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Local FAA: Two Planes At Midway Began Takeoffs At Same Time
CHICAGO (CBS) — Two planes began their takeoffs on intersecting runways at Chicago’s Midway airport on Tuesday evening, before being ordered to stop by air traffic control and averting a collision in the center of the airport, the FAA confirmed. (chicago.cbslocal.com) Más...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
Two control towers Get real major crash with that in any airport world wide The supervisor and Deptures/ATC person are at fault not pilots or airline numbers for flights
Tower controller does a great job here. First he gives Delta a synopsis of what is going on and clears him to line up and wait on 4R. Then he gives Southwest the synopsis and tells Southwest to line up and wait 31C, but don't plan on stopping. With that, Delta should now know Southwest is number 1 and Delta is number 2 for departure. Tower then advises Southwest that traffic is holding on a crossing runway (Delta) and then clears Southwest to takeoff on 31C. Both airplanes step on each other acknowledging the clearance. Controller asks for verification specifically repeating Southwest and 31C. Both airplanes step on each other again. At this point the controller suspects Delta is about to roll on 4R and sure enough when Delta begins to roll, he stops him. Kudos to the controller and also to the Southwest crew for hitting the binders when they did.
Actually, everybody did a good job but we still got the same radio problem we had at Tenarife, People getting stepped on and clearances getting garbled
Yes, the partyline communications system still used in aviation needs to be addressed. Years ago I used it to draw a situational awareness picture in my head that is now displayed in front of me on one or more MFDs. It still is beneficial in many ways but in congested air/ground space it is a hazard. I say let controllers control and pilots acknowledge with an ident unless there is a question. The controller can see who idents. If two or more aircraft ident, he/she can immediately clarify things. The ident is a powerful feature that is not used correctly in today's world. Often in busy airspace, when you know the controller has forgotten about you and there is no airtime to cut in on, a simple ident will suddenly get you the needed radio call. With more airports installing ground radar it can be used there as well. Controllers, please ident in on this suggestion.
In this case, you want the controller looking OUTSIDE at the runways rather than INSIDE at a radar display, which is the only way a controller may observe an IDENT. Because the controller was looking outside, he was able to immediately recognize that something was going wrong.
As an aside, IDENT for transmission acknowledgement is used frequently for aircraft that leave the radio range of a controller but are still under his or her supervision. This happens a lot with low-level VFR aircraft.
As an aside, IDENT for transmission acknowledgement is used frequently for aircraft that leave the radio range of a controller but are still under his or her supervision. This happens a lot with low-level VFR aircraft.
There are a lot of airports where the Tower can't see the beginning of the runway, the ident would work...
"Ident" isn't the answer. If everyone acknowledged every instruction given with an ident, the controller's scope would be a meaningless mess.
That is one of the reasons that A/C now are supposed to use the Transponder on the ground... I am surprised that TCAS did not sound with a closure like that as well.
1. Would it be better if each runway has its own Tower Frequency? Might make it hard to monitor what other flights are up to, I suppose.
2. If tower were to call the flight by its full call sign (including Airline), wait for acknowledgement from the correct flight, on the correct runway (eg flight replies "AB1234 ready, runway 020), only then will tower give the clearance for take off? A bit more time taken, for sure, but two runway closures due to an incident will be even more costly in lives and time.
3. Perhaps the airport authorities should alert airlines concerned when they have flight numbers that can be easily mistaken for each other? I believe there had been occasions when airlines had changed their flight numbers for this reason.
See http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/publications/directline/dl8_callsign.htm