I just hope they don't try to pin this on the controller who was on duty and move on without putting plans in place for some sort of structural change. Controllers are forced to work 60+ hour weeks and overnight shifts, and the controller in question was working both ground and air control simultaneously due to staffing shortages. If you listen to the ATC audio, he was handling finding a spot for a plane that aborted takeoff and declared an emergency, while calling emergency services for that plane, while coordinating multiple planes coming in to land, while also coordinating multiple planes trying to take off. With that kind of workload, an accident like this is an eventuality. Even after the fatal accident happened, he had to work for at least another hour before he could get relieved of his duty. Hopefully something will happen to fix this at some point rather than us collectively deciding that an accident or two per year is worth the cost savings of not keeping ATC properly staffed.
The NTSB - and aviation in general - as much as possible tries to avoid "pinning" issues on individuals. The purpose of an investigation isn't to ascribe blame, it's to try to understand what happened and how to prevent it from happening again, and prescribing "don't make mistakes" is not a realistic or useful method for preventing accidents from recurring.
Yes! But every news organization is leading with "I messed up." And the US President commented "They messed up", though it's unclear who that was in reference to.<p>Humans have a powerful need to affix blame and punish individuals. On the internet, you are forever the worst moment of your life.<p>We set air traffic controllers up to fail, and then when something goes wrong we torture them until they die, and then torture their memory after they die.
I hope it comes down to the NTSB recommending more controllers (or better conditions for controllers) to avoid task saturation, not just more process. It's incredible what a single controller is capable of doing, but for major areas like NYC, it's not enough.
Understand what happened and prevent it from happening again, so long as this can be done without expanding staffing, reducing OT, structural change, etc
No. Safety investigation agencies deliberately aren't regulators. The NTSB may decide that their recommendation is that every air passenger should be carrying a melon, and that results in a press release, a letter to the FAA saying that's what they recommend, that's all.<p>Deciding to change policies to effect the recommendation isn't their role. That's why you will so often see a safety investigatory body repeatedly recommend the same thing. The UK's RAIB (which is for Rail investigations) for example will often call out why a fatal accident they've investigated wouldn't have happened if the regulator had implemented some prior recommendation, either one they're slow walking or have rejected.<p>The investigators don't need to care about other factors. Are melons too expensive? Not their problem. Only unfriendly countries grow melons? Not their problem. They only need to care about recommending things that would prevent future harm which is their purpose.
> <i>Deciding to change policies to effect the recommendation isn't their role.</i><p>And if it <i>was</i> the role of investigators to change policy, then there would be enormous pressure from industry to reach convenient conclusions, poisoning the investigation process.
Hopefully some commercial professional pilots will comment on this thread, but if you go to sites where they normally hang out like:<p><a href="https://www.airlinepilotforums.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.airlinepilotforums.com</a><p>You will see many are terrified ( in commercial pilot terms...) of flying into La Guardia or JFK...
> <a href="https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/major/152572-aircraft-firetruck-hit-lga.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/major/152572-aircraft-fir...</a><p>Just a quick read/speculation based on the linked forum post...<p>Short of insane visibility conditions that prevented them from seeing the plane coming, the firetruck operator seems to be the liable party (beyond the airport for understaffing controllers—this seems to be exacerbated by government cuts but that's still no excuse for having a solo controller at that busy of an airport, especially at night).<p>The controller in question seems to have caught their mistake quickly and reversed the order instead asking the firetruck to stop (but for some reason, this wasn't heard).<p>Is it common now to have solo operators running control towers?
"Liability" isn't really how we try to see things in aviation. While it's true that it's ultimately considered the responsibility of the truck/plane to visually confirm that crossing the runway is safe, refuse unsafe commands from ATC, and comply to the best of their ability when ATC says "stop" at the last second, we can't stop our analysis there if we want to prevent this from happening in the future, because unless things change someone <i>will</i> make this mistake again in the future. Telling people not to make mistakes isn't going to help at all; it's obvious, and no one <i>wants</i> to cause an accident. The error is just the last step in the process that led to the collision.
I don't think the ATC is at fault here. If they were put in a difficult situation and responsible for too much at once, I'd view that as a leadership bug, not their personal fault (or anything they should be held liable for). The weak links imo here are the firetruck driver and whoever that ATC reports to directly (i.e., there shouldn't have been an opportunity for this to happen—that's an executive failure, whether they want to take ownership or not).
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.
I am afraid the fire truck might have some level of responsibility, since it seems FAA ground vehicle guidance says:<p>AC No: 150/5210-20A - "Subject: Ground Vehicle Operations to include Taxiing or Towing an Aircraft on Airports"<p><a href="https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/150-5210-20A.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/...</a><p>“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.”<p>These trucks seem to have pretty good visibility from inside. Not sure if La Guardia model was the same: <a href="https://youtu.be/rfILwYo3sXc" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/rfILwYo3sXc</a>
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.<p>[1]<a href="https://www.avherald.com/h?article=536bb98e" rel="nofollow">https://www.avherald.com/h?article=536bb98e</a>
That is a good point but it seems instructions for ground vehicles seem to really stress this. For example this one:
<a href="https://skybrary.aero/sites/default/files/bookshelf/1003.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://skybrary.aero/sites/default/files/bookshelf/1003.pdf</a><p>Says at pag 9:<p>"While driving on an aerodrome : Clear left, ahead, above and right<p>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."
Visibility was bad (night and mist) too.<p>But if your truck has blind spots and vis is poor, you shouldn't be driving as fast if at all.
>but I guess from the driver's seat the jet would be quite hard to see in this case.<p>They have mostly glass cabs for exactly that reason. Only thing that would block your view is a passenger in the right seat.
Every other truck in the column immediately stopped when the call was made. Truck 1 was the only one that didn't.
> Is it common now to have solo operators running control towers?<p>At Class D airports it’s always been the norm. But KLGA is Class B.
> this seems to be exacerbated by government cuts<p>What government cuts? 2025 FAA air traffic budget was up around 7% from 2025<p><a href="https://enotrans.org/article/senate-bill-oks-27-billion-faa-budget-in-fy25/" rel="nofollow">https://enotrans.org/article/senate-bill-oks-27-billion-faa-...</a>
From the article:<p>> The crash has raised fears that operations at US airports are under extreme stress. Airports have been dealing with a shortage of air traffic controllers, exacerbated by brutal federal government personnel cuts by Donald Trump’s administration at the start of his second presidency.<p>Not my opinion, just reading from there.
Is it possible to automate the job of an ATC controller? At least partially? Or at least just as a sanity check on every human decision? Not saying I want human ATC controllers replaced, but if there’s a severe staff shortage, I feel like a computerized version is better than nothing at all.
In this specific incident, there was a system in place called Runway Entrance Lights [0] that does serve as an automated sanity check on controllers commands. The surveillance video that is circulating shows that the system was working and indicated that the runway was not safe to enter. It's not clear yet why the truck entered the runway anyway.<p>0: <a href="https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl" rel="nofollow">https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl</a>
No, a lot of it is human - asking for things, getting things.
> I just hope they don't try to pin this on the controller who was on duty and move on without putting plans in place for some sort of structural change.<p>I am reminded of the Uberlingen disaster:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_%C3%9Cberlingen_mid-air_collision" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_%C3%9Cberlingen_mid-air_c...</a>
NTSB's M.O. has always been that there is never just one cause. A human mistake that costs lives is never that simple. There is a system that trained the person, a set of incentives that put the person into that place, a set of safeguards that should have existed to prevent the mistake from causing life loss, and a regulatory framework to occasionally verify all of the above. I would expect that "the controller made a mistake" would be ~one paragraph in a 100-page report.
It bothers me that everyone is laser focused on poor ATC staffing and working conditions (which is very valid, don't get me wrong). I think airport capacity should be fixed depending on ATC staffing. We need to have less air travel.<p>The way I think about it is this: substandard ATC staffing is just as bad as lacking jetways or damaged runways. When the airport can't land planes because of physical capacity constraints, flights get cancelled or delayed (literally happening today at LGA, flights are getting canceled because they're down one runway). The carriers need to eat the costs of forcing too much demand on ATCs.
> The carriers need to eat the costs of forcing too much demand on ATCs.<p>Running ATC (and limiting flights if necessary) seems like the job of the government to me.<p>Why put this on the carriers?
You are correct. Robustness requires a system that is working within it's tolerance margin, and stressing that inevitably leads to failure. A fault-tolerant system in this case would require a large amount of redundant humans. Unfortunately, the capitalist mindset prevents accepting any amount of "waste" as tolerable, which makes a robust system impossible to implement over time. Every system touched by a capitalist optimizer will eventually fail.<p>The idea that waste must be reduced is killing society, and this mindset must be addressed first before any other safety-critical system can be made reliable again.
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What structural change would permit a worker to take initiative and say "Hey, these working conditions are wrong/inadequate and I will not safely do my job today unless proper changes are made", without risk of getting fired by higher-ups?<p>Empowering workers to make safety-critical meta-decisions does not seem to be a feature of actually-existing capitalism.
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The FAA's problems are systemic and structural. They've existed long, long before the 2024 election.
It certainly didn't help.[1]<p>[1] <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-doges-cutbacks-at-the-faa-could-affect-aviation-safety" rel="nofollow">https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-doges-cutbacks-at-the-...</a>
Yes, but the problems have been driven by the relentless deregulation of critical industries and infrastructure primarily driven by a specific political bloc. In the next US election, we should vote for candidates that promise systemic change and government overhaul, not further deregulation and handouts to corporations.
Mostly due to blind faith in austerity and the market, by certain groups.
Can you elaborate on what change you would like to occur?<p>I have voted based on getting particular people nominated within a federal agency, requires the President to pick someone who will 100% be from their party, and a Senate committee that will confirm them<p>people tend to think "I'm voting against my best interests" without knowing that the agency control was my best interest as it will most likely continue shaping an industry far beyond any particular administration<p>I could see that happening again with your abstract, vague, and ambiguous idea. Just say what you mean specifically, use your words, so I know if it's something that could steer my vote or not
You had two options and one was clearly far worse than the other. This nuanced-excuse-making and “the democrats also occasionally do things I don’t like” is lazy. Take responsibility for letting the mob take over - even if it was just by inaction.
I didn’t turn 18 in the last several years<p>So the odds I’m talking about the current administration are low<p>I wrote that I have voted for an agency appointment before, and the person I replied to also is suggesting to do that again<p>yes, only democrats use the meme “voting against their best interest”, sometimes this voting pattern includes or excludes them
Very doubtful whatever agency you can conjour up as an excuse will be more impactful than the country wide changed induced by the overall administration
LaGuardia did have a fully staffed ATC, and there's zero evidence this controller was overworked. You seem to be prematurely ascribing cause when nothing has been investigated yet.
The evidence that this controller was overworked is that practically all controllers in the US at present are overworked. As such, that should be treated as the null hypothesis, and it would require substantial evidence to show that he <i>isn't</i> overworked.
> LaGuardia did have a fully staffed ATC<p>According to whom? Management, or controllers?<p>Certainly does not seem like controllers agree:<p><a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/ATC/" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/ATC/</a>
The parent post was unjustly flagged for no other reason than facts make overly emotional people here squirm with anger. Pathetic and lame.<p>This is worthy of losing flagging privileges IMO.<p>The Secretary of Transportation said on record at the first press conference that reports this guy was working alone in the tower are INACCURATE. The actual number is the responsibility of the NTSB to disclose.<p>95% of this discussion is people blowing smoke out of their ass as per usual.
How do you know it was due to staffing shortages? It is common at LGA for one controller to be handling Tower and Ground late at night.
You are describing a staffing shortage.
Is he? I can see the number of hours worked as evidence of a shortage, but <i>prima facie</i> it is not obvious that a single controller handling both ground and air is evidence of a 'shortage' if it is routinely considered feasible in the industry. It could just be an efficiency choice for low-traffic times. Based on some googling since I'm not an expert it seems this is called 'position combining' in the US and is pretty routine across the world. Therefore, if this is a problem the primary cause cannot be US policy because non-US airports also do this thing.<p>Here it's being done at SFO or so it seems: <a href="https://data.ntsb.gov/Docket/Document/docBLOB?FileExtension=.PDF&FileName=Air+Traffic+Control+-+Attachment+7+-+Memorandum+For+Combining+Positions+-Master.PDF&ID=40466898" rel="nofollow">https://data.ntsb.gov/Docket/Document/docBLOB?FileExtension=...</a><p>While searching I did find this other document where a GC (LC appears to be Local Control for local air traffic and GC is ground control) controller complains about combining due to short-staffing <a href="https://data.ntsb.gov/Docket/Document/docBLOB?ID=19837915&FileExtension=pdf&FileName=74%20-%20ATC-HP%20-%20Addendum%203%20-%20Email%20Correspondence%20and%20Related%20Documentation%20-%20Ground%20Controller_Redacted-Rel.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://data.ntsb.gov/Docket/Document/docBLOB?ID=19837915&Fi...</a><p>Well, it'll be an interesting report from the NTSB at least.
"Staffing shortage" doesn't mean "you can fit more people in the tower."<p>You can't think of any scenario having one controller makes sense?
In general, I can. In LaGuardia? Aside from right after 9/11 and during COVID-19 when almost all commercial travel stopped, I cannot.<p>I don't think people saying this stuff quite understand how <i>busy</i> LGA is even at night. I'd even go as far as to say that three minimum on duty with two in the tower at all times (for a ground/air split), would be the <i>bare</i> minimum for any hour or situation at LGA.
And therein lies the problem. Clearly, having one overworked controller running a combined tower is not safe nor sustainable.
It seems like a critical enough role that you probably want two people there in case one has a medical emergency anyway. Even if it's not that busy.
Planes landing at a rate of one every 30-40 minutes isn't exactly "overworked."
I don’t have time to check flight logs but I personally landed at LGA coming from MDW on Sunday. And I also know people who got diverted within the hour coming back to LGA that night. 30-40 minutes doesn’t seem accurate. That aside, if you’ve ever done operational staffing, you’d know that you should probably have at least one redundancy. When there is any chance of emergency or two events happening simultaneously, you should have more than one person.<p>One last meta point. We live in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and the highest air travel prices (some part is a function of longer distances I know). We should expect that we have ample coverage, if not over-coverage, at all times for one of our major metropolitan airports. Pay them.
12am-5am is very quiet, at about 1 per hour. But the accident happened during the 10pm-12am time slot, which is not as busy as other times of day, but can still have workload spikes as evidenced by this situation.<p>ATC should never work alone at any of the "Core 30" airports.
<a href="https://www.aspm.faa.gov/aspmhelp/index/Core_30.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.aspm.faa.gov/aspmhelp/index/Core_30.html</a>
In this case there were two arrivals within 4 minutes of each other and two departures, in addition to the emergency plane that had just aborted takeoff.
Which is a completely reasonable amount of traffic for one controller to handle. This wasn't the controller's fault. The firetruck received a clearance, had that clearance revoked, and either didn't hear the revocation or ignored it.
If you have ever spent time listening to LiveATC you will realize that like everyone, "tunnel ear" is a real thing - if United 1002 has received the clearance/instructions they expect, read them back, and are proceeding it can be moderately difficult to get their attention again, even with perfect verbiage.
The controller was not guilty of malfeasance, but clearing the trucks onto the runway with an airliner on short final was a mistake, no matter whatever else one could say about it.
What is the contingency/continuity plan if the single controller becomes incapacitated while on duty with no warning to pilots?
Same as if the radios stopped working or otherwise communication fails. Execute the planned procedures (which vary).<p>Often Approach will take over the "tower" and operate in crippled mode (no clearances to cross active runways, you must go down to the end kind of thing).<p>Some airports are uncontrolled at various times and would revert to that. Some airlines would require the pilot execute a missed approach and deviate to a towered airport, others may allow them to land.
That seems mad, given the volume of traffic they're working - even without emergencies. My local GA field is single controller, and that's VFR, grass runways, averages 40-50 movements/day.
What you just described is a long term staffing shortage.
Some people here coded the buttons that sometimes don't work when you check in for your flight. That makes them aviation experts. How dare you question wild assumptions.
Maybe there should be more than one
> It is common at LGA for one controller to be handling Tower and Ground late at night.<p>What happens when they need the bathroom, or have some kind of medical problem? If it's really a common case for one controller to handle things, the system itself needs to be fundamentally rethought.
"The system worked yesterday, so it should have worked forever."
> the controller in question was working both ground and air control simultaneously due to staffing shortages<p>How many planes land at LGA in the middle the night?<p>One controller overnight is completely reasonable.
Approximately one per minute in the 15 minute span proceeding this crash, including one that had an emergency takeoff rejection and was being maneuvered along with the emergency support vehicles that were being sent to attend to it
>> One controller overnight is completely reasonable<p>So if said controller has a medical episode?
"Funny" enough if this controller <i>had</i> had a medical emergency (or just bad sushi) and been off the radios, this wouldn't have happened because the fire truck would not have received clearance to cross the runway and wouldn't have. Or at least would have crossed like the airport was uncontrolled, been much more careful and announced itself, and likely have seen the landing aircraft.
And if an aircraft needs to land due to an emergency? It’s amazing things work as well as they do, the system relies on only one thing going wrong at a time. This accident was an example of multiple things going wrong at the same time.
An empty tower at La Guardia with a bunch of airplanes in the air not getting a reply to their calls is Die Hard 2 stuff. Spare me the Pete Hegseth school of ATC...
I can’t find a way to read this other than<p>“If we remove regulation and safety controls, things will be safer because everyone will be more careful.”
You should try harder, because I'm not making any comment on regulation whatsoever. There are procedures that every controller and pilot knows for how to handle loss of radio contact.
And we know how well that works: <a href="https://youtu.be/AWM0l8_F_X0?t=411" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/AWM0l8_F_X0?t=411</a>
Normally? Zero. LGA has a curfew from midnight to six AM, April 5-December 31.<p>In practice? It depends. Delays have a tendency to cascade in the air travel system and the Port Authority can curtail or cancel the curfew at their discretion. How frequently do exceptions to normal ops have to happen for it to be unreasonable to use "normal ops traffic" as a justification for scheduling a single controller? Ultimately, controllers have to control the traffic that they get, not the traffic that they want/expect to get, and a system that is overly optimized becomes brittle and unable to deal with exceptions to the norm.
Can a single human being reliably and robustly maintain a safety-critical system alone under any circumstances, ever?<p>Ever?
Looking at the things he needs to juggle at the same time, is it really reasonable? Any standard we are referring here? Sure such cases are rare but that's why we have redundancies for critical positions.
> One controller overnight is completely reasonable.<p>How many fatal accidents are reasonable in your opinion?
> One controller overnight is completely reasonable.<p>Do you really think it's appropriate to have zero margin for handling unusually high ATC workloads? Because we just saw what happens when you have zero margin for handling unusually high ATC workloads: people start dying.
There was a single traffic controller handling the entire airport. This was bound to happen and will keep happening unless things change. It's absurd that the US hasn't been able to fix its ATC shortage in decades.<p>Currently over 41% of facilities are reliant on mandatory overtime, with controllers frequently working 60-hour weeks with only four days off per month.
This. Go look at the atc subreddit, controllers have been begging for help for ages. This isn't one guy's fault.
>This isn't one guy's fault.<p>Counterpoint. It's Regen's fault. He's the guy who decided that a high priority of the government was making sure air traffic controllers had no power to fight back against being horrifically overworked (because unions are evil you see)
One thing people forget is that the key complaints PATCO's members had were:<p><pre><code> 1. outdated equipment
2. staffing levels
3. workload and fatigue
</code></pre>
Reagan went to war with the union instead of addressing these things.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Professional_Air_Traffic_Controllers_Organization_strike" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Professional_Air_Traffic_...</a>
Pretty much everything broken in the USA stems directly from Reagen.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g95fiZCzjlo" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g95fiZCzjlo</a>
Wasn't it Congress who passed 5 U.S.C. § 7311. which says a person may not “accept or hold” a federal job if they “participate in a strike” against the U.S. government.<p><a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/7311" rel="nofollow">https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/7311</a><p>originally passed as<p><a href="https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?edition=2023&num=0&req=granuleid%3AUSC-2023-title5-section7311" rel="nofollow">https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?edition=2023&num=0&req=g...</a><p>So arguably if Reagan had not fired them he would be failing to uphold the laws of the United States.
You don't need a union to have effective management. It should also be their incentive not to cause people's death by overworking employees. Which is also dumb because it costs more to overwork then hire appropriately with overtime laws... cops exploit this all the time to steal money from taxpayers. (The ones in Seattle only get caught when they accidently charge over 24 hours of overtime in a day)<p>Union rules that say only a particular classification of employee is allowed to pick up a small package from a loading dock and move it twenty feet are also bad.<p>The blame can go to the top, for not managing correctly.
Or instead of pointing fingers we can uses our brains to solve the problems and increase safety.<p>You could spend a ton of time and money automating the process, and probably should especially in the future with the proliferation of drones.<p>But in the meantime there are simple solutions. Tunnels. No ground vehicles should be crossing runways when then could go under.
There have been six presidents who could have addressed this since Reagan. Every one of them shoulders some of the responsibility.
Yes, they should all have taken actions. But also, it is much more difficult to fix something broken once the damage has settled in. I guess none of them was willing to risk the disruption a fix would have caused. And the system seemed to have held up for quite a while. Weren't there some mass firings of ATC personal at the beginning of the Trump presidency?<p>The bottom line is: don't break things that are difficult or impossible to fix.
The is a good idea, but once they are broken, you should at least try to fix them, or bear some of the blame for not having tried.
The issue is the shortage, which that doesn't address. Quite the opposite, in fact.<p>Was in three different unions. Union didn't do squat for me. Mainly kept my wages down and gave the friends of the union rep the best shifts.
Agreed. There are a whole bucketload of problems, each one contributing to the staff shortage. The US has problems that other countries don't have (or have less of). It's a long-term organisational issue. None of it is insurmountable, but things need to be done differently, and the politics of that <i>may</i> be insurmountable.<p>Being an air-traffic controller anywhere in the world is a very intense job at times, <i>and</i> needs a huge amount of proficiency that only a small number of people are capable of doing. Couple that with:<p>- the FAA expects you to move to where ATCs are needed, so many of the qualified applicants give up when they hear where the posting is. <i>You can't force them to take the job!</i><p>- the technology is decades out of date and the Brand New Air Traffic Control System (it's seriously called that) won't roll out until 2028 at the earliest<p>- Obama's FAA disincentivised its traditional "feeder" colleges that do ATC courses to "promote diversity", net outcome was fewer applicants<p>- Regan broke the union in the 1980s<p>- DOGE indiscriminately decimated the FAA like it did most other government departments
When I heard about the crash I immediately recalled the recent articles about ATC shortages and overworked ATC's. And here we are. ONE dude running ATC for LaGuardia. Mind boggling.<p>I place no blame on the ATC as they were doing everything they could given the shit sandwich they were handed. I see this happening all over with staffs getting pared down to minimums, more (sometimes unpaid) over time, prices going up, and no raises.
I’m not trying to minimize a tragedy, but maybe this is almost the perfect wake up call?<p>Not many fatalities but nevertheless a spectacular collision. At a major hub airport in a major city. It’s hard to look away from, the cause is obvious, and all that without hundreds of deaths.
The perfect wake up call before this perfect wake up call was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Potomac_River_mid-air_collision" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Potomac_River_mid-air_col...</a><p>Imagine how good the next wake up call will be!<p>See also <i>Preemptive Memorial Honors Future Victims Of Imminent Dam Disaster</i>: <a href="https://theonion.com/preemptive-memorial-honors-future-victims-of-imminent-d-1819594660/" rel="nofollow">https://theonion.com/preemptive-memorial-honors-future-victi...</a>
It's not minimizing, it's galvanizing. 100% A wake up call. I don't fly much but I was bothered by the earlier ATC stories and now I don't feel safe at all.
I actually looked into becoming an ATC controller a year or two ago (I love aviation) and they had an age cap of ~30 to start training. I'm 32, so ruled out.
According to NYT it seems like there were 2 controllers and “2 more in the building”. They also wrote that 2 seems normal for the late slower time of the night.<p>Not saying this is the right number of controllers to have, just sharing what I read in NYT.
Why drain resources training more controllers when we're having energy collapse? Even if they start pumping oil, it will only delay the inevitable. What would we do with all the extra controllers if we have to fire them in ten years anyway?
Setting people up for failure and then using them as scapegoats, this simply infuriates me.<p>Expecting a single person to consistently keep their mental picture clear and perfect for their entire career is asinine and irresponsible.<p>We need systems and tools to eliminate such errors and support people, not use them as a person to blame when things inevitably go wrong.
From the article:<p>> But he [Sean Duffy] denied rumors that the tower had only one controller on duty.
The US intentionally created the ATC shortage. From Wikipedia:<p>The PATCO Strike of 1981 was a union-organized work stoppage by air traffic controllers (ATCs) in the United States. The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) declared a strike on August 3, 1981, after years of tension between controllers and the federal government over long hours, chronic understaffing, outdated equipment, and rising workplace stress. Despite 13,000 ATCs striking, the strike ultimately failed, as the Reagan administration was able to replace the striking ATCs, resulting in PATCO's decertification.<p>The failure of the PATCO strike impacted the American labor movement, accelerating the decline in labor unions in the country, and initiating a much more aggressive anti-union policy by the federal government and private sector employers.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Professional_Air_Traffic_Controllers_Organization_strike" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Professional_Air_Traffic_...</a>
I'm going to make myself unpopular and ask if an AI could have prevented this accident.
You are absolulety right, the blockchain could have prevented this accident
You don't need modern AI; you can build a system that does voice recognition, models the airport and airspace, and applies looks for violations.<p>Actually, <i>you</i> might be able to try this. Live ATC and radar is available.
With all the advances in technology, can there be no navigation app that can just tell you you're on a collision course instead of relying exclusivly on playing broken phone between flying and driving meatbags via a sitting one?
There is actually a set of lights which should have displayed red towards the trucks.<p>Were they not operating correctly, or did the driver ignore them is one of the questions the investigation will answer.<p>The system is called Runway Status Lights. And in case there is a disagreement between the ATC clearance and the lights the drivers are supposed to not enter the runway.<p><a href="https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl" rel="nofollow">https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl</a>
RWSL were red in the video.
<a href="https://viewfromthewing.com/__trashed-13/" rel="nofollow">https://viewfromthewing.com/__trashed-13/</a>
So maybe we'll be looking at training and fatigue for the firefighters too
The description is a bit vague, but I guess this should've automatically caught the landing plane immediately after it got the approval and started landing?<p>> When activated, these red lights indicate that ... there is an aircraft on final approach within the activation area
It is not working based on approval but based on sensors observing the airplane on final. Even if the plane is landing without clearance, even if the ATC is held hostage by a terorist or having a stroke the lights should turn red when an airplane is approaching the runway from the sky.<p>This pdf talks more about how it is implemented: <a href="https://www.oig.dot.gov/sites/default/files/WEB_Final_RWSL.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.oig.dot.gov/sites/default/files/WEB_Final_RWSL.p...</a><p>“RWSL is driven by fused multi-sensor surveillance system information. Using
Airport Surface Detection Equipment-Model X (ASDE-X), external surveillance
information is taken from three sources that provide position and other
information for aircraft and vehicles on or near the airport surface. RWSL safety
logic processes the surveillance information and commands the field lighting
system to turn the runway status lights on and off in accordance with the motion of
the detected traffic.”
In the video it looks as if the other emergency vehicles have stopped and only the first truck is driving. Maybe they missed the light or it turned red just after the first truck passed the light.
GA has FLARM.
I am alarmed at the high number of supposed engineers on this thread that are seemingly unaware of how safety-critical systems work. Literally every other piece of this system has redundancy built into it. Robustness is never optional in a scenario involving human safety.<p>When did this lunacy become an arguable position?
I'm not in aerospce field, but surprised how low-tech and critical to human error takeoff/landing/taxi process is.<p>We have TCAS/ACAS in air, but no similar automatic safety guards near/on the field?
"He said LaGuardia was “very well staffed”, with 33 certified controllers and more in training. He said the goal was to have 37 on staff."<p>I'm just tired of bullshit rhetoric. 33 is less than 37, that's "understaffed" not "very well staffed". Fuck Sean and our "leaders"... they speak with unauthority and spiritlessness.
> <i>According to the aviation safety reporting system administered by the US space agency Nasa</i>...<p>Aeronautics, yes, but I was still surprised to see NASA and not the FAA here. But folllowing up here <a href="https://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/overview/immunity.html" rel="nofollow">https://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/overview/immunity.html</a><p>> <i>The FAA determined that ASRP effectiveness would be greatly enhanced if NASA, rather than the FAA, accomplished the receipt, processing, and analysis of raw data. This would ensure the anonymity of the reporter and of all parties involved in a reported occurrence or incident and, consequently, increase the flow of information necessary for the effective evaluation of the safety and efficiency of the NAS.</i><p>Very neat. It's by design. Well done.
I work in exactly this space as a NASA contractor. I don't actually have a massive amount of insight into the FAA, but my impression is that they don't do much in the way of R&D on their own. I think (without hard numbers mind you) the vast majority of FAA R&D work starts at NASA or other government labs and gets transferred to the FAA when it gets to a sufficient level of maturity. In that context, it's even more natural for NASA to host the ASRS system.
Everybody is, not just the pilots. The US ATC system has been in a state of induced crisis since Reagan broke the union's back in the 1980s. Then Trump took office, laid off a bunch of people, cancelled a bunch of hires, and immediately that led to the conditions for the Potomac / DCA collision.<p>The US is just in an active state of collapse in many areas, including air travel.
It is surprising to me that airports do not use an interlock system for deconflicting the various paths segments that may be occupied by a vehicle. Trains have used mechanical ones since the 1800s [0]. The story and comments seem to indicate the only thing preventing collisions is the mind of one person--that sounds insane.<p>0. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlocking" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlocking</a>
While it's not as sophisticated, there is a technology called Runway Entrance Lights [0] that does somewhat the same thing in the specific context of this incident. LGA is one of 20 airports around the country where this system is installed, and you can clearly see that the system was functioning if you know where to look in the surveillance video that is circulating online. For whatever reason, the truck did not respect the indicator that they should not enter the runway. So in this specific incident, short of rail-like physical limitations on movement, I think it's unlikely that any amount of additional technology would have helped.<p>0: <a href="https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl" rel="nofollow">https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl</a>
If school busses can look both ways before crossing train tracks you'd think a firetruck would look both ways for airplanes coming down a runway. Don't want to blame the firemen though - this was a series of extrmeemly unfortuante scenarios and people trying to keep the airport running safely. For years people have been on soap boxes saying the FAA/NTSB needs to do better, and yet year after year they are poorly run and poorly funded.
A quick Google gives me that a 737 typically lands between 144 and 180 mph. I think that's quite a lot faster than most people are watching out for. Good news is they are bigger than cars and so easier to spot at a distance but I'm still skeptical that "look before you cross the runway" is sufficiently safe. Keep in mind that the planes may not even be on the ground yet - at the top end in 30s they could go from a 1.5 miles away in the sky (and up to 300-400ft in the air) to plowing through your position (iirc runways are about 2 miles long for jets).<p>I wonder if it'd even be reliable to see such a plane coming fast enough.<p>Now multiply that by the dozens of planes in your vicinity, and by the 100ish big US airports.
> I think that's quite a lot faster than most people are watching out for<p>That isn't even beyond the top speed of a car, which non-trained humans are very well capable of tracking by sight - to talk of airport workers that are specifically trained to look for air traffic. It really is not that hard to tell that an aircraft is on short final if you are actually looking at it.<p>With four miles of visibility in light rain at night, the aircraft <i>should</i> have been perfectly visible (in a vacuum); what remains to be determined is <i>why</i> the ARFF crew did not see it. The answer to that could range from "they didn't look at all" to "the orientation of the runway relative to the surrounding neighbourhoods meant that the CRJ's lights got lost in the city lights".
Does anyone know why the fire truck was driving across the runway in the first place? Was it a patrol, repositioning the truck, or was there an active incident that they were responding to? Seems like reducing the number of times you have to drive across an active runway is in general a good thing, but perhaps at an airport this old this is the only way to get from A to B.
> Does anyone know why the fire truck was driving across the runway in the first place?<p>Yes we know. There was an other airplane who declared an emergency and was about to evacuate the passengers on the tarmac. The other plane in question had two aborted takeoffs, and then they smelled some “odour” in the aft of the plane which made some of the crew feel ill.
I believe it was responding to the other active incident that the ATC was also handling where a plane failed to take off?
They were responding to an incident (unidentified odor on another plane)
Maybe they could try using ICE agents as air traffic controllers too
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