Great summary- thanks so much. Would it be possible to follow up later and tell us when the NTSB concludes what really happened (why did the 3 pilots turn the wrong way?)? So often we hear only when the event happens and not later when the investigation is concluded. Thanks
Thanks for an astute presentation of the facts (even though disoriented a bit at the first attempt). I'm late to commenting but read each version when it was fresh, and the underlying realities are unchanged and enhanced by the contributions of other readers.
I had an unmentioned reaction when I followed this timeline as presented which can be summarized by the following: Why is it that major airports - as well as airliners themselves - do not have automated monitoring of ground traffic such that incursions like this would have been caught at the instant the AA airliner turned in the wrong and dangerous direction? I would think this would have been a relatively easy and yet valuable test of machine learning in a standalone context. In the 90's I worked with road traffic engineers who were developing the first generations of tools that would identify anomalous and/or dangerous traffic flows in dense cities and they were already able to detect accidents within a minute of the event without any direct data, and these aircraft are certainly transmitting position, orientation, speed, and acceleration constantly.
That said, I am also reminded that airport management, like military tactics and medical procedures, are high stakes environments where "change" and "innovative" are often faced with high barriers called "tried-and-true" and "legacy". Earlier today I received an invitation to read a new study regarding the potential interference of 5G cellular signals with legacy radio altimeters on older aircraft whether commercial or not. Here is the conclusion they reached last year:
"The results presented above highlight the need for performing multi-path, site-specific
analysis of radio wave propagation including multi-path effects in order to accurately
assess the degree to which 5G fundamental emissions may interfere with radar
altimeters. This analysis is especially important to allow the safe activation of 5G
base stations in formerly restricted zones given that radar altimeters which are acutely
susceptible to out-of-band interference remain deployed on aircraft at the beginning of
summer 2022."
Just as many people dismissed the potential impact of Y2K-related software bugs, these matters may seem marginal but require significant verification before entering service with confidence. The absence of a catastrophe is not evidence of time poorly spent...
... which led me to contemplate the skies filled with unmanned drones carrying Amazon parcels, the first generation of e-VTOL taxis connecting airports with urban centers, and eventually personal craft flying out of parking lots and private backyard pads... with an AI-enabled overwatch, of course.
Reliability and resilience testing of that should be a breeze, right?
Ed, excellent points, and I think you very well explore the complications and tensions here. On the one hand, there "should" be readily available technology "answers" to many of these problems. On the other, as you point out, the aviation-regulatory world (like the medical-regulatory world) has a very strong bias in the "ain't broke / don't fix it" direction — not wanting to change systems / equipment / procedures that have been in place for years and whose parameters, good and bad, are more or less known. There are safety benefits to this approach. (Contrast: crashes by "self-driving" cars.) There are also drawbacks, as you point out.
I was surprised to read that the American aircraft continued its flight to London. Presumably the company decided this for the convenience of the passengers and investigators can wait. But did the captain (or pic) make the requested phone call?
Yes, me too. And I'm not aware of evidence one way or another, but I *assume* that the flight crew must have called "the number" during those 30 minutes on the ground. Otherwise it would have been a very, very long flight to LHR.
And, again presumably, the controllers and also the American Airlines dispatchers must have given them the OK to proceed, because of the snarls and complications that getting a new flight crew would mean. Also I imagine a fair number of the LHR passengers were connecting to other flights within Europe or beyond. So the cascading dominos of a multi-hour delay for the whole planeload would have been significant.
Can we talk about how abominably non-standard ATC radio phraseology is at JFK? There are a lot of factors at play in this incident -- and this is one that’s easy to fix.
Crappy, lax, high-speed, heavily-accented, non-standard JFK r/t -- especially on Ground -- has been internet comedy for decades (“Kennedy Steve”) but it’s not funny anymore.
Where was the read back-hearback in the taxi clearance? Can’t tell. The comms are a mess.
Yes, fair point. I think they get away with this on the idea of "Oh, these people in New York are so incredibly busy, it's so impressive that they pull it off while maintaining their own trademark New York Style." But I agree with you that it should be standardized rather than part of a regional identity.
Interesting; the plot thickens. Questions: Among large airports is there much variation in the complexity of the taxi runway networks? Do the authorities keep track of all pilot taxiway errors? Are they more likely to happen at different times of the day or in other variable conditions?
Thanks. Good questions. My guesstimates on all of these:
— Generally the bigger (and older) the airport, the more complicated the taxiways. The layout at O'Hare looks like an incredible nightmare to me, but I have never landed an airplane there. The most complicated one with which I have firsthand experience is Oakland CA.
The big airports are basically all complicated. On the other side, there are *countless* tools for orienting yourself in the cockpit. As mentioned earlier, our little Cirrus has a live display of exactly where you are on the taxiways. And most pilots I know use Foreflight on their iPad, which also gives a real-time display.
—Yes, the FAA keeps very detailed track of when and where there are runway problems. Many airport charts have "Hot Spots" highlighted, where they know there has been trouble.
— As with everything in aviation (and life), all these things are harder at night, and in bad weather. In foggy conditions I recall crawling along the taxiways, trying to be sure you can see the signs.
— There's a fallback that amateur pilots like me can use, which would probably seem improper for airline people but errs on the side of safety. That is to say to the ground controller, "Request progressive" or "Unfamiliar, request progressive." Then they will talk you through the step-by-step turns. "Go straight ahead, across Taxiway November. Now turn to your left, on Taxiway Oscar." Again, it's one thing for a small plane pilot to say "Unfamiliar" when landing for the first time, at night, at a new airport. It's something else for an airline crew.
Thank you. And, yes, as John Zimmerman points out below, most of the rest of the world has a lot to learn from the way aviation very systematically learns from its failures. (Including this one, luckily without any casualties.)
Statistically commercial air travel is extremely safe. In part that must be because the consequences of error are so horrific.
As someone who works in healthcare and has drawn heavily on aviation for lessons on safety and quality, I am very grateful for your coverage of this situation. The quality and relevance of the commenters is a great testament to your work, too. Thank you!
That and the fact that the world of driving is so much more chaotic, and in our country, unlike, say, Germany, and unlike in aviation, almost anyone can get a driver's license.
Great recap, Jim. What jumps out at me (again) is how serious the aviation industry is about performing postmortems - even when no metal is bent and nobody is hurt! As you say, we will learn from this, and some minor change to procedure or technology will result. We have certainly adopted a near religious mindset of "Black Box Thinking" (Matthew Syed's phrase).
I can't help but think that is a key reason there were zero fatal accidents in 2022 for either US airlines or US-registered business jets. That is a truly staggering statement, but one we sort of take for granted. Many other industries - including, as you have so often written, the media - could learn from pilots.
Thank you John. I appreciate it. (For onlookers: John hosts a great aviation-themed and very broad-gauged podcast, here https://www.sportys.com/podcast )
Yes, I have been queued up for another "how could the media learn from mistakes" dispatch. May use this one as a kickoff.
Great summary- thanks so much. Would it be possible to follow up later and tell us when the NTSB concludes what really happened (why did the 3 pilots turn the wrong way?)? So often we hear only when the event happens and not later when the investigation is concluded. Thanks
Thanks for an astute presentation of the facts (even though disoriented a bit at the first attempt). I'm late to commenting but read each version when it was fresh, and the underlying realities are unchanged and enhanced by the contributions of other readers.
I had an unmentioned reaction when I followed this timeline as presented which can be summarized by the following: Why is it that major airports - as well as airliners themselves - do not have automated monitoring of ground traffic such that incursions like this would have been caught at the instant the AA airliner turned in the wrong and dangerous direction? I would think this would have been a relatively easy and yet valuable test of machine learning in a standalone context. In the 90's I worked with road traffic engineers who were developing the first generations of tools that would identify anomalous and/or dangerous traffic flows in dense cities and they were already able to detect accidents within a minute of the event without any direct data, and these aircraft are certainly transmitting position, orientation, speed, and acceleration constantly.
That said, I am also reminded that airport management, like military tactics and medical procedures, are high stakes environments where "change" and "innovative" are often faced with high barriers called "tried-and-true" and "legacy". Earlier today I received an invitation to read a new study regarding the potential interference of 5G cellular signals with legacy radio altimeters on older aircraft whether commercial or not. Here is the conclusion they reached last year:
"The results presented above highlight the need for performing multi-path, site-specific
analysis of radio wave propagation including multi-path effects in order to accurately
assess the degree to which 5G fundamental emissions may interfere with radar
altimeters. This analysis is especially important to allow the safe activation of 5G
base stations in formerly restricted zones given that radar altimeters which are acutely
susceptible to out-of-band interference remain deployed on aircraft at the beginning of
summer 2022."
Just as many people dismissed the potential impact of Y2K-related software bugs, these matters may seem marginal but require significant verification before entering service with confidence. The absence of a catastrophe is not evidence of time poorly spent...
... which led me to contemplate the skies filled with unmanned drones carrying Amazon parcels, the first generation of e-VTOL taxis connecting airports with urban centers, and eventually personal craft flying out of parking lots and private backyard pads... with an AI-enabled overwatch, of course.
Reliability and resilience testing of that should be a breeze, right?
Ed, excellent points, and I think you very well explore the complications and tensions here. On the one hand, there "should" be readily available technology "answers" to many of these problems. On the other, as you point out, the aviation-regulatory world (like the medical-regulatory world) has a very strong bias in the "ain't broke / don't fix it" direction — not wanting to change systems / equipment / procedures that have been in place for years and whose parameters, good and bad, are more or less known. There are safety benefits to this approach. (Contrast: crashes by "self-driving" cars.) There are also drawbacks, as you point out.
The Y2K comparison is a good one.
Thanks, Jim... and fwiw, I was tempted to include a comment about "autonomous" cars after having seen this earlier in the week:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E531GxfEoB8
Piling on here seemed a bit gratuitous given the other challenges that EM is facing these days...
I was surprised to read that the American aircraft continued its flight to London. Presumably the company decided this for the convenience of the passengers and investigators can wait. But did the captain (or pic) make the requested phone call?
Yes, me too. And I'm not aware of evidence one way or another, but I *assume* that the flight crew must have called "the number" during those 30 minutes on the ground. Otherwise it would have been a very, very long flight to LHR.
And, again presumably, the controllers and also the American Airlines dispatchers must have given them the OK to proceed, because of the snarls and complications that getting a new flight crew would mean. Also I imagine a fair number of the LHR passengers were connecting to other flights within Europe or beyond. So the cascading dominos of a multi-hour delay for the whole planeload would have been significant.
Can we talk about how abominably non-standard ATC radio phraseology is at JFK? There are a lot of factors at play in this incident -- and this is one that’s easy to fix.
Crappy, lax, high-speed, heavily-accented, non-standard JFK r/t -- especially on Ground -- has been internet comedy for decades (“Kennedy Steve”) but it’s not funny anymore.
Where was the read back-hearback in the taxi clearance? Can’t tell. The comms are a mess.
Yes, fair point. I think they get away with this on the idea of "Oh, these people in New York are so incredibly busy, it's so impressive that they pull it off while maintaining their own trademark New York Style." But I agree with you that it should be standardized rather than part of a regional identity.
Jim—long time reader of yours but first time commenter.
Sounds like you need to give the PMDG 737 in Microsoft Flight Simulator a try and practice some rejected takeoffs! I’d love that article!
Good idea!!
Can talk with Bruce Willilams about this ;)
Interesting; the plot thickens. Questions: Among large airports is there much variation in the complexity of the taxi runway networks? Do the authorities keep track of all pilot taxiway errors? Are they more likely to happen at different times of the day or in other variable conditions?
Thanks. Good questions. My guesstimates on all of these:
— Generally the bigger (and older) the airport, the more complicated the taxiways. The layout at O'Hare looks like an incredible nightmare to me, but I have never landed an airplane there. The most complicated one with which I have firsthand experience is Oakland CA.
The big airports are basically all complicated. On the other side, there are *countless* tools for orienting yourself in the cockpit. As mentioned earlier, our little Cirrus has a live display of exactly where you are on the taxiways. And most pilots I know use Foreflight on their iPad, which also gives a real-time display.
—Yes, the FAA keeps very detailed track of when and where there are runway problems. Many airport charts have "Hot Spots" highlighted, where they know there has been trouble.
— As with everything in aviation (and life), all these things are harder at night, and in bad weather. In foggy conditions I recall crawling along the taxiways, trying to be sure you can see the signs.
— There's a fallback that amateur pilots like me can use, which would probably seem improper for airline people but errs on the side of safety. That is to say to the ground controller, "Request progressive" or "Unfamiliar, request progressive." Then they will talk you through the step-by-step turns. "Go straight ahead, across Taxiway November. Now turn to your left, on Taxiway Oscar." Again, it's one thing for a small plane pilot to say "Unfamiliar" when landing for the first time, at night, at a new airport. It's something else for an airline crew.
Wow. Frighteningly fascinating. And yet, I know that commercial flight is far safer than automobiles.
Your interest in this stuff is contagious.
Thank you. And, yes, as John Zimmerman points out below, most of the rest of the world has a lot to learn from the way aviation very systematically learns from its failures. (Including this one, luckily without any casualties.)
Statistically commercial air travel is extremely safe. In part that must be because the consequences of error are so horrific.
As someone who works in healthcare and has drawn heavily on aviation for lessons on safety and quality, I am very grateful for your coverage of this situation. The quality and relevance of the commenters is a great testament to your work, too. Thank you!
Thank you!
That and the fact that the world of driving is so much more chaotic, and in our country, unlike, say, Germany, and unlike in aviation, almost anyone can get a driver's license.
Great recap, Jim. What jumps out at me (again) is how serious the aviation industry is about performing postmortems - even when no metal is bent and nobody is hurt! As you say, we will learn from this, and some minor change to procedure or technology will result. We have certainly adopted a near religious mindset of "Black Box Thinking" (Matthew Syed's phrase).
I can't help but think that is a key reason there were zero fatal accidents in 2022 for either US airlines or US-registered business jets. That is a truly staggering statement, but one we sort of take for granted. Many other industries - including, as you have so often written, the media - could learn from pilots.
Thank you John. I appreciate it. (For onlookers: John hosts a great aviation-themed and very broad-gauged podcast, here https://www.sportys.com/podcast )
Yes, I have been queued up for another "how could the media learn from mistakes" dispatch. May use this one as a kickoff.
Really, really appreciate your thoughtful analysis and the discussion it has generated.
Thank you!