The National Transportation Safety Board has published its preliminary report on last month’s deadly crash involving an Air Canada jet and a fire truck at New York’s LaGuardia airport, concluding communication failures and a lack of transponders in the truck played roles in the collision.
The report, released Thursday, said the truck’s driver heard instructions to “stop, stop, stop” over the radio, but did not realize the message was intended for them.
After the initial warning, the fire truck’s turret operator heard the controller say, “Truck 1, stop, stop, stop,” and realized the warning was for his crew. By then, the report said, the truck was already on Runway 4 as Air Canada Express Flight 8646 was landing.
The jet and the truck collided seconds after the plane touched down. Pilots Mackenzie Gunther and Antoine Forest were killed, and 33 people were injured, including six who had serious injuries.
What if… we employed enough ATC and support personnel instead of treating it like a business where the goal is to run on minimum necessary headcount?
Yeah but you see they dared to think about unionizing 45 years ago so GET FUCKED!!!
God, it’s like you don’t even care about maximizing profit at any cost at all.
They’re just a bunch of money crackheads running the show. Their minds are beyond addled.
thats blatant socialism, gtfo.
I wonder if we could do some sort of virtual ADSB on the ground where it tracks anything on the field and squawks its location?
This would alert about incursions even if the object didn’t have a transponder.
Another factor in the crash was the fact that emergency vehicles at LaGuardia were not outfitted with a transponder as part of the airport’s surface surveillance system, known as ASDE-X. The system is designed to prevent runway collisions by creating a display air traffic controllers can use to track the movement of every plane and vehicle in real time.
Right, but I’m saying if there was a computer vision system monitoring the runway cameras and transmitting ADSB signals the truck wouldn’t need a transponder. Another system would be broadcasting its position.
Cameras won’t work in bad weather when visibility is poor. The answer is to force every ground vehicle that shares any space with aircraft should have a transponder and the airfield should have a working ASDE system. Surely it’s a necessity at an airport of that size?
I love how adding safety with a passive system built on old technology gets interpreted as “we should replace ADSB and transponders are unnecessary”
But there is a system and it sounds like it works. It just wasn’t in place. The problem is not a technical one.
Those transponders aren’t free, and I bet that cost probably factored into why they weren’t there.
A virtual one would cover every vehicle at the airport without having to buy them all transponders, on top of tracking anything else.
ADS-B transponders look to be around $4k to $5k. That’s dirt cheap. These things are on small private craft. They’re well understood, standardized and certified. They don’t have trouble with rain or snow and they’re ubiquitous.
A new computer vision system would cost millions in development costs, certification, testing along-side existing systems, etc.
I feel pretty confident you’re solving the wrong problem.
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I’m confused. Do you know what a transponder is?
I wonder if we could do some sort of virtual ADSB on the ground where it tracks anything on the field and squawks its location?
That is exactly what a transponder is for. Tracking live location. How are you even intending to implement a virtual representation of a live environment without the moving things telling you where they are?!?
ADSB broadcasts the position in the signal. The receivers don’t do any triangulation or anything
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Computer vision is crazy cheap and we can do this alongside transponders.
You are unnecessarily argumentative
Eh, I deleted the comment cause I felt I was being an ass about something I didn’t know a lot about. That’s fair.
Still though, I struggle to understand how “rip out everything and replace it with a different system” is more cost effective than “just put a transponder in the damn truck”. You say this was probably a cost cutting measure - you expect the people that cut that cost to now leap at the chance to overhaul their entire tracking system?
What’s the rate of failure on your CV system? How often is it going to decide a bird flying around is a car on the runway? How much will it cost to develop and implement when adsb already exists and works and is cheap? How much effort will it take to implement that could instead be spent making sure transponders are installed on ground vehicles?
I’m sure people had the same arguments against ADSB
That’s not an argument in favour of your plan, nor an answer to any of the questions.
I conclude the plan is dumb.
Seems like a great idea, and also would be fairly easy to implement
Hell, a fairly rudimentary system could be built pretty quickly with the airports’ existing surveillance cameras, though I’d want LiDAR and some higher res cameras or even IR as well for low visibility conditions
That’s… not free either. And even lidar will never be as accurate as a radio antenna letting the moving pieces tell you exactly their location and motion.
Again: Complimentjng not replacing.
Say a plane loses a landing gear on takeoff and it’s on the runway. Who’s gonna go strap a transponder to it?
Planes already have transponders.
Why isnt AI doing ATC yet?
No.
