unnoticeably.
Is it not a bit curious that ground control is still done almost exclusively with voice comms? It would be easy to imagine detailed taxi instructions being sent digitally, with voice used sparingly, for confirmation of critical steps (like crossing a runway) and emergencies.
This would relieve crowding on the frequency. It would also allow the route to be monitored by computer, with automatic warning given (both to pilots and controller) if an aircraft deviated from instructions.
All this automated computer to computer communication is just starting to be implemented for enroute control. It works well when the situation has low dynamics. I don’t see it playing a role in approach, tower, ground, or departure ops for decades, if ever. We’d have to half the flow rate of airplanes to account for all the lags & distractions in that method of control.
Looking at a picture of the ATR-72 crash in the AP picture it looks like the plane was split along the bottom as if it hit a solid object. there are 2 rows of windows and what looks like the beginning of the vertical stabilizer.
interesting comment in the article:
If the aircraft had suffered a bird strike as it was coming in to land, it is possible this would have prompted the pilots to discontinue their approach and go around again, which also could have led to a stall, Singh said.
“A high thrust setting can lead to a stall,” he said. “Go-arounds are most often mishandled by crew … so again the issue is, how did the pilot cope with the failure?”
Interesting observation, and possibly true. I myself have always enjoyed flying and made a point of getting a window seat whenever possible, so I’d definitely be one of the complainers!
My understanding is that in the early stages of development of the Concorde, the engineers were in favour of a windowless cabin. But they relented in the face of evidence that passengers would be uncomfortable and potentially even claustrophobic in such an environment, though I suspect that with modern technology like LCD screens and creative lighting it might be possible to mitigate that. Another data point is that on one miserable flight, I had the “window” seat at the very back of a DC-9; because of the location of the engines, there was no window there. So I was crammed against a solid wall with no ability to look out. It was unpleasant and marginally claustrophobic.
The appeal of windows is purely psychological, of course. It’s not as if you could leap out the window if you are beset with the closed-in feeling of claustrophobia, but human psychology is a strange business.
Looks like the next generation narrow-body might feature a truss-supported high-wing design with a T-tail …
Mr. LSL posted this in another thread, and I want to respond because I’ve been in this situation:
Good og, this is one of the worst things about our business.
One of my co-workers used to say, “We’re not on a 4-day date.” By which he meant we’re going to fly together, but we don’t have to be friends and hang out. That’s fine with me, and for the most part pilots are generally pleasant. But when they’re not… It’s the worst. I dread having to spend time with unkind, boorish people in the enclosed space of a cockpit. Really makes the job seem like a day in hell. Worse is seeing one you know on the schedule with you, which causes you to dread going to work.
So I’ve learned to watch for when they start probing. They make a comment somewhat adjacent to politics, gun control, religion or whatnot, and I try so hard not to take the bait. My standard response is to wag my finger and say with a smile, “Ah ah ah, not my first day in a multi-crew cockpit. We don’t know each other well enough to start talking politics.”
That usually ends it, or perhaps redirects the conversation to talking ABOUT talking about politics or other sensitive issues, which might be fine. But once in a while you run into one who can’t let it go. Seems like every pilot group has one.
I laughed.
A good-news-bad-news feature of working for a megacorp is that my department is real large. There is a very long roster of co-pilots on my aircraft in my base, much less adding in the copilots at the other bases flying the same plane.
If somebody is not to my taste, odds are very good I’ll never encounter them again. The bad news aspect is there’s lots of neat folks I’d happily work with regularly that I also will never see again. The copilots have the same situation vis-a-vis the captains.
My idea of hell would be working for a corporate flight department with just 3 or 10 pilots working the other seat. The couple that are great would be great. The 4 that are a PITA would be a real PITA.
Very genteel. I admire your restraint.
These days charter companies make an effort to hire people who can get along, for exactly this reason. In that world you’re going to be with your flying partner for a week or more at a time, and very likely be seeing them again often.
One company I worked for did a traditional interview process, but then held a cocktail party in the evening. After I was hired I found out they were watching the applicants carefully for problematic behaviors: rudeness to servers, problems with alcohol, etc. They were known to turn down well qualified pilots who seemed to be jerks. I liked that company.
If I hit a bird or birds at a few hundred feet on an approach, the last thing I’d want to do is go around. Everything gets easy as soon as you’re stationary on the ground. A go-around just complicates everything.
Ditto an engine failure. Our rule of thumb is an engine failure on approach below about 2500 feet above the airfield we just press in and land using less flaps, then deal with the engine once stopped on the ground. Only for a failure earlier in the approach would we do a (single engine) go-around, go hold someplace to sort it all out, then finally come back and land.
The one reason I could imagine going around after a bird strike is if both windshields are obscured by bird remains.
As alluded to by @LSLGuy, the ground ATC environment is highly dynamic with decisions needing to be made on the run based on the timing of aircraft movements. Generally taxi instructions are given in chunks from one possible conflict to the next. As aircraft taxi in accordance with their instructions they may be able to continue past a certain taxiway or cross a particular runway but it all depends on the timing and positioning of everyone else. This type of dynamic environment does not lend itself to controlling by, what is effectively, text message.
We do use CPDLC (Controller Pilot DataLink Communications) for less time critical purposes such as getting the initial airways clearance before engine start, and relatively simple enroute instructions like a climb, descent, or re-routing, as well as enroute position reporting. It works very well and out where I fly the alternative is trying to talk over horribly scratchy HF radio or using a system where a position report is sent to the company via ACARS and the company forwards it in an appropriate format to ATC (FMC position reporting). CPDLC is far better than HF and more flexible than the limited abilities of FMC reporting, but it can’t beat voice when it comes to instructions like “Taxi on GOLF, hold short of ALPHA, actually, no, the American B777 has rolled past the high speed, turn right on ALPHA, LIMA, hold short runway 34L.”
Sometimes when you need to tell someone something, it’s more effective to just ring them up rather than sending a text message or email.