Thing is, the incidents have mostly been unrelated. One shot down, one double engine failure from birds, one midair collision, one heavy landing, this runway incursion was caused by the pilots as far as I can tell. There have been some other runway incursion incidents but in the whole this clump of incidents and accidents is just random clumpiness.
Air Traffic Controllers are not being cut. And this was the fault of the small jet crossing the runway. The crew was told to hold short and couldn’t be bothered to look down the runway at the giant plane about to crush them. It’s a shame ATC couldn’t have them held for a sobriety test.
I’m shocked that isn’t something that is done. IANAPilot but I would think the rules are stringent enough that when you make a serious fuckup like this you return to the terminal, have blood drawn for a drug test and start filling out reports for the FAA. Maybe an interview explaining what happened (for starters).
I have heard the ATC thing where they tell the pilots to call a number ATC will be giving them but for something as dangerous as this I’d expect more.
Hell, I can be detained and tested for a traffic violation with a car. Why not this?
Yes, I expect they were asked to make a phone call. I hope the acronym was 1-800 dumbass.
Too tired to catch up; but from what I read in an article earlier, the Challenger pilot misunderstood ground control’s instructions (read them back incorrectly), and proceeded across the active runway while GC was saying, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa!;
From this recording, it sounds like the ground controller did correct the bizjet pilot, and the pilot read it back correctly the second time, and then he committed the incursion. Correct me if I’m mistaken:
Oh, believe me, the FlexJet crew is in for more than a little paperwork.
That’s a charter company, operating under Part 135. They are supervised closely by the FAA and crews get called on the carpet in a serious way for much, much less. To begin with, that crew will have certainly filed ASAP reports (Aviation Safety Action Program), which confess and describe the occurrence in detail. That gives them a little protection because the emphasis is on data gathering.
But after that they will have an intervention with the company’s FAA rep, the chief pilot and other company brass will get involved and I wouldn’t be surprised if the pilots are fired. Or maybe not - they may undergo re-training of some kind. But whatever the process is, it will take some weeks and it will affect the pilots’ standing in the company.
I know this from experience - once during a takeoff from a major airport my flying partner missed a call (as did I, though I was busy flying the plane) which resulted in overshooting our assigned altitude. It caused no conflict, nobody was endangered. ATC wasn’t even especially bothered, they just gave us a new heading to fly and continued our climb. But it was WEEKS of meetings, reports and other stuff.
Those FlexJet pilots are having an unpleasant time right now. And I have no doubt they feel terrible about the whole thing.
And thankful that the other pilots were aware enough to avoid a collision.
Yep. Aircraft incidents are currently newsworthy, so we hear about stuff that’d go unremarked at other times.
But, safety is a multifaceted system. Stressing one part of the system makes gaps in other parts more important. So although these incidents are unrelated by cause, they are related by impact to safety.
I’ll add that the Southwest pilots had paperwork to do, as well. A go-around for any reason (even saving the day, as in this case) triggers an automatic ASAP report.
So this ruined their day too, though they are certainly the heroes. All this reporting is what contributes to the high level of aviation safety in airline operations. The recent headlines notwithstanding.
i think they also had the poor luck of it being video’d in what makes a great “free” news piece … had it been not for the visual, it would have been one of the 100s/1000s? close calls …
Thing I learned here in this thread is that an accident is mostly always a compound of 2 or more mistakes … luckily here only one mistake was made.
They were. This video puts together the audio from both the ground and tower frequencies:
Here’s that same video, with Captain Steeeve’s (sic) excellent (as always) conjecture: The bizjet was told to cross one runway, and hold short of the next. But that first runway is really narrow – it looks kind of more like a taxiway! So, it’s likely the bizjet ignored it, and treated the SECOND runway (the one they’re supposed to hold short of) as the FIRST one (the one they’re free to cross).
At some point the biz jet saw the approaching plane because that was a fast taxi speed across the runway.
So, pilots? Surmise you fucked up and are wrongly on a runway that is active (at night, poor viz). I hear planes don’t back up for shit? What do you do? Go into the grass and lose your job but live? Pray ATC or the other plane realizes what’s going on? Yuck.
A little relief from crashes. Here is an early video of the X-15 program and some of the pilots who flew it. There’s a well known one mentioned toward the end of the video.
You don’t know what was said on that phone call. Imagine all the things one might hear said through a telephone. I bet you can imagine some pretty un-fun news coming out of a telephone speaker.
It wasn’t a friendly “Hey, Captain. Howza wife 'n kids?” kind of call.
Please see the quote I was responding to:
I was saying I think it should be a thing where pilots can be drug tested after a major mistake.
Thought some of you aviation fans would enjoy this YouTube channel I stumbled across. I’ve never seen such a comprehensive cockpit view from a commercial airline - all the taxiing and checks are included. They even pipe in the radio.
A jinxed skydiving facility?
A spokesperson for the FAA said the agency’s investigations of skydiving accidents focus on inspecting the packing of the parachute and reserve parachute, and flight rules for the pilot and aircraft. The FAA does not investigate to determine the cause of the event.
Four hours beside a corpse? Uh… no, thanks.