Federal Aviation Administration to cut more air traffic controllers

Sam Spade wrote:



There was only one airplane. The controller had no obligation to
continue to watch this, the only aircraft, once takeoff clearance had
been issued.

He most certainly does. Using your logic with only one aircraft the
controller doesn't even have to be in the tower.

"Newps" wrote in message
. ..

He most certainly does. Using your logic with only one aircraft the
controller doesn't even have to be in the tower.


He has to be in the tower to be sure there is no other aircraft. Once he
does that and issues the clearance there's no obligation to watch the
airplane to make sure it departs on the correct runway. He certainly can do
that, but there's no requirement for him to do so. After all, if a pilot
cannot be relied upon to takeoff from the correct runway without a
controller monitoring his every surface movement then we must install
control towers at every airport and prohibit surface movements if all
surfaces are not visible to the tower controller.

Using your logic with only one aircraft the controller doesn't even have to be in the tower.

Well, he has to be there to ensure that there really =is= only one aircraft.

Jose
--
"Never trust anything that can think for itself, if you can't see where
it keeps its brain." (chapter 10 of book 3 - Harry Potter).
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

"Sam Spade" wrote in message
...
John Mazor wrote:

The tower provides runway separation. You can't do that from a darkened
room on the ground, you have to see the runways and be able to scan the
sky in the immediate vicinity to establish a sequence.

And in order to do that, they have to watch the airplanes on the taxiways
and runways, don't they? Which was my point.

There was only one airplane. The controller had no obligation to continue
to watch this, the only aircraft, once takeoff clearance had been issued.

I'm not a controller, but I suspect that monitoring the progress of ground
traffic is one of those "do as workload permits" chores. As I have
repeatedly stated here, if there had been a second controller, that doesn't
guarantee that the error would have been caught - but no one can show that
it wouldn't have been caught, either. We know from an incident report that
13 years ago a controller did catch exactly the same error at the same
airport with the same two runways. Why did that not happen this time?

What I wwas doing here was responding to the narrow-minded views
expressed here, to the effect that since the pilot has the primary
responsibility for everything that happens, then runway, taxiway, and
controller responsibilities had nothing to do with the accident in KY. I
wasn't drawing a direct, exact connection regarding the conditions at the
two airports.

Narrow-minded views?

Comments to the effect that once you could see that the crew screwed up by
using the wrong runway, nothing else matters.

Which means that nothing else needs to be examined or fixed. Perhaps that
was not the intent of these unthinking reactions, but that was exactly the
mentality and the investigative mindset in the early days of aviation.
Unless someone could prove mechanical failure or some other factor over
which the pilot had no control, it was his damn fault, period, end of
discussion, end of investigation. That's hardly a productive approach to
safety.

For a Part 121 flight crew to takeoff during nighttime on a runway without
operating runway edge lights rises to the level of criminal negligence.
At that point ambiguous or even misleading airport signage became
irrelevant.

Oh, really? Irrelevant? I'll be surprised if the NTSB agrees with that
sweeping conclusion.

Had the signs caused them to end up on a dead-end taxiway, well, ok, shame
on the signs. But, for them to take an unlighted runway, and diregard
their heading bug or FMS runway display, well, gee..."Honest officer, I
wouldn't have driven 90 the wrong way on this one way street and collided
with the school bus, had only the one-way signs had been more visible."

An overly simplistic analogy, to say the least. Rather than deconstruct
it - which wouldn't convince you anyway - suppose we wait and see what the
NTSB report says after the investigation is completed.

-- John Mazor
"The search for wisdom is asymptotic."

"Except for Internet newsgroups, where it is divergent..."
-- R J Carpenter

Newps writes:

He most certainly does. Using your logic with only one aircraft the
controller doesn't even have to be in the tower.

Correct. Most airports don't have controllers in the tower, and yet
pilots manage to use those airports without any problem. This is
possible even with multiple aircraft, provided that all the pilots are
competent.

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Jose writes:

Well, he has to be there to ensure that there really =is= only
one aircraft.

Why? How do people survive at uncontrolled airports, then?

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Mxsmanic wrote:
Newps writes:

He most certainly does. Using your logic with only one aircraft the
controller doesn't even have to be in the tower.

Correct. Most airports don't have controllers in the tower, and yet
pilots manage to use those airports without any problem. This is
possible even with multiple aircraft, provided that all the pilots are
competent.

Not quite true. For the most part, if there is a tower then there is a
controller. Some towers at smaller airfields close during the early
morning hours and then the field reverts to a pilot controller field,
but during normal working hours when the tower is open the controllers
are there. A more true statement would have been most airports don't
have towers/controllers.

"John Mazor" wrote in
:

I'm not a controller, but I suspect that monitoring the progress of
ground traffic is one of those "do as workload permits" chores. As I
have repeatedly stated here, if there had been a second controller, that
doesn't guarantee that the error would have been caught - but no one can
show that it wouldn't have been caught, either. We know from an
incident report that 13 years ago a controller did catch exactly the
same error at the same airport with the same two runways. Why did that
not happen this time?

Because the logic that "a second controller might have caught it but might
not" is inconclusive. As such it's a poor speculation to cause regulatory
actions, or even to claim that it was a ***cause*** of the accident.

Some airports have video cameras on line that allow people to watch the
runways. Maybe if they had a video camera installed on this runway, the
pilot's girlfriend would have been watching and called his cell phone to
warn him that he was about to take off on the wrong runway. It doesn't
guarantee that the error would have been caught - but no one can show that
it wouldn't have been caught that way, either.

Perhaps the accident was caused by the pilot's girlfriend or the lack of a
video camera?

A million other things could have happened that might have helped catch the
error and didn't. It's inconclusive speculation about circumstances that
aren't regulated. Even if there were a second controller, unless the
regulations require that the controller monitor each and every airplane
from taxi through departure handoff, a second controller would have had no
impact on the situation. Unless you can prove that the reason the first
controller turned away was specifically to perform a task that the second
controller would have been doing, or prove that the second controller would
have been staring out the window instead of doing his own job, you simply
have no case.
Conjecture like this does nothing to improve the safety of the air traffic
system. It only distracts from determining the things that really were
causal in this accident to try to prevent them from happening in the
future.

The media wants to sensationalize the apparent lack of safety in the Air
Traffic system because it sells papers and improves TV ratings.

What's your mission?

John Mazor writes:

I'm not a controller, but I suspect that monitoring the progress of ground
traffic is one of those "do as workload permits" chores. As I have
repeatedly stated here, if there had been a second controller, that doesn't
guarantee that the error would have been caught - but no one can show that
it wouldn't have been caught, either. We know from an incident report that
13 years ago a controller did catch exactly the same error at the same
airport with the same two runways. Why did that not happen this time?

Apparently workload did not permit.

If an FAA regulation had existed to prevent crews from flying if they
didn't know which aircraft to fly, then that would have prevented the
accident, too, since this crew initially got onto the wrong aircraft.
That did not bode well for the rest of the flight.

Oh, really? Irrelevant? I'll be surprised if the NTSB agrees with that
sweeping conclusion.

You don't think that pilots should check for a lighted runway?

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TheNPC writes:

The FAA violated their ATCT staffing orders
They will be cutting a big check after all the Civil suits
You can take that too the bank

Normally any lawsuit would have to demonstrate that the FAA's actions
directly caused or contributed to the accident. That won't be
possible here, although a simple emotional appeal to the jury might
work.

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