[HN Gopher] LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before ...
___________________________________________________________________
LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway
crash
Related: _Two pilots dead after plane and ground vehicle collide at
LaGuardia_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47486386 (667
comments)
Author : m_fayer
Score : 316 points
Date : 2026-03-24 15:19 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| notRobot wrote:
| There was a single traffic controller handling the entire
| airport. This was bound to happen and will keep happening unless
| things change. It's absurd that the US hasn't been able to fix
| its ATC shortage in decades.
|
| Currently over 41% of facilities are reliant on mandatory
| overtime, with controllers frequently working 60-hour weeks with
| only four days off per month.
| FL410 wrote:
| This. Go look at the atc subreddit, controllers have been
| begging for help for ages. This isn't one guy's fault.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| >This isn't one guy's fault.
|
| Counterpoint. It's Regen's fault. He's the guy who decided
| that a high priority of the government was making sure air
| traffic controllers had no power to fight back against being
| horrifically overworked (because unions are evil you see)
| voxic11 wrote:
| Wasn't it Congress who passed 5 U.S.C. SS 7311. which says
| a person may not "accept or hold" a federal job if they
| "participate in a strike" against the U.S. government.
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/7311
|
| originally passed as
|
| https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?edition=2023&num=0&req=
| g...
|
| So arguably if Reagan had not fired them he would be
| failing to uphold the laws of the United States.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| They were striking for less outdated tools, improving
| staffing levels, and other safety improvements. The
| solution was to give them the things they wanted.
| busterarm wrote:
| The issue is the shortage, which that doesn't address.
| Quite the opposite, in fact.
|
| Was in three different unions. Union didn't do squat for
| me. Mainly kept my wages down and gave the friends of the
| union rep the best shifts.
| anonymars wrote:
| Firing them all broke the pipeline
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47495739
| busterarm wrote:
| When I don't show up to work I expect to get fired and
| not rehired too.
| jen20 wrote:
| There have been six presidents who could have addressed
| this since Reagan. Every one of them shoulders some of the
| responsibility.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Yes, they should all have taken actions. But also, it is
| much more difficult to fix something broken once the
| damage has settled in. I guess none of them was willing
| to risk the disruption a fix would have caused. And the
| system seemed to have held up for quite a while. Weren't
| there some mass firings of ATC personal at the beginning
| of the Trump presidency?
|
| The bottom line is: don't break things that are difficult
| or impossible to fix.
| jen20 wrote:
| The is a good idea, but once they are broken, you should
| at least try to fix them, or bear some of the blame for
| not having tried.
| jordanb wrote:
| One thing people forget is that the key complaints PATCO's
| members had were: 1. outdated equipment
| 2. staffing levels 3. workload and fatigue
|
| Reagan went to war with the union instead of addressing
| these things.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Professional_Air_Traffic
| _...
| coryrc wrote:
| You don't need a union to have effective management. It
| should also be their incentive not to cause people's death
| by overworking employees. Which is also dumb because it
| costs more to overwork then hire appropriately with
| overtime laws... cops exploit this all the time to steal
| money from taxpayers. (The ones in Seattle only get caught
| when they accidently charge over 24 hours of overtime in a
| day)
|
| Union rules that say only a particular classification of
| employee is allowed to pick up a small package from a
| loading dock and move it twenty feet are also bad.
|
| The blame can go to the top, for not managing correctly.
| achierius wrote:
| > It should also be their incentive
|
| You can't just proclaim what incentives should be. We do
| have a mechanism for _changing_ the incentives of
| management though: it 's called unions.
| coryrc wrote:
| If it was a traveler's union, maybe. Cop unions don't
| result in better outcomes for the general public, and
| there's no reason a controller's union won't end up just
| boosting pay and having a rubber room for hacks
| (referencing NYC schools paying teachers to not work
| because they're either predators or terrible at teaching,
| but being unable to fire them).
| newsclues wrote:
| Or instead of pointing fingers we can uses our brains to
| solve the problems and increase safety.
|
| You could spend a ton of time and money automating the
| process, and probably should especially in the future with
| the proliferation of drones.
|
| But in the meantime there are simple solutions. Tunnels. No
| ground vehicles should be crossing runways when then could
| go under.
| wsbetter wrote:
| It might sound simple, but won't tunnels lower the
| strength of the runways (I presume that's where you would
| put them)? Strengthening that would create an expensive
| solution to a basic communication problem. That's like
| saying instead of 4 way stops, we elevate the two
| intersecting roads to avoid collision, just because
| someone may have ran the stop sign.
|
| Also, ground vehicles typically need to be on the ground
| for a reason. Why seperate them?
| sonar_un wrote:
| Pretty much everything broken in the USA stems directly
| from Reagen.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g95fiZCzjlo
| antonymoose wrote:
| I'm not saying he didn't ignore a real problem - but it's
| been 45 years since the 1981 airline strike. Surely the
| blame ought to be spread around our incompetent Federal
| government.
| 2c0m wrote:
| I actually looked into becoming an ATC controller a year or
| two ago (I love aviation) and they had an age cap of ~30 to
| start training. I'm 32, so ruled out.
| irishcoffee wrote:
| 31. If you had started 2 years ago you should have been
| fine.
| MisterTea wrote:
| When I heard about the crash I immediately recalled the
| recent articles about ATC shortages and overworked ATC's. And
| here we are. ONE dude running ATC for LaGuardia. Mind
| boggling.
|
| I place no blame on the ATC as they were doing everything
| they could given the shit sandwich they were handed. I see
| this happening all over with staffs getting pared down to
| minimums, more (sometimes unpaid) over time, prices going up,
| and no raises.
| m_fayer wrote:
| I'm not trying to minimize a tragedy, but maybe this is
| almost the perfect wake up call?
|
| Not many fatalities but nevertheless a spectacular
| collision. At a major hub airport in a major city. It's
| hard to look away from, the cause is obvious, and all that
| without hundreds of deaths.
| MisterTea wrote:
| It's not minimizing, it's galvanizing. 100% A wake up
| call. I don't fly much but I was bothered by the earlier
| ATC stories and now I don't feel safe at all.
| amiga386 wrote:
| The perfect wake up call before this perfect wake up call
| was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Potomac_River_mid-
| air_col...
|
| Imagine how good the next wake up call will be!
|
| See also _Preemptive Memorial Honors Future Victims Of
| Imminent Dam Disaster_ : https://theonion.com/preemptive-
| memorial-honors-future-victi...
| HoldOnAMinute wrote:
| There are no "wake up calls" in America. If nothing
| changed after Sandy Hook, then nothing was ever going to
| change.
|
| In the future, you'll wear your cow collar, own nothing,
| and like it.
| amiga386 wrote:
| Agreed. There are a whole bucketload of problems, each one
| contributing to the staff shortage. The US has problems that
| other countries don't have (or have less of). It's a long-
| term organisational issue. None of it is insurmountable, but
| things need to be done differently, and the politics of that
| _may_ be insurmountable.
|
| Being an air-traffic controller anywhere in the world is a
| very intense job at times, _and_ needs a huge amount of
| proficiency that only a small number of people are capable of
| doing. Couple that with:
|
| - the FAA expects you to move to where ATCs are needed, so
| many of the qualified applicants give up when they hear where
| the posting is. _You can 't force them to take the job!_
|
| - the technology is decades out of date and the Brand New Air
| Traffic Control System (it's seriously called that) won't
| roll out until 2028 at the earliest
|
| - Obama's FAA disincentivised its traditional "feeder"
| colleges that do ATC courses to "promote diversity", net
| outcome was fewer applicants
|
| - Regan broke the union in the 1980s
|
| - DOGE indiscriminately decimated the FAA like it did most
| other government departments
| itopaloglu83 wrote:
| Setting people up for failure and then using them as
| scapegoats, this simply infuriates me.
|
| Expecting a single person to consistently keep their mental
| picture clear and perfect for their entire career is asinine
| and irresponsible.
|
| We need systems and tools to eliminate such errors and support
| people, not use them as a person to blame when things
| inevitably go wrong.
| mikpanko wrote:
| According to NYT it seems like there were 2 controllers and "2
| more in the building". They also wrote that 2 seems normal for
| the late slower time of the night.
|
| Not saying this is the right number of controllers to have,
| just sharing what I read in NYT.
| amelius wrote:
| I'm going to make myself unpopular and ask if an AI could have
| prevented this accident.
| blitzar wrote:
| You are absolulety right, the blockchain could have prevented
| this accident
| dehrmann wrote:
| You don't need modern AI; you can build a system that does
| voice recognition, models the airport and airspace, and
| applies looks for violations.
|
| Actually, _you_ might be able to try this. Live ATC and radar
| is available.
| kevmo wrote:
| The US intentionally created the ATC shortage. From Wikipedia:
|
| The PATCO Strike of 1981 was a union-organized work stoppage by
| air traffic controllers (ATCs) in the United States. The
| Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO)
| declared a strike on August 3, 1981, after years of tension
| between controllers and the federal government over long hours,
| chronic understaffing, outdated equipment, and rising workplace
| stress. Despite 13,000 ATCs striking, the strike ultimately
| failed, as the Reagan administration was able to replace the
| striking ATCs, resulting in PATCO's decertification.
|
| The failure of the PATCO strike impacted the American labor
| movement, accelerating the decline in labor unions in the
| country, and initiating a much more aggressive anti-union
| policy by the federal government and private sector employers.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Professional_Air_Traffic_...
| frenchtoast8 wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > But he [Sean Duffy] denied rumors that the tower had only one
| controller on duty.
| journal wrote:
| Why drain resources training more controllers when we're having
| energy collapse? Even if they start pumping oil, it will only
| delay the inevitable. What would we do with all the extra
| controllers if we have to fire them in ten years anyway?
| arjie wrote:
| > _According to the aviation safety reporting system administered
| by the US space agency Nasa_...
|
| Aeronautics, yes, but I was still surprised to see NASA and not
| the FAA here. But folllowing up here
| https://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/overview/immunity.html
|
| > _The FAA determined that ASRP effectiveness would be greatly
| enhanced if NASA, rather than the FAA, accomplished the receipt,
| processing, and analysis of raw data. This would ensure the
| anonymity of the reporter and of all parties involved in a
| reported occurrence or incident and, consequently, increase the
| flow of information necessary for the effective evaluation of the
| safety and efficiency of the NAS._
|
| Very neat. It's by design. Well done.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| I work in exactly this space as a NASA contractor. I don't
| actually have a massive amount of insight into the FAA, but my
| impression is that they don't do much in the way of R&D on
| their own. I think (without hard numbers mind you) the vast
| majority of FAA R&D work starts at NASA or other government
| labs and gets transferred to the FAA when it gets to a
| sufficient level of maturity. In that context, it's even more
| natural for NASA to host the ASRS system.
| ndiddy wrote:
| I just hope they don't try to pin this on the controller who was
| on duty and move on without putting plans in place for some sort
| of structural change. Controllers are forced to work 60+ hour
| weeks and overnight shifts, and the controller in question was
| working both ground and air control simultaneously due to
| staffing shortages. If you listen to the ATC audio, he was
| handling finding a spot for a plane that aborted takeoff and
| declared an emergency, while calling emergency services for that
| plane, while coordinating multiple planes coming in to land,
| while also coordinating multiple planes trying to take off. With
| that kind of workload, an accident like this is an eventuality.
| Even after the fatal accident happened, he had to work for at
| least another hour before he could get relieved of his duty.
| Hopefully something will happen to fix this at some point rather
| than us collectively deciding that an accident or two per year is
| worth the cost savings of not keeping ATC properly staffed.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| How do you know it was due to staffing shortages? It is common
| at LGA for one controller to be handling Tower and Ground late
| at night.
| FL410 wrote:
| And therein lies the problem. Clearly, having one overworked
| controller running a combined tower is not safe nor
| sustainable.
| pc86 wrote:
| Planes landing at a rate of one every 30-40 minutes isn't
| exactly "overworked."
| gortok wrote:
| In this case there were two arrivals within 4 minutes of
| each other and two departures, in addition to the
| emergency plane that had just aborted takeoff.
| pc86 wrote:
| Which is a completely reasonable amount of traffic for
| one controller to handle. This wasn't the controller's
| fault. The firetruck received a clearance, had that
| clearance revoked, and either didn't hear the revocation
| or ignored it.
| bombcar wrote:
| If you have ever spent time listening to LiveATC you will
| realize that like everyone, "tunnel ear" is a real thing
| - if United 1002 has received the clearance/instructions
| they expect, read them back, and are proceeding it can be
| moderately difficult to get their attention again, even
| with perfect verbiage.
| mannykannot wrote:
| The controller was not guilty of malfeasance, but
| clearing the trucks onto the runway with an airliner on
| short final was a mistake, no matter whatever else one
| could say about it.
| VK-pro wrote:
| I don't have time to check flight logs but I personally
| landed at LGA coming from MDW on Sunday. And I also know
| people who got diverted within the hour coming back to
| LGA that night. 30-40 minutes doesn't seem accurate. That
| aside, if you've ever done operational staffing, you'd
| know that you should probably have at least one
| redundancy. When there is any chance of emergency or two
| events happening simultaneously, you should have more
| than one person.
|
| One last meta point. We live in the wealthiest country in
| the history of the world, and the highest air travel
| prices (some part is a function of longer distances I
| know). We should expect that we have ample coverage, if
| not over-coverage, at all times for one of our major
| metropolitan airports. Pay them.
| pc86 wrote:
| Almost every night there are 6-7 hours with zero or near-
| zero scheduled departures and very few scheduled
| arrivals.
|
| The controller shortage has nothing to do with pay,
| controllers make a lot of money.
| bdamm wrote:
| 12am-5am is very quiet, at about 1 per hour. But the
| accident happened during the 10pm-12am time slot, which
| is not as busy as other times of day, but can still have
| workload spikes as evidenced by this situation.
|
| ATC should never work alone at any of the "Core 30"
| airports.
| https://www.aspm.faa.gov/aspmhelp/index/Core_30.html
| SteveNuts wrote:
| What is the contingency/continuity plan if the single
| controller becomes incapacitated while on duty with no
| warning to pilots?
| bombcar wrote:
| Same as if the radios stopped working or otherwise
| communication fails. Execute the planned procedures
| (which vary).
|
| Often Approach will take over the "tower" and operate in
| crippled mode (no clearances to cross active runways, you
| must go down to the end kind of thing).
|
| Some airports are uncontrolled at various times and would
| revert to that. Some airlines would require the pilot
| execute a missed approach and deviate to a towered
| airport, others may allow them to land.
| zardo wrote:
| It seems like a critical enough role that you probably want
| two people there in case one has a medical emergency
| anyway. Even if it's not that busy.
| xeromal wrote:
| I believe other areas can assist when something like that
| happens.
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| Maybe there should be more than one
| metalliqaz wrote:
| Maybe. Lets see what the NTSB recommendations say.
|
| However despite the downvotes I still haven't seen evidence
| that they were running understaffed at that moment.
|
| What I _do_ know is that the developing emergency on the
| tarmac due to an apparently hazardous smell in another
| plane is likely the cause of the confusion that led to this
| incident. That 's a trigger that could have been
| exacerbated by fatigue but we don't have any evidence of
| that yet.
| RankingMember wrote:
| > I still haven't seen evidence that they were running
| understaffed at that moment.
|
| I think the disagreement you see is based on the
| definition of what "understaffed" means. Having one ATC
| to do ground and air control simultaneously seems like an
| under-staffing situation to begin with, regardless of
| whether it's a common practice.
| thmsths wrote:
| There is also the angle of: even if there is an
| appropriate amount of controllers in the tower at a given
| time, how they do it can also hint at the issue. Being an
| ATC is a taxing job, mandatory overtime and 60 hours work
| weeks screams understaffing to me.
| pc86 wrote:
| It is possible for ATC to be understaffed as a
| profession, LGA to be understaffed as an airport,
| individual controllers to be overworked, _and_ for it to
| be 100% reasonable to have a single controller at LGA in
| the middle of the night.
| adrr wrote:
| Its weird that there strict laws that limit pilot hours
| to under 40 hours a week but no laws that restrict number
| of hours ATC works.
| mmooss wrote:
| > Having one ATC to do ground and air control
| simultaneously seems like an under-staffing situation to
| begin with
|
| Do we have evidence that one controller did all ground
| and air? The only evidence I've seen was the NY Times
| said that, according to a source, two controllers were
| working and two more were in the building.
|
| In situations like this there is as lot of
| disinformation. The best thing to do is not add to it - a
| pile of bad information is not improved by piling more
| on. The best thing is to patiently find reliable info and
| stick to it.
| RankingMember wrote:
| That one controller was handling both ground and air is
| still a bit of a tell that there was some short-
| handedness afoot, though, by my eye.
|
| > The best thing is to patiently find reliable info and
| stick to it.
|
| No disagreement here
| mmooss wrote:
| > That one controller was handling both ground and air
| ...
|
| Why do you (or why does anyone) think that? My point in
| the GP was, I have yet to see evidence that there was
| only one controller, and I have seen evidence that there
| were two.
| RankingMember wrote:
| Because in the ATC recording you hear him directing both
| mmooss wrote:
| I get it now. That's of interest, definitely, but I
| wouldn't conclude it was universally true - that the one
| controller did both for everyone.
| cyberax wrote:
| You can listen to the ATC recordings before and after the
| accident.
| mmooss wrote:
| Does someone say there is only one controller working?
| Just because that particular recording has only one
| controller doesn't mean nobody else is working.
| cyberax wrote:
| You can hear him directing ground and air traffic.
| murat124 wrote:
| SPOF still applies here. You don't need evidence of
| fatigue or anything. You have only 1 of anything, you run
| the risk of ending up having nothing.
| jen20 wrote:
| > It is common at LGA for one controller to be handling Tower
| and Ground late at night.
|
| What happens when they need the bathroom, or have some kind
| of medical problem? If it's really a common case for one
| controller to handle things, the system itself needs to be
| fundamentally rethought.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| There are other people there, but the person on the radio
| is doing both.
| cjrp wrote:
| That seems mad, given the volume of traffic they're working -
| even without emergencies. My local GA field is single
| controller, and that's VFR, grass runways, averages 40-50
| movements/day.
| pklausler wrote:
| "The system worked yesterday, so it should have worked
| forever."
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| You are describing a staffing shortage.
| pc86 wrote:
| "Staffing shortage" doesn't mean "you can fit more people
| in the tower."
|
| You can't think of any scenario having one controller makes
| sense?
| Someone1234 wrote:
| In general, I can. In LaGuardia? Aside from right after
| 9/11 and during COVID-19 when almost all commercial
| travel stopped, I cannot.
|
| I don't think people saying this stuff quite understand
| how _busy_ LGA is even at night. I 'd even go as far as
| to say that three minimum on duty with two in the tower
| at all times (for a ground/air split), would be the
| _bare_ minimum for any hour or situation at LGA.
| volkl48 wrote:
| It does quiet down eventually. There's no scheduled
| departures 22:55-5:45 and only a handful of arrivals
| 23:59-6:45.
|
| However, arrivals stay pretty heavy right up until 23:59
| even on schedule and if you've got a lot of delayed
| flights (not exactly uncommon at LGA) - you may still
| have a lot of departures going out in the 23:00 hour.
|
| I would not be surprised to learn that they're staffed to
| an appropriate level for what the schedule says is
| _supposed_ to be operating at that time, but a very
| inadequate level for what actually winds up operating at
| that time on many days.
|
| Initial analysis suggests they were running about 75% of
| full capacity in flight ops in the 15min prior to the
| accident. I doubt they were staffed to 75% of the daytime
| peak.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _You can 't think of any scenario having one controller
| makes sense?_
|
| At one of the nation's busiest airports? Where there are
| two intersecting runways, both potentially with departing
| and arriving aircraft? Nope.
|
| But, sure, a single-runway regional airport can probably
| get by with a single controller.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| When the airport is closed, in case there was an
| emergency that needed to reroute. One person on then
| makes sense?
|
| La Guardia appears to handle 400 flights a day, 22 an
| hour. I see 6 moving planes right now
| (https://www.flightradar24.com/airport/lga); hopefully
| they have more than one person on?
| pc86 wrote:
| 400 flights a day is 16-17 per hour and those are going
| to be mostly during the day. As someone else points out
| there is a ~6 hour stretch overnight with _no scheduled
| departures_. That 's somewhat common even at large hubs.
|
| I don't want to blow your mind but if the airport closes
| there aren't going to be any controllers in the tower.
| arjie wrote:
| Is he? I can see the number of hours worked as evidence of
| a shortage, but _prima facie_ it is not obvious that a
| single controller handling both ground and air is evidence
| of a 'shortage' if it is routinely considered feasible in
| the industry. It could just be an efficiency choice for
| low-traffic times. Based on some googling since I'm not an
| expert it seems this is called 'position combining' in the
| US and is pretty routine across the world. Therefore, if
| this is a problem the primary cause cannot be US policy
| because non-US airports also do this thing.
|
| Here it's being done at SFO or so it seems: https://data.nt
| sb.gov/Docket/Document/docBLOB?FileExtension=...
|
| While searching I did find this other document where a GC
| (LC appears to be Local Control for local air traffic and
| GC is ground control) controller complains about combining
| due to short-staffing https://data.ntsb.gov/Docket/Document
| /docBLOB?ID=19837915&Fi...
|
| Well, it'll be an interesting report from the NTSB at
| least.
| mannykannot wrote:
| "...routinely considered feasible..."
|
| What we are seeing here is the normalization of deviance.
| volkl48 wrote:
| An obvious issue is going to be that while it's supposed
| to be a lower-traffic time, if you've had delays
| cascading down the day - it may not be in reality. If the
| staffing doesn't adjust for delays shifting the time of
| flights, it would probably often leave you with an
| overworked controller.
|
| Looking at the normal schedules - if all is on schedule
| there'd be no departures in the 23:00 hour but you'd
| still have the arrivals side running pretty heavily.
| However, once you factor in things not being on schedule,
| as they evidently were not on that night, you get:
|
| ----------
|
| The 15min before the accident had 14 flight operations
| (per Juan Browne/blancolirio going through the ADSB
| playback). And that's in marginal weather and at night,
| which makes things more complicated.
|
| That is 75% of the official maximum capacity of the
| airport - during the main part of the day where there's
| government-imposed caps on flights, it's capped at 74
| operations per hour or about 18.5 per 15min.
|
| As such, it seems apparent that you would need just as
| much staffing (or at least 75% as much) at that time to
| safely handle the traffic volume that was occurring that
| night as you did in the main part of the day.
|
| Unless the normal staffing here was just 2 people, it
| seems clear that 1 is inadequate.
| afavour wrote:
| What you just described is a long term staffing shortage.
| longislandguido wrote:
| Some people here coded the buttons that sometimes don't work
| when you check in for your flight. That makes them aviation
| experts. How dare you question wild assumptions.
| 0xy wrote:
| LaGuardia did have a fully staffed ATC, and there's zero
| evidence this controller was overworked. You seem to be
| prematurely ascribing cause when nothing has been investigated
| yet.
| consumer451 wrote:
| > LaGuardia did have a fully staffed ATC
|
| According to whom? Management, or controllers?
|
| Certainly does not seem like controllers agree:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/ATC/
| banannaise wrote:
| The evidence that this controller was overworked is that
| practically all controllers in the US at present are
| overworked. As such, that should be treated as the null
| hypothesis, and it would require substantial evidence to show
| that he _isn 't_ overworked.
| PUSH_AX wrote:
| I'd pay to watch someone say this in a court of law...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/reasonable_person
|
| The concept most certainly exists.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| Couldn't we just... wait to see what FAA says before coming
| up with our own (entirely speculative) theories?
| afavour wrote:
| Can we trust the FAA's conclusion?
|
| Its previous head had a term that didn't expire until
| 2028 but he resigned after pressure from Elon Musk (who
| didn't like that he got fined), now a Trump-friendly head
| has been installed. What, realistically, would be the
| consequences if he lied? Likely none. Government
| officials lying on record is an every day occurrence
| these days.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| True! Assumptions and speculation are always better.
|
| I'm glad we've made our conclusions up front before the
| report has even come out.
|
| That saves me a lot of reading!
| afavour wrote:
| Come on, this is silly. The fact that air traffic
| controllers are overworked is neither an assumption nor
| speculation. It is very widely documented.
| mmooss wrote:
| It does not at all mean that this controller was
| overworked when this crash happened; that would be failed
| reasoning and misuse of evidence. It just raises the
| question, which should be looked at.
|
| It's scary that so many don't seem to know the
| difference. This is how misinformation starts and
| spreads.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| The only thing we know so far is from two minutes of ATC
| audio.
|
| That's literally it. Anything else is speculation and
| extrapolation.
|
| But don't let that stop you if you already know what
| caused the tragedy.
| pc86 wrote:
| You're 100% right, a "Trump-friendly" administrator has
| been "installed" so we can't trust the FAA's conclusions.
| The last guy quit so this guy is definitely going to lie.
| hanche wrote:
| NTSB is the relevant institution, not FAA.
| longislandguido wrote:
| The parent post was unjustly flagged for no other reason than
| facts make overly emotional people here squirm with anger.
| Pathetic and lame.
|
| This is worthy of losing flagging privileges IMO.
|
| The Secretary of Transportation said on record at the first
| press conference that reports this guy was working alone in
| the tower are INACCURATE. The actual number is the
| responsibility of the NTSB to disclose.
|
| 95% of this discussion is people blowing smoke out of their
| ass as per usual.
| wat10000 wrote:
| If a member of this administration said he wasn't working
| alone, that's solid evidence he was.
|
| The evidence that he was overworked seems pretty damned
| obvious. He forgot about an entire airplane and put a fire
| truck in its path. The evidence of overwork is strewn all
| around LGA.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| From VAS Aviation, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbm-
| QJAAzNY, or possibly in the comments, it was noted that
| there were 2 people on - one in the tower, one elsewhere in
| charge of approach. So perhaps, it's innacurate because he
| was working "with" the person on approach, but still
| accurate to what we would all call "working alone"?
| _moof wrote:
| There's a mountain of evidence. No single controller should
| ever be running tower and ground at an airport like LGA.
| inaros wrote:
| Hopefully some commercial professional pilots will comment on
| this thread, but if you go to sites where they normally hang
| out like:
|
| https://www.airlinepilotforums.com
|
| You will see many are terrified ( in commercial pilot terms...)
| of flying into La Guardia or JFK...
| rglover wrote:
| > https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/major/152572-aircraft-
| fir...
|
| Just a quick read/speculation based on the linked forum
| post...
|
| Short of insane visibility conditions that prevented them
| from seeing the plane coming, the firetruck operator seems to
| be the liable party (beyond the airport for understaffing
| controllers--this seems to be exacerbated by government cuts
| but that's still no excuse for having a solo controller at
| that busy of an airport, especially at night).
|
| The controller in question seems to have caught their mistake
| quickly and reversed the order instead asking the firetruck
| to stop (but for some reason, this wasn't heard).
|
| Is it common now to have solo operators running control
| towers?
| joncrane wrote:
| The controller was talking to Frontier plane when he first
| said stop, then said stopstopTruck1stopstopstop and it
| would be easy for there to be a gap in processing for the
| driver of truck 1 because the verbiage all flowed in the
| same stanza that was started when addressing the Frontier
| flight.
| inaros wrote:
| I am afraid the fire truck might have some level of
| responsibility, since it seems FAA ground vehicle
| guidance says:
|
| AC No: 150/5210-20A - "Subject: Ground Vehicle Operations
| to include Taxiing or Towing an Aircraft on Airports"
|
| https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circul
| ar/...
|
| "you must ensure that you look both ways down the runway
| to visually acquire aircraft landing or departing even if
| you have a clearance to cross."
|
| These trucks seem to have pretty good visibility from
| inside. Not sure if La Guardia model was the same:
| https://youtu.be/rfILwYo3sXc
| phearnot wrote:
| Not arguing with the regulations, just pointing out that
| based on airport diagram[1], since the truck was crossing
| rwy on taxiway D, the CRJ was on the right approaching
| from behind. I have never been inside an airport
| firetruck, but I guess from the driver's seat the jet
| would be quite hard to see in this case.
|
| [1]https://www.avherald.com/h?article=536bb98e
| inaros wrote:
| That is a good point but it seems instructions for ground
| vehicles seem to really stress this. For example this
| one: https://skybrary.aero/sites/default/files/bookshelf/
| 1003.pdf
|
| Says at pag 9:
|
| "While driving on an aerodrome : Clear left, ahead, above
| and right
|
| Scan the full length of the runway and the approaches for
| possible landing aircraft before entering or crossing any
| runway, even if you have received a clearance."
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| >but I guess from the driver's seat the jet would be
| quite hard to see in this case.
|
| They have mostly glass cabs for exactly that reason. Only
| thing that would block your view is a passenger in the
| right seat.
| caminante wrote:
| Visibility was bad (night and mist) too.
|
| But if your truck has blind spots and vis is poor, you
| shouldn't be driving as fast if at all.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| He was stopped until he received instructions to cross
| the runway from the person whose job it is to sit in a
| position with good visibility and tell people when they
| can cross runways. He wasn't driving fast at all. The
| whole system is set up so that vehicles with blind spots
| (every large passenger jet) can safely move.
|
| We can't say that emergency vehicles should just stay in
| on dark and stormy nights.
| vkou wrote:
| Every other truck in the column immediately stopped when
| the call was made. Truck 1 was the only one that didn't.
| krisoft wrote:
| I very much doubt that you know the exact timing of the
| event. My guess is that you might have seen a video where
| some industrious editor put the ATC recordings over the
| leaked surveilance footage, but there is no way that is
| correctly synced.
| hatthew wrote:
| With publicly available information we can sync it to
| within ~2 seconds. All trucks other than the first one
| were definitely in the process of stopping in between the
| first and second time ATC told them to stop (5 seconds
| apart).
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| They were all, including truck 1, queued up at the stop
| line waiting for clearance to cross. Truck 1 received
| clearance to cross, he began crossing, then received
| instructions to stop after it was too late.
|
| The rest of the emergency vehicles were stopped because
| they hadn't been authorized. Truck 1 started moving
| because he had received specific instructions to do
| exactly what he was doing.
|
| I take it you're not a pilot, controller or someone who
| has ever worked an aviation radio?
| jmtulloss wrote:
| FWIW the whole group received permission to cross. The
| instructions were to "Truck 1 and company", not just
| Truck 1
| hatthew wrote:
| "Truck 1 and company" were cleared to cross. A few
| seconds later, "truck 1" was instructed to stop.
|
| Edit: Confirmed truck 1 was the one involved in the
| collision. Previous text: It is unclear which truck
| specifically was involved in the crash. In photos, the
| truck has the number 35 on it, not sure if that would
| preclude it from being identified as "truck 1" verbally.
| sssilver wrote:
| > Is it common now to have solo operators running control
| towers?
|
| At Class D airports it's always been the norm. But KLGA is
| Class B.
| wk_end wrote:
| "Liability" isn't really how we try to see things in
| aviation. While it's true that it's ultimately considered
| the responsibility of the truck/plane to visually confirm
| that crossing the runway is safe, refuse unsafe commands
| from ATC, and comply to the best of their ability when ATC
| says "stop" at the last second, we can't stop our analysis
| there if we want to prevent this from happening in the
| future, because unless things change someone _will_ make
| this mistake again in the future. Telling people not to
| make mistakes isn 't going to help at all; it's obvious,
| and no one _wants_ to cause an accident. The error is just
| the last step in the process that led to the collision.
| rglover wrote:
| I don't think the ATC is at fault here. If they were put
| in a difficult situation and responsible for too much at
| once, I'd view that as a leadership bug, not their
| personal fault (or anything they should be held liable
| for). The weak links imo here are the firetruck driver
| and whoever that ATC reports to directly (i.e., there
| shouldn't have been an opportunity for this to happen--
| that's an executive failure, whether they want to take
| ownership or not).
| SecretDreams wrote:
| The weak link is the system in place which puts so much
| work on so few staff.
|
| The fire truck received the go ahead. They weigh 3x more
| than a normal firetruck. They're rushing to a different
| emergency. The plane is moving fast as hell. They can't
| just react instantaneously.
|
| The ATC worker is clearly too stretched and such an
| incident was an inevitability. When they're shouting
| stop, they are no longer directly talking to the
| firetruck, which obscures the situation for everyone.
|
| It is a terrible tragedy that will only be prevented with
| reform in staffing and safety procedures.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| The NTSB's role is to not to assign blame.
|
| We aren't in the aviation industry, and neither are we
| the NTSB.
|
| Prosecutions and convictions do occur as a result of
| aviation incidents, pilots loose their jobs, pilots loose
| their licenses, ATC staff can be prohibited from ever
| working in the industry again.
|
| We free to talk about all of those aspects here.
| bko wrote:
| > this seems to be exacerbated by government cuts
|
| What government cuts? 2025 FAA air traffic budget was up
| around 7% from 2025
|
| https://enotrans.org/article/senate-bill-oks-27-billion-
| faa-...
| rglover wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > The crash has raised fears that operations at US
| airports are under extreme stress. Airports have been
| dealing with a shortage of air traffic controllers,
| exacerbated by brutal federal government personnel cuts
| by Donald Trump's administration at the start of his
| second presidency.
|
| Not my opinion, just reading from there.
| bko wrote:
| So where there budget cuts or not? That was the claim. I
| have yet to find anything that suggests there were budget
| cuts, just vague mentions of "brutal federal government
| personnel cuts".
|
| I'm just looking for: budget was X in <2026 and in 2026
| it is Y, where X > Y
| ridgeguy wrote:
| Analyze staffing, not budget. That gets more directly at
| workload.
| rglover wrote:
| You said budget cuts, not me.
| sophacles wrote:
| Notably 2025 was also the year that Elon started firing
| people and shutting down things that were in the budget,
| as well as several shutdowns.
| rdtsc wrote:
| Truck was on a different frequency from the aircraft so
| they couldn't even hear each others' clearances.
|
| Also first time ATC told the truck to stop it wasn't too
| clear who the message was addressed to. It's a bit hard to
| hear "Truck1" there, not clear who he wants to stop. The
| second time, one can argue by the time "stop" command was
| heard it might have been better to gun the engine. As the
| truck sort of slowed down in the middle of the runway.
| pc86 wrote:
| > the controller in question was working both ground and air
| control simultaneously due to staffing shortages
|
| How many planes land at LGA in the middle the night?
|
| One controller overnight is completely reasonable.
| inaros wrote:
| >> One controller overnight is completely reasonable
|
| So if said controller has a medical episode?
| pc86 wrote:
| "Funny" enough if this controller _had_ had a medical
| emergency (or just bad sushi) and been off the radios, this
| wouldn 't have happened because the fire truck would not
| have received clearance to cross the runway and wouldn't
| have. Or at least would have crossed like the airport was
| uncontrolled, been much more careful and announced itself,
| and likely have seen the landing aircraft.
| inaros wrote:
| An empty tower at La Guardia with a bunch of airplanes in
| the air not getting a reply to their calls is Die Hard 2
| stuff. Spare me the Pete Hegseth school of ATC...
| pc86 wrote:
| I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. The
| GP is literally about a lone controller in the tower
| having a medical episode and what would happen after
| that.
| bombcar wrote:
| The pilots would execute untowered approach procedures, a
| small airport with little to no traffic and VFR flight
| you may self-announce on frequency, a larger airport you
| go back to approach, etc.
| tadfisher wrote:
| Each of those flights should have an alternate and be
| prepared (have enough fuel) to divert. If there is a fuel
| emergency then self-announcing is likely appropriate as
| the plane is coming down anyway, but that is multiple
| things going wrong.
| bombcar wrote:
| A big part of it is what category of airport it is, and
| plane. General aviation almost always goes to self-
| announce (which includes some business jets perhaps, they
| often land at untowered airports) but not category 135
| air travel or whatever it is.
| MeetingsBrowser wrote:
| I can't find a way to read this other than
|
| "If we remove regulation and safety controls, things will
| be safer because everyone will be more careful."
| inaros wrote:
| And we know how well that works:
| https://youtu.be/AWM0l8_F_X0?t=411
| pc86 wrote:
| You should try harder, because I'm not making any comment
| on regulation whatsoever. There are procedures that every
| controller and pilot knows for how to handle loss of
| radio contact.
| MeetingsBrowser wrote:
| Am I misunderstanding the implication in your comment
| that things would have been safer had there been no ATC
| at all?
|
| Because the parties involved would be more careful if
| there were no ATC?
| penultimatename wrote:
| And if an aircraft needs to land due to an emergency?
| It's amazing things work as well as they do, the system
| relies on only one thing going wrong at a time. This
| accident was an example of multiple things going wrong at
| the same time.
| pc86 wrote:
| Every accident is an example of multiple things going
| wrong at the same time.[0]
|
| I'm going to pretend to know exactly what would happen in
| that precise scenario but I'm confident most commercial
| pilots get enough training to be able to handle it.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model
| bombcar wrote:
| One of the things you learn as a pilot is _how to
| recognize that you need to go into emergency mode_ if you
| will. Call it high-alert if you want.
|
| You need to recognize when something is out of the
| ordinary and treat it as an emergency (perhaps not a
| literal pan-pan/mayday emergency) _sooner_ rather than
| later, and do things that may end up to have been
| unnecessary (like executing a go-around because emergency
| vehicles were on the move).
|
| One controller on two frequencies is another example -
| that works fine in _normal_ situations, but during an
| emergency response, perhaps the channels should be mixed;
| giving the pilots in the air a chance to hear the
| incorrect clearance onto their runway.
|
| After all, an active runway is really more of an "air"
| control thing than a ground one.
| inaros wrote:
| >> Every accident is an example of multiple things going
| wrong at the same time.
|
| You are defeating your own argument :-) Its exactly
| because every accident is an example of multiple things
| going wrong at the same time...that you need...multiple
| layers of control and safety to catch it through each
| hole of the cheese.
|
| Like...another controller?
| _moof wrote:
| That risk is managed through medical certification. The
| real problem with understaffing is that one person can't
| handle all that work.
| caconym_ wrote:
| > One controller overnight is completely reasonable.
|
| Do you really think it's appropriate to have zero margin for
| handling unusually high ATC workloads? Because we just saw
| what happens when you have zero margin for handling unusually
| high ATC workloads: people start dying.
| ferguess_k wrote:
| Looking at the things he needs to juggle at the same time, is
| it really reasonable? Any standard we are referring here?
| Sure such cases are rare but that's why we have redundancies
| for critical positions.
| bloudermilk wrote:
| Approximately one per minute in the 15 minute span proceeding
| this crash, including one that had an emergency takeoff
| rejection and was being maneuvered along with the emergency
| support vehicles that were being sent to attend to it
| rekrsiv wrote:
| Can a single human being reliably and robustly maintain a
| safety-critical system alone under any circumstances, ever?
|
| Ever?
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| There are millions of people who are self employed in an
| industry where they could be maimed or killed if they screw
| up who manage to make it to retirement.
|
| I think the better question is how you get a system in
| which people are only responsible for any one facet to get
| the same performance out of people that a painter can get
| out of himself when he's setting up his own ladder that he
| personally has to climb on.
| bombcar wrote:
| The goal should always be to _reduce_ the human
| dependency - _where reasonable_ which is where all the
| argument is, because of the cost /benefit analysis.
|
| Mandatory scaffolding for roofing contractors would save
| some amount of deaths/injuries (and the related expenses)
| but add expenses to each job.
|
| Some roofing firms refuse to operate without scaffolding;
| you pay for it or you find someone else.
| pythonaut_16 wrote:
| I don't think the GPs point is about personal safety of
| workers, but rather critical safety systems that rely on
| one person with no backups. Like an ATC tower for a busy
| airport staffed by a single person on an overnight shift.
|
| A painter who does a bad job setting up a ladder is going
| to have a bad time, a lone ATC operator having a heart
| attack potentially puts multiple large aircraft full of
| people in danger...
| _moof wrote:
| I design and conduct space missions, and I'm an experienced
| professional pilot. The answer to your question is "never."
|
| Any system that requires perfect performance from any one
| human _will fail._
| MeetingsBrowser wrote:
| > One controller overnight is completely reasonable.
|
| How many fatal accidents are reasonable in your opinion?
| BorgHunter wrote:
| Normally? Zero. LGA has a curfew from midnight to six AM,
| April 5-December 31.
|
| In practice? It depends. Delays have a tendency to cascade in
| the air travel system and the Port Authority can curtail or
| cancel the curfew at their discretion. How frequently do
| exceptions to normal ops have to happen for it to be
| unreasonable to use "normal ops traffic" as a justification
| for scheduling a single controller? Ultimately, controllers
| have to control the traffic that they get, not the traffic
| that they want/expect to get, and a system that is overly
| optimized becomes brittle and unable to deal with exceptions
| to the norm.
| duped wrote:
| It bothers me that everyone is laser focused on poor ATC
| staffing and working conditions (which is very valid, don't get
| me wrong). I think airport capacity should be fixed depending
| on ATC staffing. We need to have less air travel.
|
| The way I think about it is this: substandard ATC staffing is
| just as bad as lacking jetways or damaged runways. When the
| airport can't land planes because of physical capacity
| constraints, flights get cancelled or delayed (literally
| happening today at LGA, flights are getting canceled because
| they're down one runway). The carriers need to eat the costs of
| forcing too much demand on ATCs.
| rekrsiv wrote:
| You are correct. Robustness requires a system that is working
| within it's tolerance margin, and stressing that inevitably
| leads to failure. A fault-tolerant system in this case would
| require a large amount of redundant humans. Unfortunately,
| the capitalist mindset prevents accepting any amount of
| "waste" as tolerable, which makes a robust system impossible
| to implement over time. Every system touched by a capitalist
| optimizer will eventually fail.
|
| The idea that waste must be reduced is killing society, and
| this mindset must be addressed first before any other safety-
| critical system can be made reliable again.
| fn-mote wrote:
| > The carriers need to eat the costs of forcing too much
| demand on ATCs.
|
| Running ATC (and limiting flights if necessary) seems like
| the job of the government to me.
|
| Why put this on the carriers?
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Put the _costs_ on the carriers, not hand the job over to
| them.
| xeonmc wrote:
| > I just hope they don't try to pin this on the controller who
| was on duty and move on without putting plans in place for some
| sort of structural change.
|
| I am reminded of the Uberlingen disaster:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_%C3%9Cberlingen_mid-air_c...
| garaetjjte wrote:
| I think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Los_Angeles_runway
| _collis... is more applicable.
| onefiftymike wrote:
| Admiral Cloudberg has a great writeup about this. I
| instantly thought of LA when I saw the headlines about the
| LaGuardia collision.
|
| https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/cleared-to-collide-
| the-c...
| rectang wrote:
| In both cases, the controller's fate was grim. Peter
| Nielsen (Uberlingen) was murdered by a relative of a crash
| victim. Robin Lee Wascher (LA), whose own parents had died
| in an earlier air crash, was crucified in the media and
| never worked as a controller again.
|
| Both precedents are applicable, because the Laguardia
| controller is also going to be savaged.
| wk_end wrote:
| The NTSB - and aviation in general - as much as possible tries
| to avoid "pinning" issues on individuals. The purpose of an
| investigation isn't to ascribe blame, it's to try to understand
| what happened and how to prevent it from happening again, and
| prescribing "don't make mistakes" is not a realistic or useful
| method for preventing accidents from recurring.
| rectang wrote:
| Yes! But every news organization is leading with "I messed
| up." And the US President commented "They messed up", though
| it's unclear who that was in reference to.
|
| Humans have a powerful need to affix blame and punish
| individuals. On the internet, you are forever the worst
| moment of your life.
|
| We set air traffic controllers up to fail, and then when
| something goes wrong we torture them until they die, and then
| torture their memory after they die.
| jimbokun wrote:
| The current US President is the last person we should
| listen to when it comes to deciding anything important.
| rectang wrote:
| By using the role name rather than proper name, I'd hoped
| to spare HN from a tangent like this. My point doesn't
| rest on the nature of single individual, but instead
| applies to a human tendency. Politicians and press both
| play to the base impulses of a mass audience, unlike the
| NTSB. This is not the first time that a politician has
| scapegoated individuals when systemic failure occurs.
| estearum wrote:
| I actually can't remember or imagine another POTUS even
| getting to a level of specificity required to scapegoat
| an individual for something like this. The usual (and
| correct) answer is to say: "We don't know yet what
| happened, but there will be a full investigation and we
| will make the changes necessary to prevent it from
| happening again."
|
| Pretty easy!
|
| It doesn't serve us well to act like this administration
| is anything other than extremely aberrational.
| SecretDreams wrote:
| Agreed. Respect and decorum are gone with the most recent
| POTUS. It's not okay to ascribe this aviation incident to
| the ATC controller. However, it is fully okay to call the
| POTUS and staff out for attacking so many individuals, at
| such a deeply personal level, over issues that are
| clearly systematic and that have clearly gotten worse
| under current leadership.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _extremely aberrational_
|
| Is it still an aberration the second time 'round?
| estearum wrote:
| Yes
| soperj wrote:
| He lost the vote the first time. He lost to a corpse the
| second time he ran, it was like Weekend at Bernie's.
| rectang wrote:
| Look, if you were to review my comment history you would
| have no doubt about where I stand on the current
| administration.
|
| But scapegoating any single politician for the systemic
| problems of aviation is as unhelpful as scapegoating the
| controller for the crash at Laguardia.
| estearum wrote:
| I didn't see anyone scapegoating him for anything other
| than engaging in direct personal attribution which is
| counter to aviation safety culture, basic leadership
| principles, and minimum decorum standards -\\_(tsu)_/-
| jimbokun wrote:
| Sure but most of his predecessors knew enough to not
| weigh in beyond regret for the tragedy and loss of life
| until after the investigators did their job.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who are legally
| obligated to listen to him for many important decisions.
| film42 wrote:
| I hope it comes down to the NTSB recommending more
| controllers (or better conditions for controllers) to avoid
| task saturation, not just more process. It's incredible what
| a single controller is capable of doing, but for major areas
| like NYC, it's not enough.
| awakeasleep wrote:
| Understand what happened and prevent it from happening again,
| so long as this can be done without expanding staffing,
| reducing OT, structural change, etc
| tialaramex wrote:
| No. Safety investigation agencies deliberately aren't
| regulators. The NTSB may decide that their recommendation
| is that every air passenger should be carrying a melon, and
| that results in a press release, a letter to the FAA saying
| that's what they recommend, that's all.
|
| Deciding to change policies to effect the recommendation
| isn't their role. That's why you will so often see a safety
| investigatory body repeatedly recommend the same thing. The
| UK's RAIB (which is for Rail investigations) for example
| will often call out why a fatal accident they've
| investigated wouldn't have happened if the regulator had
| implemented some prior recommendation, either one they're
| slow walking or have rejected.
|
| The investigators don't need to care about other factors.
| Are melons too expensive? Not their problem. Only
| unfriendly countries grow melons? Not their problem. They
| only need to care about recommending things that would
| prevent future harm which is their purpose.
| rectang wrote:
| > _Deciding to change policies to effect the
| recommendation isn 't their role._
|
| And if it _was_ the role of investigators to change
| policy, then there would be enormous pressure from
| industry to reach convenient conclusions, poisoning the
| investigation process.
| hectormalot wrote:
| Indeed. Similar accident (USAir 1493/Skywest 5569) shows that
| thinking exactly.[1] Was easy to pin on the controller, they
| went far beyond that in their analysis. Almost always
| impressed with the professionalism of those organizations. I
| sometimes wonder how software would look if we had such
| investigations for major incidents.
|
| 1: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/cleared-to-collide-
| the-c...
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| The NTSB also _isn't_ the organisation that makes any changes
| nor, as you suggest, assigns any penalties.
|
| The NTSB only makes recommendations.
| jliptzin wrote:
| Is it possible to automate the job of an ATC controller? At
| least partially? Or at least just as a sanity check on every
| human decision? Not saying I want human ATC controllers
| replaced, but if there's a severe staff shortage, I feel like a
| computerized version is better than nothing at all.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| No, a lot of it is human - asking for things, getting things.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| In this specific incident, there was a system in place called
| Runway Entrance Lights [0] that does serve as an automated
| sanity check on controllers commands. The surveillance video
| that is circulating shows that the system was working and
| indicated that the runway was not safe to enter. It's not
| clear yet why the truck entered the runway anyway.
|
| 0: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl
| jamincan wrote:
| I wonder if they thought that since they were responding to
| an emergency, and they were given clearance to cross by
| ATC, that that would override normal procedures. Kind of
| like how emergency vehicles cross a red light all the time
| when responding to an emergency.
| AnAnonymousDude wrote:
| If they thought that, it was in error. Training
| SPECIFICALLY calls this out. The lights ALWAYS overrule
| the controller. Period.
| rectang wrote:
| It would be interesting to know whether that rule was
| onerous enough in practice that they had little choice
| but to break it in order to do their jobs effectively.
| They were responding to an emergency, seconds count, and
| they believed they had clearance from the controller.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| The REILs are part of ARFF training. Pilot training on it
| is also clear. The system is automated. It plots the
| direction and speed of anything approaching the runway and
| predicts a conflict. If the REILs are red it is HIGHLY
| likely there is a conflict that is missed by human error
| and you should not proceed without confirming. Don't just
| confirm cleared to cross, explicitly tell the controller
| "XYZ tower we have red runway entrance lights. Please
| confirm runway XX is clear".
|
| The system is smart enough that if you get red bars to
| cross for an airplane departing once it passes your
| position the red clears because it knows the airplane is
| already past you. It is not dumb - it was deliberately
| designed to minimize false positives so everyone would
| trust it otherwise they might ignore it when it really
| counts. (AFAIK it very accurate in fact so the firetrucks
| weren't crossing because they distrusted the red lights).
|
| This is just like all aviation incidents and indeed most
| incidents of any kind: the holes in the swiss cheese lined
| up.
|
| The emergency aircraft couldn't find a free gate, creating
| a massive distraction for ATC, airport, et al. This is
| probably the primary domino that started the sequence. Had
| a gate been free this incident would not have happened. One
| big hole lined up.
|
| Normally the aircraft would visually see the truck or the
| truck would visually see the airplane. But it was dark and
| rainy. Another hole lined up.
|
| Everyone involved was rushing because noise abatement
| requires the airport to close at a certain hour. Thus
| everyone wanted to take-off or land before that shutdown.
| Another hole.
|
| Normally the controller wouldn't issue the clearance to
| cross or their supervisor monitoring behind them would
| notice the error and override. But the controller and/or
| supervisor were distracted by the emergency. Another hole
| lined up.
|
| The controller realized the error and issued a stop command
| but the fire truck proceeded anyway; they may or may not
| have heard the transmission. Another hole lined up.
|
| Then someone else decided to jump on frequency during this
| busy time (we don't know who just yet) which may have
| prevented the controller's stop and/or go-around commands
| from being heard (another hole lined up).
|
| The ARFF crew did not obey the REILs, accepting the
| clearance. Perhaps they thought the red lights were due to
| aircraft on short final and they still had time to cross?
| Perhaps it was some other misunderstanding of how that
| system works. Another hole lines up.
|
| And the Air Canada jet was not paying attention to the
| chaos on frequency. There's a reason runway crossings are
| typically done on tower frequency: so aircraft can hear
| what is going on. But it was late at night and their brains
| probably didn't process what was happening. Or they were
| too close to touching down to have the bandwidth. Another
| hole lined up.
| krisoft wrote:
| > the holes in the swiss cheese lined up.
|
| I totally agree with you on that.
|
| > The emergency aircraft couldn't find a free gate,
| creating a massive distraction for ATC, airport, et al.
|
| Yes. And I want to add one more thing to this: the
| airplane with the "odour" issue was kinda ambivalent
| about the danger. They deemed it dangerous enough to
| declare an emergency, and request a gate then later ask
| for airstairs but not dangerous enough to pop the slides
| and just evacuate right there and then. I'm not saying
| this is wrong. Obviously they were evaluating the
| situation as new information was coming in. But it
| increased the workload of the ATC. They were trying to
| find a gate, and etc. If it was a clearer "mayday mayday
| mayday, aft cabin fire, we are evacuating" that might
| have been paradoxically less "work" for the ATC. Or at
| least more of a "practiced" scenario.
|
| > Perhaps it was some other misunderstanding of how that
| system works.
|
| Yeah. That's a big one. Total speculation but maybe they
| thought the airplane with the "odour" issue was keeping
| it red?
| MBCook wrote:
| Why cross a runway at all? Can they not use taxiways and
| aprons to get there?
| _moof wrote:
| A great deal of ATC relies on automation, such as systems
| like ASDE-X, which is used at LGA. ASDE-X uses radar and
| vehicle transponders (among other things) to detect collision
| hazards on the ground. Unfortunately ASDE-X only works if
| every vehicle has a transponder.
|
| The truck involved in the collision did not have one. https:/
| /bsky.app/profile/flightradar24.com/post/3mht7m2f3rc2...
| dmitrygr wrote:
| NTSB's M.O. has always been that there is never just one cause.
| A human mistake that costs lives is never that simple. There is
| a system that trained the person, a set of incentives that put
| the person into that place, a set of safeguards that should
| have existed to prevent the mistake from causing life loss, and
| a regulatory framework to occasionally verify all of the above.
| I would expect that "the controller made a mistake" would be
| ~one paragraph in a 100-page report.
| calf wrote:
| What structural change would permit a worker to take initiative
| and say "Hey, these working conditions are wrong/inadequate and
| I will not safely do my job today unless proper changes are
| made", without risk of getting fired by higher-ups?
|
| Empowering workers to make safety-critical meta-decisions does
| not seem to be a feature of actually-existing capitalism.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > What structural change would permit a worker to take
| initiative and say "Hey, these working conditions are
| wrong/inadequate and I will not safely do my job today unless
| proper changes are made", without risk of getting fired by
| higher-ups?
|
| Well, what you are describing is a strike, and it is
| currently illegal for ATC to strike, so in theory one
| possible structural change would be to make it legal for the
| workers to do what you're describing.
| Eufrat wrote:
| I suspect someone is literally asking the idiotic question if
| they can just replace our air traffic controllers with an AI.
| downrightmike wrote:
| ATC are under contract to not be able to quit, basically high
| stress slavery and the gov't put the screws to them. The only
| thing that will fix this is the rich can't fly their private
| jets
| GarnetFloride wrote:
| When I was young I took a tour of an air traffic control center
| near New York. By the end I knew it was not for me. Everyone
| looked stressed. Things have gotten so much worse.
|
| This guy was doing at least 3 people's jobs even before the
| first emergency occurred.
|
| Then it was an inevitable cascade failure situation. It was
| never his fault.
|
| Management failed here. If its stupid but it works, its not
| stupid, is the old saying, but the reality I've seen is its
| still stupid but you got lucky. -Maxim 43
|
| The luck finally ran out.
| mrbukkake wrote:
| Maybe they could try using ICE agents as air traffic controllers
| too
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| Does anyone know why the fire truck was driving across the runway
| in the first place? Was it a patrol, repositioning the truck, or
| was there an active incident that they were responding to? Seems
| like reducing the number of times you have to drive across an
| active runway is in general a good thing, but perhaps at an
| airport this old this is the only way to get from A to B.
| nemomarx wrote:
| I believe it was responding to the other active incident that
| the ATC was also handling where a plane failed to take off?
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| Was the 2nd plane on a runway still also?
| avemg wrote:
| it was on a taxiway. The fire truck had to cross the runway
| to get to it.
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| Thanks for the info, I wasnt sure if the fire truck
| crossing the runway was normal operation.
| Hovertruck wrote:
| They were responding to an incident (unidentified odor on
| another plane)
| krisoft wrote:
| > Does anyone know why the fire truck was driving across the
| runway in the first place?
|
| Yes we know. There was an other airplane who declared an
| emergency and was about to evacuate the passengers on the
| tarmac. The other plane in question had two aborted takeoffs,
| and then they smelled some "odour" in the aft of the plane
| which made some of the crew feel ill.
| adolph wrote:
| It is surprising to me that airports do not use an interlock
| system for deconflicting the various paths segments that may be
| occupied by a vehicle. Trains have used mechanical ones since the
| 1800s [0]. The story and comments seem to indicate the only thing
| preventing collisions is the mind of one person--that sounds
| insane.
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlocking
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| While it's not as sophisticated, there is a technology called
| Runway Entrance Lights [0] that does somewhat the same thing in
| the specific context of this incident. LGA is one of 20
| airports around the country where this system is installed, and
| you can clearly see that the system was functioning if you know
| where to look in the surveillance video that is circulating
| online. For whatever reason, the truck did not respect the
| indicator that they should not enter the runway. So in this
| specific incident, short of rail-like physical limitations on
| movement, I think it's unlikely that any amount of additional
| technology would have helped.
|
| 0: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl
| sentientslug wrote:
| A runway light does not physically prevent a vehicle from
| entering a restricted area in the same way that an interlock
| would. Not saying it's practical but an interlock would have
| indeed prevented an accident of this type.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Yes, I get that. But an airport is not a rail network. The
| question is how you would actually implement physical
| interlocks on an airport in a way that works and is safe
| while controlling movement of everything from a pickup
| truck to an A380? It's an incredibly hard problem to solve.
| And keeping in mind too that the Runway Status/Entrance
| Lights first started development over 30 years ago and are
| still only deployed at 20 airports, despite being a vastly
| simpler system than one controlling physical barriers.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| I'm curious how much of a buffer there is between the
| time the sensors detect the airplane and it being safe to
| enter the runway.
|
| Is it definitely safe to cross the runway in a vehicle
| moving a normal speed up to the moment before the lights
| turn red? Is it safe for a little bit afterward? Or is it
| unsafe even a little before the lights turn red?
| lvspiff wrote:
| If school busses can look both ways before crossing train
| tracks you'd think a firetruck would look both ways for
| airplanes coming down a runway. Don't want to blame the firemen
| though - this was a series of extrmeemly unfortuante scenarios
| and people trying to keep the airport running safely. For years
| people have been on soap boxes saying the FAA/NTSB needs to do
| better, and yet year after year they are poorly run and poorly
| funded.
| dgoldstein0 wrote:
| A quick Google gives me that a 737 typically lands between
| 144 and 180 mph. I think that's quite a lot faster than most
| people are watching out for. Good news is they are bigger
| than cars and so easier to spot at a distance but I'm still
| skeptical that "look before you cross the runway" is
| sufficiently safe. Keep in mind that the planes may not even
| be on the ground yet - at the top end in 30s they could go
| from a 1.5 miles away in the sky (and up to 300-400ft in the
| air) to plowing through your position (iirc runways are about
| 2 miles long for jets).
|
| I wonder if it'd even be reliable to see such a plane coming
| fast enough.
|
| Now multiply that by the dozens of planes in your vicinity,
| and by the 100ish big US airports.
| filleduchaos wrote:
| > I think that's quite a lot faster than most people are
| watching out for
|
| That isn't even beyond the top speed of a car, which non-
| trained humans are very well capable of tracking by sight -
| to talk of airport workers that are specifically trained to
| look for air traffic. It really is not that hard to tell
| that an aircraft is on short final if you are actually
| looking at it.
|
| With four miles of visibility in light rain at night, the
| aircraft _should_ have been perfectly visible (in a
| vacuum); what remains to be determined is _why_ the ARFF
| crew did not see it. The answer to that could range from
| "they didn't look at all" to "the orientation of the runway
| relative to the surrounding neighbourhoods meant that the
| CRJ's lights got lost in the city lights".
| eviks wrote:
| With all the advances in technology, can there be no navigation
| app that can just tell you you're on a collision course instead
| of relying exclusivly on playing broken phone between flying and
| driving meatbags via a sitting one?
| krisoft wrote:
| There is actually a set of lights which should have displayed
| red towards the trucks.
|
| Were they not operating correctly, or did the driver ignore
| them is one of the questions the investigation will answer.
|
| The system is called Runway Status Lights. And in case there is
| a disagreement between the ATC clearance and the lights the
| drivers are supposed to not enter the runway.
|
| https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl
| eviks wrote:
| The description is a bit vague, but I guess this should've
| automatically caught the landing plane immediately after it
| got the approval and started landing?
|
| > When activated, these red lights indicate that ... there is
| an aircraft on final approach within the activation area
| krisoft wrote:
| It is not working based on approval but based on sensors
| observing the airplane on final. Even if the plane is
| landing without clearance, even if the ATC is held hostage
| by a terorist or having a stroke the lights should turn red
| when an airplane is approaching the runway from the sky.
|
| This pdf talks more about how it is implemented: https://ww
| w.oig.dot.gov/sites/default/files/WEB_Final_RWSL.p...
|
| "RWSL is driven by fused multi-sensor surveillance system
| information. Using Airport Surface Detection Equipment-
| Model X (ASDE-X), external surveillance information is
| taken from three sources that provide position and other
| information for aircraft and vehicles on or near the
| airport surface. RWSL safety logic processes the
| surveillance information and commands the field lighting
| system to turn the runway status lights on and off in
| accordance with the motion of the detected traffic."
| mmmrtl wrote:
| RWSL were red in the video.
| https://viewfromthewing.com/__trashed-13/ So maybe we'll be
| looking at training and fatigue for the firefighters too
| flakeoil wrote:
| In the video it looks as if the other emergency vehicles have
| stopped and only the first truck is driving. Maybe they
| missed the light or it turned red just after the first truck
| passed the light.
| Leherenn wrote:
| GA has FLARM.
| _moof wrote:
| There is one. It's called ASDE-X. The truck wasn't
| participating.
| rekrsiv wrote:
| I am alarmed at the high number of supposed engineers on this
| thread that are seemingly unaware of how safety-critical systems
| work. Literally every other piece of this system has redundancy
| built into it. Robustness is never optional in a scenario
| involving human safety.
|
| When did this lunacy become an arguable position?
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| I'm not in aerospce field, but surprised how low-tech and
| critical to human error takeoff/landing/taxi process is.
|
| We have TCAS/ACAS in air, but no similar automatic safety
| guards near/on the field?
| _moof wrote:
| We do have that on the ground. The truck wasn't
| participating.
| _moof wrote:
| This is my field and the amount of extremely confident nonsense
| I've read on here in the last 24 hours is going to put me in
| the cardiac ICU.
| hugh-avherald wrote:
| You're still using outdated bio-hearts? Wouldn't it be better
| to just use a cronjob on a server-controlled heart?
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Everybody is, not just the pilots. The US ATC system has been in
| a state of induced crisis since Reagan broke the union's back in
| the 1980s. Then Trump took office, laid off a bunch of people,
| cancelled a bunch of hires, and immediately that led to the
| conditions for the Potomac / DCA collision.
|
| The US is just in an active state of collapse in many areas,
| including air travel.
| throw7 wrote:
| "He said LaGuardia was "very well staffed", with 33 certified
| controllers and more in training. He said the goal was to have 37
| on staff."
|
| I'm just tired of bullshit rhetoric. 33 is less than 37, that's
| "understaffed" not "very well staffed". Fuck Sean and our
| "leaders"... they speak with unauthority and spiritlessness.
| 9front wrote:
| "... we have an odor on the plane as well here at this time. We
| are going to be going back to the gate, request fire as well." -
| United pilot
|
| "2384, it is oder like a smoke odor ...like from fire?" - Control
|
| "No, it was a weird odor. I don't know exactly how to describe
| it. But yeah... we can't get a hold of anyone at the ops for a
| gate assignment." - United pilot
|
| "Ground, United 2384 is declaring an emergency. The flight
| attendants in the back are feeling ill because of the odor. We
| will need to go into an available gate at this time." - United
| pilot
|
| "... the fire trucks are over there. They're going to bring a
| stair truck just in case you guys do want to evacuate. Let me
| know if you do." - Control
|
| "Copy, yeah, we prefer to wait on a gate, but I mean, again, we
| only got so much time here because there's still a bit of odor in
| the back of the airplane." - United pilot
|
| "646, number two, clear to land 4." - Control
|
| "Truck one and company, cross four Delta." - Control
|
| "Truck one and company, crossing four at Delta." - Truck 1
|
| "Stop, stop, stop, stop, Truck 1. Stop,stop, stop. Stop, Truck 1,
| Stop." - Control
|
| "That was - that wasn't good to watch." - Frontier pilot
|
| "Yeah, I know. I was here. I tried to reach out to [inaudible].
| We were dealing with an emergency earlier... um, I messed up." -
| Control
|
| "No, man, you did the best you could." -Frontier pilot
| spprashant wrote:
| Feel bad for the ATC officer. I hope they can find it in them
| to forgive themselves.
| liminal wrote:
| Fast, cheap or good. Pick two. It seems like they've been
| prioritizing fast (lots of planes) and cheap (low staffing,
| outdated equipment) and paying lip service to good (safety).
| ooboe wrote:
| To get an idea of the crazy workload some of these controllers
| are experiencing, the beginning of this video has an untrimmed
| 1-minute excerpt of ATC communications for Newark approach. Even
| the rest of the video, which has some editing, has no silences
| removed.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKjBCEubtBI
| ridgeguy wrote:
| No expert here, low-time GA decades ago. I regard these incidents
| as aspects of the universal race to the economic bottom.
|
| The workloads are too high. Nobody running life-critical
| operations should be working 60+ hour weeks and overnight shifts.
| We've known for decades how these practices increase errors. One
| effective answer is to dilute the workload by hiring more people.
| But this slows the race to lower costs, so it isn't done. We need
| to spend more on people.
| blobbers wrote:
| I hear a lot of folks ascribing safety to physical human
| shortages in staffing.
|
| Looking at airport security, it's impossible not to ascribe
| waste, fraud and abuse if indeed there is a lack of ATC hires
| causing this. We can go without a greeter at the beginning of the
| security line, or a pre-screener of boarding passes halfway
| through the security line and have an extra ATC on duty. If you
| can't find the extra $ for that you're either blind or we need to
| charge each passenger $1 more.
|
| The truth is, this sort of situational control shouldn't really
| be given to a human.
|
| This is exactly the kind of thing a computer should be handling,
| in the same way we don't have a traffic guard at every
| intersection. Yes I understand airports are complex. So you have
| a computer and a human, and they work together.
| tacoooooooo wrote:
| > Yes I understand airports are complex. So you have a computer
| and a human, and they work together.
|
| how do you think it works today? some guy with binoculars?
| advisedwang wrote:
| Full narrative of the report in question:
|
| > LGA Tower initiated a takeoff clearance for an aircraft waiting
| on 13 when we were only 300 feet high on final for 22. The voice
| accepting the takeoff clearance, most likely the First Officer,
| did not seem concerned, but the departing aircraft seemed to
| hesitate moving for a couple seconds. I believe this was because
| the Captain of that flight was likely the pilot flying, and was
| in a position to see how close we were to landing. I think he or
| she thought twice before starting their takeoff roll. Due to the
| thick smoky haze from the Canadian wildfires and a possible
| helicopter in the area, I judged it safer to continue the
| approach and land around 10 seconds after the departing aircraft
| crossed our path, instead of suddenly going around and trusting
| that the helicopter was not near the departure end of 22. The
| guidance in ATC's 7110.65 does not seem to give guidance on
| exactly how close aircraft in this situation can get. Based on
| today's and close calls I have seen over the years for Runway
| 27R/35 at PHL and 22L/29 at EWR, it seems to be a judgement call
| by the Local Controller. Another concern is that the portion of
| the runway status light system visible to aircraft departing 13
| appears to have been disabled. In the past, this system provided
| an additional layer of safety to prevent runway incursions. Now,
| I never see it light up anymore when I am waiting in position on
| 13 while a plane lands on 22. The pace of operations is building
| in LGA. The controllers are pushing the line. On thunderstorm
| days, LGA is starting to feel like DCA did before the accident
| there. Please do something. At least turn the RWSL for 13 back
| on.
|
| I think it's misleading to act like this was some kind of
| whistleblower.
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