In aviation, there’s a idea referred to as Big Sky — the concept there’s simply a lot sky on the market, it’s unlikely for 2 planes to ever hit one another. Before radar and GPS, it was an accepted manner for pilots to keep away from midair collisions. As it seems, it’s rather less accepted once you’re operating air visitors management.
An Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board investigation right into a near-miss at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport traced the state of affairs again to a lone air visitors controller, one who seemed to be taking a “Big Runway” strategy to airplane routing. The controller, in keeping with the Washington Post, cleared a Southwest 737 for takeoff and a FedEx cargo airplane for touchdown on the identical runway – and at overlapping instances:
On the morning of Feb. 4, Austin-Bergstrom International Airport was blanketed in fog. Air visitors controller Damian Campbell couldn’t see the Southwest jet from the tower however cleared it to take off. Campbell informed NTSB investigators that the airline’s pilots tended to maneuver shortly, so he anticipated there was loads of time earlier than the cargo jet would must be on the runway.
“They were rolling, I assume,” Campbell mentioned. But when he realized he couldn’t hear the sound of the 737′s engines, Campbell mentioned he knew one thing was flawed.
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Campbell informed investigators that trying again, he may have prevented the Southwest airplane from departing. “Hindsight being 20/20 definitely could have held them,” Campbell mentioned.
The complicating issue right here seems to be the fog, which prevented Campbell from bodily seeing the planes he was directing — a problem Campbell credit to the airport’s dated tools, which doesn’t give the identical form of proximity warnings that trendy tech does.
Perhaps that is one thing of a scorching take, however I feel planes ought to be capable of take off and land in fog with out hitting one another. Whether the repair is extra ATC coaching or fancy new software program issues little to me — I simply don’t wish to reside via Die Hard 2 at each press journey.
Source: jalopnik.com