[zackbloom]

Just to give a little context as a pilot: It is the job of the tower controller to decide who uses the runway when. There are often multiple planes waiting to take off, and multiple planes nearing the airport to land. It's not uncommon for a tower controller to allow a plane to takeoff while another is approaching the runway. The theory is, of course, that the flight will depart in plenty of time.

In this case, the controller failed to tell the departing flight to hurry (the references to 'no delay' or 'immediate' in the blog post), AND frankly timed things pretty close given the weather. Without the ability to actually see the approaching plane, or perhaps even the plane on the ground, it will probably be found that timing a departure that close at all was reckless. That said, I feel for these tower controllers, it's not common for many planes to get stacked up waiting to depart, and it is their job to get them out. What may have worked just fine on a clear-weather day simply became too dangerous on that day.

The official manual for air traffic controllers in the US is the FAA Order JO 7110.65W [1], if anyone cares to review it.

1 - https://www.faa.gov/documentlibrary/media/order/atc.pdf

[rationalist]

> I feel for these tower controllers

I would feel for this tower controller if there wasn't a bunch of comments in r/ATC saying how this particular controller has transferred between facilities because he keeps messing up and makes workplace complaints instead of owning up to his mistakes.

Edit to add source:

> a controller who, according to everyone who has worked with him from the last facility where he washed out and now AUS, say has no business being a controller and they can't fire him because he files EEO complaints habitually.

https://old.reddit.com/r/ATC/comments/10uub5x/

More discussion:

https://old.reddit.com/r/ATC/comments/10u0zvl/disaster_avert...

[rlpb]

> It's not uncommon for a tower controller to allow a plane to takeoff while another is approaching the runway.

Only in the US is it permitted for the controller to clear an aircraft to land while another is using the runway. The rest of of the world does not allow "anticipated clearance".

(Apart from a "land after" clearance where the landing aircraft must accept responsibility for separation.)

Edited to add: how it works everywhere else in the world: the controller is not permitted to clear an aircraft to land unless and until the previous one is confirmed clear. That's why the term is "cleared".

[SQueeeeeL]

I'm not sure how many people know this, but one of the first instances of "union busting" ever committed by the US federal govt was against air traffic controllers. The job used to be extremely competitive and prestigious, but overall lower wages and security has made it way harder to attract as many highly talented individuals.

And with how many rules there are in that pdf, it's shocking we don't see multiple accidents a year.

[JackFr]

Police unions improve the lives of police officers but do little to improve policing. Teachers' unions improve the lives of teachers but have little effect on student outcomes. It's not obvious to me that a powerful air traffic controllers' union would do anything to improve safety. In fact if other public sector unions are informative, the result of a strong ATC union would be to protect and insulate poor performers.

[metabagel]

The workers were asking for better working conditions and equipment. Both of those impact their ability to do their job.

[bilekas]

I don't knock unions but I will add :

> The median annual wage for air traffic controllers was $129,750 in May 2021

SOME unions do take advantage, given the traffic controllers' 'single point of failure' it can be very attractive for some unions who are greedy. Again I reiterate, unions are not a bad idea, just not all of them are solely in the interests of the actual employees.

[SQueeeeeL]

I personally think stability and having some bureaucrat monitoring hours is good. I don't want my air traffic controllers popping pills and pulling double shifts, or showing up to work drunk because they're worried about getting fired for calling in sick. People with dangerous jobs need to be kept safe from themselves

[bilekas]

> showing up to work drunk because they're worried about getting fired for calling in sick

Much like air hosts and pilots, air traffic controllers (at least in the EU) are tested frequently for substance issues including alcohol. A friends father who was an air traffic controller was tested daily for the very reason you mention. Nobody WANTS an accident.

> People with dangerous jobs need to be kept safe from themselves

Absolutely agree, they're professionals though and well trained. I believe they can be responsible adults. That's why it's so rare to see unfortunate mistakes like this seems to be.

[phpisthebest]

>>tested daily for the very reason you mention

Which also limits the hiring pool as many people, myself included, would refuse to be tested daily on principle. Hell I object to pre-employment screenings.

And I have not drunk a drop of Alcohol in over 25 years, nor done any drugs, dont smoke, nothing. That said I am not taking your little test to prove that to you unless you have a reasonable articulable reason to suspect I may be under said influence.

[thfuran]

Then you shouldn't be involved in safety-critical areas. That's just entirely the wrong outlook. You should never skip an important verification step because someone promises things are fine.

[albrewer]

I disagree with this take when it comes to safety-critical applications, especially when you are directly responsible for the safety of thousands of lives at any given moment in the day.

At the end of the day, I don't see potentially sacrificing the lives of multiple planeloads of people as a worthy tradeoff for foregoing verification that the controller is not under the influence of mind-altering substances when performing their job because it invades their privacy. Performing the job must inherently be approached with a collectivist attitude.

For other jobs where the magnitude of the mistake doesn't involve bodily harm or significant resources, I agree 100%.

[suddenclarity]

> or showing up to work drunk because they're worried about getting fired for calling in sick

I feel like there are a plethora of issues there.

[dsfyu404ed]

CDL drivers have all of this without a union.

[bobthepanda]

IIRC that figure is partially due to understaffing leading to long hours and six day workweeks, and it’s not exactly ideal for us to have overworked ATC

[AdamN]

That's not some statement unique to unions. Every organization suffers from the principal-agent problem and every union has a tension between what the union wants, what it's officers want, and what the members want. Also, there's nothing wrong with greed: it's one of the prime human motivators and is encourage in capitalist/individualist societies.

Unions are frequently reasonably well aligned and sometimes not.

There are many solutions like government mandated elections of the officers, rotation of the officers, multiple unions for a given sector or company or factory, etc... Each solution of course comes with a cost including weaker officers coming in, dilution of the power of the union, etc...

This pattern also exists for governments, transnational organizations, corporations, non-profits, etc... and it doesn't make them bad or good or greedy or saintly - it just is the nature of any group.

[srge]

Air trafic controller strikes have plagued our country (France) for many years and I see no indication that it makes our flight safety better

[camgunz]

Not to be snarky, but these last couple close calls in the US feel like indication to me.

[_cenw]

In 2020, ATC directed an incoming United 787 on the wrong runway at Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport. The only reason nothing terrible happened is that the Easyjet pilot on the wrong runway called for go-around after looking out the window, moments before the would-be collision.

Didn't make it beyond aviation news, probably because recording ATC is not allowed in France.

Human error will creep up everywhere, all you can control is the frequency.

[AdamN]

ATC cannot be recorded? Where else is that the case?

[TrickyRick]

In the UK it's not only illegal to record, it's also illegal to even listen. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/3280

[_cenw]

Germany. To be clear, they have tapes, you're just not allowed to listen in / record legally if the transmission is "not intended for you".

[phpisthebest]

People seem to believe other nations have freedom.. In reality when looking at it objectively Most nations lack a huge amount of core freedoms we in the US take for granted

[cm2187]

In fact I heard some stories of nepotism in another european country. Not convinced it is an elite either.

[Kuinox]

Flight in airports are not safe without air controller. It doesn't make it better, it's a requirement to safety.

[HPsquared]

Talking about the strikes, I think.

[srge]

Indeed lol

[coredog64]

PATCO went on an illegal strike, continued the strike in contravention of court orders, and then remained on strike after a deadline from the president.

They could have returned prior to the final deadline, they could have had a sick-out, they could have worked to rule.

I’m sympathetic to labor demands, but if your oath of office makes it illegal to strike and you participate in a walkout, well, that’s on you.

[rtkwe]

A union not allowed to strike isn't really a union, when you boil it down the only real leverage a union has is the ability to withhold labor. If the government is allowed to come in and force a contract on people then the bargaining power of the union is severely curtailed. All the business needs to do is wait and lobby the politicians to impose their preferred contract instead of negotiating with the actual employees.

We saw this essential pattern play out with the recent near railway strike. The rail companies barely had to give up anything because the strike would have been too effective to be allowed to happen.

[CydeWeys]

How convenient to make strikes illegal. That disarms the union of one of its most potent weapons in ensuring its members get their due.

[JackFr]

There is a fundamental difference between private and public sector unions.

"All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management." -- Franklin D. Roosevelt (the guy who created the NLRB and was responsible for modern labor law in the US.)

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/letter-the-resolut...

[metabagel]

As the head of the government, he had a great interest in not having unions in government service.

[ak217]

If a private employee union strikes and makes unreasonable demands, the employer eventually goes out of business.

If a public employee union does the same, the government can't go out of business. So what that means is, as long as the union is granted monopoly on its kind of labor supply, they are holding the taxpayers and their infrastructure hostage.

Public employee unions should not be allowed to strike without giving up their monopoly on labor. And we would do well to not entitle private employee unions to mandatory membership and rigid seniority rules (I know from personal experience that these rules make them incredibly corrupt).

[CWuestefeld]

In the private sector, I'd agree. But in the world of government services, where there's a legally-enforced monopoly, it's a very different story.

[ak217]

Air traffic controllers do have a union. PATCO, the previous union that was "busted", was a public employee union that chose to hold critical public infrastructure hostage, which is unacceptable. Any union that does that should expect to be stripped of its monopoly on that kind of labor.

[titusjohnson]

No, they did not. Reagan very much wanted to spread that lie, but no infrastructure was held hostage. The laborers who held the skills needed to run that infrastructure declined to work when their compensation negotiations were declined.

Reagan's actions have had a profoundly disturbing effect on the American middle class that is still being felt today.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Had they all quit that would have been fine - nobody can force you to work. But they chose to not work and keep their jobs.

> The laborers who held the skills needed

So did many other people. They conspired to break the law by arranging to violate their employment contracts in a group so as to cause undue difficulty to their employer and they held public infrastructure hostage to prevent anyone else operating it.

> Reagan's actions have had a profoundly disturbing effect on the American middle class

The death of unions is a lot broader of an issue than RR killing the ATCU, and generally much deserved. Unions exist to save lives where the law isn't capable but for every plausibly relevant situation like air-traffic control or deep mining there are a hundred overreaches like trying to unionize Amazon warehouses.

As society and work got safer in general it became less important to have such an option as the right to blockade someone's property and dictate who they can hire.

[rtkwe]

A union that can't strike is a shared suggestion box at best. The ultimate power of a union boils down to the ability to deny labor to businesses and support it's members through that period in order to bargain.

[jeffrallen]

See also the 1999 documentary, Pushing Tin, for an exploration of the highly talented individuals employed by the FAA. /s

[dave78]

I always assume that a movie like Pushing Tin is about as accurate of a portrayal of the job of ATC as Swordfish or Antitrust is for software development.

[bambax]

The linked article (more interesting than this one IMHO) asks

> Why were they arriving and departing on the same runway when parallels were available?

and it's a good question! If there's more than one runway available, and bad visibility, why make two planes use the same runway so close to one another??

https://vannevar.blogspot.com/2023/02/austin-fedexdal-disast...

[jameshart]

Unless the terminal is between the runways, using parallel runways will still require clearing planes to cross runways. The conflict risks are different, but they don’t go away.

Intuitively feels like the safest way to operate would be landing planes on the farthest runway, with takeoffs on the near one, because it would only require clearing just-landed aircraft to cross the takeoff runway and you have more discretion to time departures than arrivals.

[hrunt]

At ABIA, the terminal is between the parallel runways.

[jameshart]

Fair point. Forgot that since it’s in Texas, they would have the space to spread out :)

[throwaway290]

Perhaps they had not much traffic that day and wanted to keep one runway busier to save on maintenance or something.

[cm2187]

But what about the Southwest crew? The article says they waited a full minute between being cleared for take off and starting to roll. Surely they wouldn't assume the runway is the right place to hang around in a busy airport, planes typically take off straight away. If they do that it will eat into any safety margin.

[sfeng]

It's very likely the Southwest pilots were completing a checklist, programming their flight computer, or some other minor pre-takeoff activity before being ready to takeoff. A minute just isn't all that much of a delay. If the controller needed it to happen immediately, they should have first asked if the plane was ready, and then should have issued a takeoff clearance with 'without delay' or 'immediate' in it. Only then would be the Southwest pilots job to refuse the clearance if they couldn't comply immediately.

I am unaware if there is a formal definition of how long a controller should expect a flight to take before following a non-urgent instruction, but 60 seconds doesn't seem wild to me.

Now you could say that the Southwest pilots should have heard 'traffic 3 miles out', and understood that things need to move quickly. But as a pilot, I can say we don't have the traffic picture controllers have, particularly in bad weather. The general understanding is if we can't see other aircraft, we manage our plane, and its ATC who can get a picture of how fast the other aircraft are moving and what is safe from a separation perspective.

[blitzar]

As a passenger that flys almost exclusively long haul from very busy airports, it is rare that my plane will come to rest on the runway, generally accelerating in the turn onto the runway and taking off.

[sfeng]

Did they come to rest on the runway, or did they wait a minute at the side of the runway and then proceed to takeoff? I don't think you would notice the difference as a passenger, unless you were listening in on the ATC transmissions.

[dsfyu404ed]

As a passenger there's a pretty obvious difference between "swing a turn, stand on the brakes, floor it and full send" and "swing a turn, come to a stop, sit there a minute or so, stand on the brakes, floor it and full send"

[blitzar]

I can not recall a flight where I was not in a queue to depart, nor an airport where there was not a 90 degree turn onto the runway.

Without ATC I do not know when "cleared to takeoff" is given; it may be given off the runway, pilots spend a minute checking the mirrors and blindspot before turning onto the runway.

[dghlsakjg]

There are many runway intersections that are not 90 degree turns. They are frequently mid runway so typically only used by smaller planes for departure

Cleared to takeoff can be given before you have entered the runway, or you can be asked to “lineup and wait”.

The first means that you have permission to enter the runway, if you haven’t already, and takeoff. The latter means that you are cleared to enter the runway, but not takeoff and wait for takeoff clearance.

[mixdup]

There is zero evidence that happened. They could absolutely have been sitting at the threshold to the runway for those 60 seconds and immediately took off when they turned the corner 60 seconds later

[dghlsakjg]

The training I got as a lowly ppl, was that a takeoff clearance meant that the runway was yours to do with as you pleased within reason. If the southwest crew needed to sit on the runway for a few moments getting setup they had permission to do it. Their job is to follow atc directions, which they absolutely did.

If the controller wanted you to do an immediate takeoff they normally make damn sure that you are able and you know the context. At least in my experience mixing it up with jet traffic at Boeing field.

Something like: “Southwest xxx cleared for immediate takeoff, you have a FedEx heavy on 3 mile final”

To the pilot that is saying: you can go, but you only have 90 seconds or so.

[cm2187]

But surely "within reason" includes some sort of timeout?

[dghlsakjg]

Kind of. It’s not unheard of for the plane to have issues on the runway. Flat tire, avionics settings, whatever. That causes you a delay on the runway, or to just have to sit there and close the runway

On a regular day the controller could see this, and ask what is going on. At a small GA airport with training ops the controller is likely used to people pulling out onto the runway and taking their god damn time. The FAA actually advises wait times of as long as 2 minutes for wake turbulence, and that’s something I’ve done. Just sit there on the end of a runway.

Things get a little different, in practice, at busy commercial airports, but the rules are the same.

[sgent]

Used to fly out of MEM in the co-pilot seat when it was still a hub for NWA. Usually, the small planes they lined up on an alternative runway, but occasionally wind direction / strength required using one of the two (now three) parallel runways.

More than once I remember a 747, 777 or A340 taking off and getting the call "cleared for immediate departure". The pilot I was with routinely would say something like "I'm not even taxing onto the runway for 2 minutes, then we can talk".

[cm2187]

Maybe I am thick but I am not sure I got your point. You mean he would wait 2min off the runway? Why, vortex created by larger planes?

[ninjagoo]

Yes, agreed - this certainly appears to lean towards ATC error given the conditions. Maybe the ATC rulebook needs to be updated for conditions, maybe it doesn't.

And it might be time to think about TCAS extensions to ground ops for aircraft with clearances?

[JustSomeNobody]

Question, when FedEx says "Southwest Abort!" and then the controller tells them to turn right and Southwest says "negative" is that because they didn't have enough runway to do either?

[altgeek]

My understanding is that Southwest was already at or had exceeded V1 speed. Explanation of V1 -> https://www.flyingmag.com/everything-about-v-speeds-explaine...