Mountain Explorer

Who said anything about UA1?? There is no doubt that UA1 was not in collision danger. PAL might have lost parts of its tail (had the go-around not happened), but there's no fuel in the tail so I wasn't assuming a major explosion there. The inferno, IMO, would have been upon collision with the 3rd plane in line, a 789 headed for SYD.

Huh? If the reader is so intelligent, why are they unable to draw any conclusions? You want the media to tell you how to think?? I certainly don't. I would argue that the best media is one who presents the facts, and allows the intelligent reader to draw their own conclusions.

Standard staffing at that time is 2 controllers. 1 is less than 2. I think that's a common use of the word "only". If the tower was over-staffed (for example, 3 controllers). Then I'd agree, the sentence "There were ONLY three controllers on duty at the time" would be quite strange language. But that's not the case here.

The Lev

Editorials by their nature generally try to form public opinion, not just present facts. This editorial certainly went well beyond presenting facts, so by your own metric it is far from "the best media".


What is the minimum required staffing at that hour? I suspect 1. If they were under the minimum, then this would certainly be a legitimate issue to raise. If the NTSB finds that "only" one person was a contributing factor to the incident, then hopefully minimums will be revisited. Until then, let's withhold judgment.

Admiral Ackbar

Oh well, plane went off the radar for 12 seconds, at least its non reportable right! So many holes in the swiss cheese that night.

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/08/1...da-close-call/

Stranger

FAA changed procedure.


https://www.flightglobal.com/news/ar...fter-a-440380/

Bohemian1

The seems like a practical outcome, at least for SFO. I wonder what ACA will learn from this. TBD I guess.

smallmj

My guess is that these are temporary changes until the final report becomes available. At that point they'll decide whether to make these changes permanent.

RangerNS

It seems reasonable to me that "have extra controllers" be a standard practice when the airport is in an unusual configuration.

CZAMFlyer

Is SFO an "unusual configuration" in your opinion? If yes, what makes it so?

RangerNS

I said when the airport was in an unusual configuration, not is an unusual configuration.

Unquestionably, the left runway was closed that night.This calls for issuing a NOTAR, and putting up a big flashing X. It certainly seems reasonable that they also have extra staff on to handle the additional cognitive load of them and the pilots they assist.

CZAMFlyer

Are you implying an airport's configuration is altered when a runway is closed? That might be the confusing part for me. Configuration generally means the layout and relative orientation of the chunks of pavement, and not whether some of them are available for use at a given time. I now interpret you stating that SFO was "unusual" in that one of the normally-available runways was not so that evening.

Do you mean NOTAM? I'm not sure I see a correlation between closing a landing surface, its effect upon cognitive loading of airport users, and how an extra controller might be of useful assistance. The fix that was implemented seems much more pertinent (that of the temporary ban on visual approaches at night with a runway closed).

172pilot

I assume that you are arguing for arguments sake? If a normally used runway is closed then the airport is in an unusual configuration.

I dont fly into SFO on a regular basis so I don't know but as an example, if 28L is normally for arrivals and 28R for departures, then 28L being closed results in an unusual configuration.

RangerNS

Yes, NOTAM.

You've never been spaced out walking from the bed to the coffee maker and trip over sometime that is never there? That you put there 8 hours earlier? Never driven a route you do 100x a year only to get flustered but construction closing "your" entrance to the mall? Be distracted by the woman in a red dress, glitch, and grab the door in the bank of 4 doors which is always locked?


We can add another controller, we can require NOTAMs to be read back. We can make the viewing angle of the landing radar be wider.

​​​​​We really can't make better people.

tcook052

Please note a number of posts regarding a second AC incident at SFO had been posted in this thread but have been moved to the correct thread where it was already under discussion:

"Somewhat scary one near Winnipeg" - The AC Master Incidents Thread

Please note that further posts on the 22nd Oct. incident will be moved and/or deleted.

tcook052
AC forum moderator

Troopers

New video from T2 security cam released by NTSB. Starts around 50 sec, top left.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF7FR7TjnME&feature=youtu.be

CZAMFlyer

About as close as it gets.