One week ago, air traffic control screwed up in San Diego, clearing two Southwest Airlines flights onto the same runway at the same time, leading to a high-speed aborted takeoff – but which could have been much worse.
- Southwest 1478 was headed to Dulles Love Field
- Southwest 785 headed for Phoenix
Both planes were cleared onto runway 27 within moments of each other. The tower cleared the Dallas-bound flight to take off, and ground control cleared the Phoenix flight to cross the runway.
- Tower: Southwest 1478, runway 27, line up and wait.
Ground: Southwest 785, cross runway 27 at B6, continue taxiing.
Tower: Southwest 1478, cleared for takeoff.
Southwest 1478 was told to abort takeoff at a speed of 100 knots. The Southwest pilots rejected takeoff, and exited the runway at the same intersection where Southwest 785 was attempting to cross.
Southwest 785 continued to Phoenix without delay, while Southwest 1478 required inspection from the aborted takeoff attempt and returned to the gate for a three hour delay.
Here, ground and tower were managing activity on the same runway and were not coordinated. When the takeoff was called off, it wasn’t immediately even a clear instruction. Air traffic control didn’t even speak to having made an error.
While Southwest Airlines is currently in the midst of an FAA safety audit following one of their planes coming within feet of the water while still miles from Tampa less than a month after another of the airline’s 737s descended to just over 500 feet while still 9 miles out from the Oklahoma City airport, as well as a Southwest flight in Hawaii coming within 400 feet of the Pacific Ocean and another taking off from a closed runway, this incident was clearly the FAA’s fault since they manage air traffic control.
Air traffic control is probably the single greatest safety vulnerability in U.S. aviation. FAA funding and procurement is fundamentally broken. 76% of the 138 air traffic control systems are unsustainable or potentially unsustainable. There’s an ongoing effort to address two-thirds of those, but… not for 6-13 years. There is not even a plan to replace or upgrade four critical systems. It takes 5.5 to 19 for the agency to complete an acquisition through its six step process.
Would you believe that the FAA has been trying to go electronic since 1983 and doesn’t expect to mostly do so until the 2030s?
Wait until you explain paper flight strips!https://t.co/fyU7aSILWr pic.twitter.com/gOBIHME3oK
— gary leff (@garyleff) July 2, 2023
Meanwhile, all of Nav Canada facilities went electronic 15 years ago (and all control towers and TRACONs even earlier). Their solution is used in Australia, Italy, the U.K. and Dubai. We could license the Canadian solution, or other commercial ones, but instead the FAA has been working contracting for their own solution since three years before the Beastie Boys were fighting for your right to party.
The FAA is both service provider of air traffic control and regulator – they regulate themselves. And they aren’t even permitted to ask Congress for the funds they need, if they were even able to manage upgrade and staffing projects appropriately.
(HT: One Mile at a Time)
Gary, after reading this article I think I’d rather drive!
In the past month, BigBear.ai was one of a group contracting with the FAA for ‘airport management’. Perhaps you can explore more fully what that entails, and whether BigBear can address this issue of concern to us all. (The President of BigBear is formerly head of CBT and was acting DHS director at one time… and is doing the security screening improvements at DFW, JFK and so on.. so makes sense?).
I get the feeling that the FAA will change after enough blood has spilled.
Government agencies that have the dual role of regulating and encouraging an industry rarely work well. It is why the old Atomic Energy Commission was disbanded. With any regulatory agency there is the danger of it being captured by the main stakeholders in the industry. But to simultaneously build them up makes that possibility even stronger.
It seems that Boeing’s quality control problems were made worse by the FAA turning over inspection to the very people doing the construction, but I don’t know whether that was to encourage the company or to save money that the Administration might have been short of. Either way it’s a terrible way to do things. The FAA was long known as a “tombstone agency”, generally not proactive and making corrections only after disasters happened. I thought that changed after the Turkish Airlines Flight 981 disaster in 1974 when one factor was that the FAA had not issued an Airworthiness Directive to fix a defective cargo door latch, but perhaps not.
Passengers need to insist that funding the FAA is a priority. Stop with the CRs ( continuing resolutions ) for political manipulation and make safety the focus.
ATC made an error, but it was corrected within 7 seconds with a clear cancel takeoff instruction to sw1478 while it was still barely moving, followed immediately by a hold instruction to sw785. It took another 23 seconds for the pilots of sw1478 to acknowledge and act. This is largely on the pilots for making it as close at it was, and resulting in high speed rejection and subsequent delay. ATC conflict resolution procedures worked well to correct human error which is bound to happen from time to time. As a frequent flyer, I’m not terribly worried about this incident as far as ATC is concerned, although pilot reaction and attention should be better- there are 2 of them!
Just a matter of time before someone’s number is up and a crash occurs. Doesn’t change my view of flying as I don’t worry about things which have extremely low probability and when my time is up I will be fine with that as I’ve had an amazing life with no regrets
@Maryland – funding won’t do it. The FAA is notoriously slow rolling out technology and the unions fight many jobs. What is really needed is to privatize it like most other countries and put in service level agreements in the contract with diligent oversight to ensure compliance