[joncrane]

The controller was talking to Frontier plane when he first said stop, then said stopstopTruck1stopstopstop and it would be easy for there to be a gap in processing for the driver of truck 1 because the verbiage all flowed in the same stanza that was started when addressing the Frontier flight.

[inaros]

I am afraid the fire truck might have some level of responsibility, since it seems FAA ground vehicle guidance says:

AC No: 150/5210-20A - "Subject: Ground Vehicle Operations to include Taxiing or Towing an Aircraft on Airports"

https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/...

“you must ensure that you look both ways down the runway to visually acquire aircraft landing or departing even if you have a clearance to cross.”

These trucks seem to have pretty good visibility from inside. Not sure if La Guardia model was the same: https://youtu.be/rfILwYo3sXc

[phearnot]

Not arguing with the regulations, just pointing out that based on airport diagram[1], since the truck was crossing rwy on taxiway D, the CRJ was on the right approaching from behind. I have never been inside an airport firetruck, but I guess from the driver's seat the jet would be quite hard to see in this case.

[1]https://www.avherald.com/h?article=536bb98e

[inaros]

That is a good point but it seems instructions for ground vehicles seem to really stress this. For example this one: https://skybrary.aero/sites/default/files/bookshelf/1003.pdf

Says at pag 9:

"While driving on an aerodrome : Clear left, ahead, above and right

Scan the full length of the runway and the approaches for possible landing aircraft before entering or crossing any runway, even if you have received a clearance."

[cucumber3732842]

>but I guess from the driver's seat the jet would be quite hard to see in this case.

They have mostly glass cabs for exactly that reason. Only thing that would block your view is a passenger in the right seat.

[userbinator]

...and that passenger should also be actively looking around.

[caminante]

Visibility was bad (night and mist) too.

But if your truck has blind spots and vis is poor, you shouldn't be driving as fast if at all.

[dghlsakjg]

He was stopped until he received instructions to cross the runway from the person whose job it is to sit in a position with good visibility and tell people when they can cross runways. He wasn’t driving fast at all. The whole system is set up so that vehicles with blind spots (every large passenger jet) can safely move.

We can’t say that emergency vehicles should just stay in on dark and stormy nights.

[caminante]

>from the driver's seat the jet would be quite hard to see in this case.

..is what I was responding to.

>We can’t say that emergency vehicles should just stay in on dark and stormy nights.

This conclusion is flawed and doesn't apply to what I said.

If a truck can't see (conditions or not), then they shouldn't be on the same runway as takeoff/landing because...the consequences were severe despite the safeguards you mentioned, e.g. Not driving fast is relative and the "eyes" failed too initially.

[dghlsakjg]

“Vehicles with large blind spots don’t belong on the runway” is a completely untenable proposal.

Almost every airplane is bigger, blinder and slower than that truck. If it had been a plane cleared across the runway, this would have been so much worse.

Even if you want to exempt airplanes, it would require a complete rebuild of most major airports or using completely different emergency equipment. Every airport you have ever flown to commercially has ground vehicles crossing or operating on runways every day. It is simply not possible to operate a commercial airport without ground vehicles in aircraft movement areas, including runways.

The solution is not to spend billions on new trucks or access roads because of a single incident. It is to ensure that controllers, the people directly in charge of coordinating safe ground movement, have the mental bandwidth and tools to do their jobs. The fact that this was a truck and not an airplane is luck, making any discussions about truck cab visibility very much secondary. You have to go upstream of “trucks have blind spots” to truly prevent another of these incidents.

[vkou]

Every other truck in the column immediately stopped when the call was made. Truck 1 was the only one that didn't.

[dghlsakjg]

They were all, including truck 1, queued up at the stop line waiting for clearance to cross. Truck 1 received clearance to cross, he began crossing, then received instructions to stop after it was too late.

The rest of the emergency vehicles were stopped because they hadn’t been authorized. Truck 1 started moving because he had received specific instructions to do exactly what he was doing.

I take it you’re not a pilot, controller or someone who has ever worked an aviation radio?

[jmtulloss]

FWIW the whole group received permission to cross. The instructions were to "Truck 1 and company", not just Truck 1

[dghlsakjg]

Thanks, I missed that.

[hatthew]

"Truck 1 and company" were cleared to cross. A few seconds later, "truck 1" was instructed to stop.

Edit: Confirmed truck 1 was the one involved in the collision. Previous text: It is unclear which truck specifically was involved in the crash. In photos, the truck has the number 35 on it, not sure if that would preclude it from being identified as "truck 1" verbally.

[dghlsakjg]

Ah. I missed hearing that “and company” in the recording.

In any case, if they were cleared across the runway, and they were, it isn’t really on them. It doesn’t change the gist of the argument. The broader point is that it wasn’t that one truck was barreling around being reckless as implied by gp, it’s just that one truck made it out and the rest of the company had yet to start moving (whether because they saw the plane coming from their viewpoint farther back, or just hadn’t started moving yet, we will find out later). The entire company had stopped at the line, and when cleared across the lead truck was struck. Of course the rest were still stopped behind the line, there was a giant fire truck in their path moments before.

The instruction to stop is, to my pilots ear, irrelevant. Until an instruction is read back by the receiving party, it is worthless. It might not have been received, or received incorrectly. That’s the whole point of the readback, to ensure that the instruction was received correctly (notice how I missed the “and company”… a readback would have caught that). If there is not a readback, controllers are instructed to ask for one. On top of that, it was a panic instruction using non standard verbiage. If he was already past the line, the instruction to stop might have made it worse.

[doubleg72]

“I take it you haven’t ever worked with radio.. “. Seems like you haven’t a clue how any of this works. Doesn’t matter if they had radio clearance, the fire truck is responsible for ensuring runways is clear and not driving in front of plane.

[dghlsakjg]

I’m a certificated pilot in two countries, trained in this region, and own an airplane. I have a pretty good grasp how this works, but am willing to learn if you have citations besides the CFR pull quotes elsewhere in this thread.

All people (pilots included) are responsible for only following ATC instructions if it is safe/possible to do so. You aren’t supposed to land on a runway with other traffic on it, even if cleared. You aren’t supposed to cross a runway if there is a plane taking off or landing, even if cleared. You aren’t supposed to clear a vehicle onto a runway at the same time you cleared a plane to land (this one’s an assumption, I’m not a trained controller).

You are making the assumption that the truck did not check the runway, but keep in mind that it is a 30ish ton vehicle, and the plane was moving at 150 mph at touchdown, 100 mph at the time of impact. There very well may not have been a plane visible when the truck started moving. The truck might not have received the non-standard clearance revocation, or received it and tried to get off the runway by accelerating across, or received it and begun slowing in the path of the plane.

The truck driver could have prevented this, but they certainly aren’t the primary cause.

[krisoft]

I very much doubt that you know the exact timing of the event. My guess is that you might have seen a video where some industrious editor put the ATC recordings over the leaked surveilance footage, but there is no way that is correctly synced.

[hatthew]

With publicly available information we can sync it to within ~2 seconds. All trucks other than the first one were definitely in the process of stopping in between the first and second time ATC told them to stop (5 seconds apart).