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American Airlines Pilot Union Trying To Cover For Crew In New York Near-Disaster
On January 13, an American Airlines Boeing 777 headed to London taxied on the wrong runway as a Delta 737 began its take off roll. This was nearly a disaster of epic proportions, as the American jet crossed right in front of Delta, and the Delta plane hit the brakes. (viewfromthewing.com) 更多...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
It is way past due for the implementation of electronic transmission of textual (or graphical) ground control instructions at major airports such as KJFK. My "Gen z" son can type a 20-word txt message with his thumbs faster than a controller and pilot can mumble and read-back taxi instructions. In the case of ground control, the elements of a clearance are in a certain format and come from a limited set of phrases. with a well-designed interface (and there are many out there) the controller can create the clearance with a small number of keystrokes (or pen touches or voice commands) that can be sent via text or graphically. The crew can acknowledge with one key touch on their EFB after the taxi route appears on their iPad.
The good: DL pilots and their SA, and the AA pilot union for supporting their dues paying members even when the pilots made such a profound mistake.
The bad: JFK ATC had cleared AA to depart runway 31L from a taxiway that was behind them, and ATC was also lax about obtaining a read back of hold short instructions due to frequency congestion.
The ugly: STOP! if you are the tiniest bit unsure of your position on the surface of an airport and get ATC’s immediate attention. Interrupt them if you must for this purpose. Ask for progressive taxi. Clarify anything that is unclear. And … LOOK OUTSIDE and only glance inside at your taxiway diagram and maybe the compass! I will admit that the airlines (with few exceptions) are terrible about requiring its pilots to make distracting briefings while taxiing. I’ve often questioned the wisdom in this. The airplane should be stopped whenever you are doing anything other than taxiing. Don’t program the FMS, don’t make any briefings/speeches, operational or otherwise, and don’t think about or talk about anything else except taxiing. This should apply to both pilots. I don’t even like running checklists on the roll. Just STOP for all that. Shame on the AA pilots for not doing this, and double shame on them for their departure afterwards! All three of those pilots should be fired and their FAA certificates revoked for not preserving the CVR. The CVR would have been the best evidence for learning what truly lead to such an unfortunate lapse in judgement and SA by these pilots. It’s hard to admit your mistakes, especially for pilots, but had they not departed thirty minutes afterward, I may have been in favor of extra training. Maybe an ASAP will save their certificates and give us a vague (at best) idea of why this happened. Either way, this is just U-G-L-Y-!
The bad: JFK ATC had cleared AA to depart runway 31L from a taxiway that was behind them, and ATC was also lax about obtaining a read back of hold short instructions due to frequency congestion.
The ugly: STOP! if you are the tiniest bit unsure of your position on the surface of an airport and get ATC’s immediate attention. Interrupt them if you must for this purpose. Ask for progressive taxi. Clarify anything that is unclear. And … LOOK OUTSIDE and only glance inside at your taxiway diagram and maybe the compass! I will admit that the airlines (with few exceptions) are terrible about requiring its pilots to make distracting briefings while taxiing. I’ve often questioned the wisdom in this. The airplane should be stopped whenever you are doing anything other than taxiing. Don’t program the FMS, don’t make any briefings/speeches, operational or otherwise, and don’t think about or talk about anything else except taxiing. This should apply to both pilots. I don’t even like running checklists on the roll. Just STOP for all that. Shame on the AA pilots for not doing this, and double shame on them for their departure afterwards! All three of those pilots should be fired and their FAA certificates revoked for not preserving the CVR. The CVR would have been the best evidence for learning what truly lead to such an unfortunate lapse in judgement and SA by these pilots. It’s hard to admit your mistakes, especially for pilots, but had they not departed thirty minutes afterward, I may have been in favor of extra training. Maybe an ASAP will save their certificates and give us a vague (at best) idea of why this happened. Either way, this is just U-G-L-Y-!
Hasn’t anyone else noticed who wrote the piece? “Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel …” This is a points guy. There are some glaring omissions and the author implies without any corroborating evidence of gross negligence by the AA crew. RainbowRiver, Squaker and tsberry make some good points without jumping to conclusions. The transcript was not published in the article so we don’t know what the actual taxi clearance was. Could be the 777 needed the much longer runway 31L for departure and was taxiing as cleared. It could be they were cleared across that runway. It could be the wig-wags or runway occupancy warning system were inoperative. It could be the ground controller missed passing the taxiing aircraft to the tower controller. There are LOTS of mistakes that could have been made on both sides of the microphone. The point is, we don’t know nearly enough from the information presented. The author clearly passed judgment and isn’t a journalist or likely not even a pilot. Which is why the members noted above advocate waiting for the results of the investigation as do I. This, by the way is one reason of a number of good ones why pilots have unions.
(Captain-male) AA mistakes: Not briefing the taxi route Not understanding the taxi clearance Missing the right turn to 04L (on K) Not confirming crossing clearance on 31L at K Not clearing (visually) (any) runway when crossing (especially when an aircraft is on a runway you are about to cross in takeoff position (or rolling) with it’s landing lights on. Poor SA (Kudos to Delta/ATC for good SA) (Sadly AA F/O was “along for the ride,” also with poor SA) ASRS will be submitted. Capt and F/O) will receive remedial training. Company (AA) will submit Operation Bulletin. NTSB will recommend more stop lights. FAA will try to “fix” the problem with another FAR? Public will forget whole incident after a few days.
And what was the relief pilot on the jumpseat doing??? Their main job is to monitor the situation and advise the PF and PM if something doesn't look right, feel right, etc. We used to say "the smartest pilot in the cockpit" as they have the lowest workload of the 3 pilots (not taxiing the acft, on the radio with ATC, running checklists, etc) and the big-picture view of the whole situation.
Another reason to get rid of unions.