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Honestly it's pretty insane that the airline industry still uses black boxes with only 2 hours of recording time. I'd think that updating the storage capacity whenever possible would be a pretty big priority and it's not like such a procedure would take a lot of time or effort.
Adding extra storage, no. Getting the new model of black box certified, yes, thats almost certainly a very long and expensive process. That said the amount of time it's taken for such things to happen is not ideal.
@@darthkarl99 This is true. Variations to legally mandated equipment like this need to come from the governing body, and in this case the relevant governing bodies should make this change to requirements. So I can see why the aircraft manufacturers don't _change_ CVRs of their own will, but I wonder why they haven't simply added additional recording equipment; I don't know of any reason they couldn't do so.
The technology exists. Storage is cheap. Dashcams have a "snapshot" capability to store data when something significant happens. The hard part is getting it certified for aircraft use.
It's bs to say its hard to get it certified. The only hard part is getting the people who are in charge of the certification to do their job. One of the biggest issues in the industry I work for is the fact that the government specs are 60 years out of date or worse. We've tried to get them to update them, but they typically just copy paste from the old into a new document. This results in a huge amount of errors that confuse the situation even further. We've started a semi industry wide petition to get them to take a serious look and evaluate using modern standards.
I’m 63, been flying since 1976, flying roughly 900 hrs per year at an airline. I’ve never seen the system in worse condition. The airlines are shoving more and more people into more and more flights. The ATC system is overwhelmed and showing signs of collapse. My average duty day has increased by 31/2 hours over the last 2 years to nearly 12 hours a day. That’s average! A lot of days it’s 14 hours. My rest periods have decreased accordingly. 10-11 hours is normal. That’s from the time we block in plus 15 mins to show time the next day. We are at the hotel 8 hours usually. The newest rest rules actually allowed things to get worse instead of better. ATC delays and short staffing is causing real problems. I’ll be glad to retire soon.
You will enjoy retirement. I spent 45 years working for a flag carrier. One of the best days on my career was doing my last landing at the end of a 16 hour leg . Don’t miss it at all.
As an avionics mechanic myself, I can absolutely say that I agree with the consensus that loss of valuable experience is a concern. Personally, I feel the lack of past opportunities for newer mechanics in recent years, coupled with the pandemic response from most commercial airlines, really has set the future of aviation up for failure. Valuable time was lost and now we run a risk as older, more seasoned mechanics are retiring, thus new mechanics don't have the time needed to learn from them. As always, education is important in all professions but we cannot underestimate the value of experience within trade positions. Short term economic strategies to save money may ultimately cost companies exponentially more in the future with these oversights.
I am an expert in organizational change and am in aerospace. The loss of experienced people can’t be estimated. We have to team up more experienced people with the less. This is hard to do and won’t happen at all if companies don’t understand it and won’t fund it. They will pay 10X on the 1st lawsuit.
@@jamesdellaneve9005 The FAA mandates Airlines have to provide training to maintenance personnel. In my years of experience, I've seen very few hours allotted towards training and expecting seasoned mechanics to train them. The company wants to keep your nose to the grind stone and not in a classroom.
If there were a educational institution opened that looked to hire all the retiring top level pros (and pay them accordingly) to teach the new players that would be an amazing opportunity for all involved. If they (this new university) can garner a great reputation as the top tier level of professional education and consistently graduated skillful talent, that’s where all the knowledge could live and that’s where all the passionate and dedicated would strive to attend. Idk if this exists, or how it would come about if not. Surely tons of folks who adore the industry and want to see it thrive and survive would want their hands in making sure it has ample funding. Aircraft manufacturers, commercial and industrial airlines, hell, even the government would bode well seeing something like this gets its sea legs… Which one of you can make this happen? I’ve got zero aviation experience, but I know a little in the education field and am currently studying funding education centers and fundraising/capital gains campaigns. I’d love to volunteer my time with something like this…
you calling it "education" instead of teaching is all anyone needs to know about how things will evolve. education is the transfer of behavioral patterns, while teaching is the transfer of knowledge.
My first flight was in 1967. The instant we touched the tarmac at West Palm, the pilot braked extremely hard. About two seconds later, another plane took off directly over us in the opposite direction, from the same runway, really, really low. I don't know if that near miss was reported, but it sure didn't make the news. Hundreds of people were literally a couple of seconds from death. No biggie
Bonus: I don't know which direction the wind was coming from, but at least one of those planes was using the runway in the wrong direction for wind (and therefore had higher ground speed than it should have). Extra little cherry on top of that already-terrifying near miss. And yeah, no chance that a comparable incident today wouldn't be big news.
@@patheddles4004 Good point. I'm not sure if that last sentence was ironic or not, but we only get told what they want told. BTW, when I wrote really low, the shadow of the other plane was just a little bit bigger than our plane. So, really really low. Life goes on, if you're lucky
@@robertmoffett3486 not ironic at all - I reckon any time in the past 20+ years that would have made news either way, but especially now when there's an existing media narrative for it to serve. And yeah agreed re near death experiences - they happen, and that very much was one. Just wanted to be clear that I wasn't dismissing it, is all.
@@patheddles4004 Maybe the wind was light or calm. In this case runway in use doesn't matter from ops point of view. Who knows, maybe they were in changing runway direction... The disturbing fact is the error on ATC side.
In the hospital I work in, we have an error and near error reporting system. Anything that goes wrong that has influence on the patient is an error. And anything that goes wrong behind the scene and is caught before it reaches the patient, is a near error. The errors are collected and analyzed. We aim to prevent errors by making our processes safer. You cant ever solve a problem, especially not a systemic problem, without knowing about the (near) misses being reported liberally.
NASA has the Aviation Safety Reporting System for exactly that. Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, and the UK have similar.
That system was pioneered in aviation and Human factors has been trying to get it into medicine for decades. If aviation had the error rate of medicine, we estimate we'd lose a 737 and everyone onboard every single day.
ALL such incidents should be analysed as 'major accidents', when the reason it was not a major accident is simply chance . Or put another way the roll of a dice. If it were to happen again perhaps it would have killed everyone. So best investigate it fully.
My uncle worked for Blue Cross/Blue Shield and my father worked as a lawyer defending the US in medical malpractice cases (malpractice committed by military doctors and hospitals). Between the two of them, I can't tell you how many times I heard about the wrong leg being amputated. At least now they mark the leg with a black sharpie.
Agreed. I'm a professional firearms trainer for a government agency. Every projectile that doesn't land where it's supposed to requires paperwork on my part. If you don't correct the behavior that can lead to accidents, then you will have more actual accidents.
Thanks Petter, as a 30k hour retired heavy jet captain, a great response to these (somewhat disturbing) incidents! I absolutely believe that CVRs MUST BE upgraded to have much longer storage before wiping over existing recordings. It doesn’t even need to be totally crash proof, as this could be additional recording devices for incidents rather than accidents. After all- a crashed aeroplane won’t overwrite recordings!
As a 30k captian, you spend a total of 1250 total days flying, meaning you were airborn for almost 3,5 years. That is more than the life expectancy of many different kind of birds.
Eh, there’s no reason a CVR with more storage needs to be any less crash proof. If anything, it might need to be a bit larger physically, but even then, you can get a terabyte on a single chip. Chips of guaranteed reliability like what would be used in a CVR and FDR would be of lesser capacity, but still, even just 64 or 128GB would be enough for days of high quality, multi-channel (i.e. many microphones dotted around the place) recording.
@@uzaiyaro Heck, these days a 1 or 2 TB SSD is pretty cheap in comparison to the cost of a 100+ pax airplane and practically indestructible once it's loaded into a shock/explosion resistant container. IMO the manufacturers are simply not going to voluntarily add more telemetry that could point towards system malfunction (read: lawsuits) instead of pilot error.
With all due respect to all, I'm afraid that cannabis use may have some influence on most of those "inattention" events that are often disguised with a generic categorization like "loss of situational awareness." I have many sources of information to back up my claim: I hear daily that cannabis has become a habit, just like smoking tobacco or drinking spirits under the stupid label of "recreational use". I know that doctors, engineers, pilots, truck drivers, whatever, 80/90 percent smoke marijuana. I do not claim that any of the incidents discussed are related to the use of cannabis, what I infer is the possibility of delving into this dangerous subject under the watchful sight of a "non-complacent eye" that could uncover this disastrous trend.
My father was a pilot with more than 20 000 flight hours, split roughly even between agricultural aviation and helicopter. He often stated his opinion that all pilots should be trained in aerobatics, not because they will actually need to do aerobatics, but to develop a more instinctual feel for flying. A feel for how the aircraft will behave when things go strange, and that "seat of the pants" feel which will tingle the "something is wrong" feeling. Your opinion on that?
I know almost nothing about aviation, but my gut tingle thinks that your father is absolutely right. Unfortunately maybe the tingling seat school would cost quite a lot of money...although of course human life would be far more valuable than all the money in the world. My respect to your dear old man. ❤
Although….I get the impression from several MP crash videos that pilots flying seat-of-their-pants rather than responding procedurally according to what instruments and computers were telling them actually contributed to the crash. Plus, in the Airbus (I think) he’s said it’s so fly-by-wire that the joystick controller gives no feedback so you can’t fly by feel.
There has been a lot of discussion in the US flying community about "hand flying" skills since at least the 1990's. I recall a lot of discussion about it in the late 1990's when I was doing my initial PPL training. One of the issues was the elimination of spin recovery training from PPL requirements. After my PPL, I voluntarily took a "unusual attitude and upset recovery" training course, which I felt really improved my overall flying skills and confidence.
And pilots need to lose the rats nest around the mouth. Beards look hideous and unprofessional in uniform. Makes pilots and such, look like dumpster diving bums, a ba d guy from m i d ea st or a follower of ma rxx.
@@MasterCarguy44-pk2dq Wrong. Im a CFI for 2 decades. Spi ns are Only FAA reqr. for CFI cert and only 2 turns on each direction. Easy to do from 4k agl on a Cessna.
I'm not a pilot, I'm just a person on the internet, but I've done spin recovery in KSP. And it's one of the most satisfying things, being able to recover from a problem and return safely to ground.
Lmao. It's crazy that people are using it as a bad word when "Woke" means exactly what it says; that you are AWAKE and aware. It's so silly the nonsense over the word. Why would being woke be a bad thing? "Oh darn! I know the truth and when I'm being lied to"
@@stevecavanagh8033 I think it's dangerous if they are right leaning! So how about we just give them a cup of coffee and hope they stay awake! You don't need to bring politics into everything! Have a nice day, A Leftist!
Thank you for making mention of ramp safety. It is something very overlooked outside the industry and even at times within the industry. Airports are a very hazardous place and when you put people out on the ramp with little training and low pay you create a recipe for disaster. We as an industry need to do better at looking out for those who make it possible for the aircraft to even leave the ground. One team one fight.
Absolutely true Curio. As a former "ramp rat" (1995 - 2004/SEA) ground handling is so overlooked. With baggage and cargo loaders, fuel trucks, catering, de-icers, etc., there's a lot of moving parts. Unfortunately most of those people are making very low wages for the work and responsibility they have. And these companies get what they pay for. An overwhelming majority of these people take great pride and care in their work, but it only takes one mistake to ruin a lot of lives. I can say for sure the biggest lesson I learned in my time on the ramp? Don't go drinking with the Russian flight attendants. 😂
When I used to read the help wanted ads, JFK had ads for baggage handlers every single day for years and years. That's because the pay is crap for that crappy job. Only desperate people apply. So when they do slow, sloppy work, that's why. They're basically unemployable anywhere else, and they work un airports. Not good
I’m grateful that the safety message seems to have sunk in the UK airports. I feel safe on the ramp, though I’m very keenly aware that I’m largely responsible for my own safety. If I follow the rules and stay observant I’ll be okay. That and jet engines are scary.
I agree. They can record 25 hours. Investigations should always be about finding the truth.. not about blame. I really like your videos... which is kinda odd as I got out of aviation years ago. But I still am very interested in the interaction of crew members and ground crews in regards to safety.
It’s all about homologation rules. Simply fitting a bigger memory would require a complete recertification. It’s ridiculous that rules can’t accommodate such an improvement but that’s how it is.
I was thinking the same and checked the data generated by 7 days of 10 mono audio streams with CD quality. That would "only" be 600GB of data so absolutely doable nowadays. If they already have to recertify the process they might as well go bigger directly.
As a UK pilot it's always seemed odd to me that in the US more than one aircraft at a time can be cleared to land on a particular runway, and take offs may well be happening on that runway after another aircraft has been cleared to land on it. In UK, you only get your landing clearance (with the exception of 'land after') when there is no other aircraft using that runway or cleared to use it. That seems a heck of a lot safer to me.
Not only "seems" a lot safer, it IS a lot safer. Exactly the same sort of thing where in the UK we only have green man pedestrian phases when there is no possibility of conflicting vehicle movements at traffic signals. Not only seems safer, but is safer. Now of course you can still get vehicles making conflicting movements, but that's when people are jumping red traffic lights or emergency vehicles are using their sirens. Much less common and thus much less likely to cause problems.
@@laaaliiiluuu no, it's because without it the amount of flights in the country would be limited and the airspace would be even more congested. There is no danger for issuing a takeoff and landing clearance if the minimum separation criteria have been met. 1000s of aircraft land every day safely using this method. So yeah, I think it's safe. You are just using one event to justify your ignorance.
That advice about not worrying about flying in or out of places where there are many reports of minor incidents reminds me of when I worked in security. A company I work for would sometimes get clients cancelling service after some time because they had problems before and then had no problems for a long time. The clients thought the need for security was over, until the problems came back. We all said that it was the fact that they had good security that they didn't have problems. Good security is all about preventing the problems in the first place. Unfortunately, in these sorts of matters, safety and security, too many people don't think about them the right way. Obviously, with frequent safety reports of minor incidents it indicates that people are paying attention to safety. If it's not all about prevention then it's not about safety.
Sounds like IT. Try to cut costs because you hardly ever have problems and suddenly you have constant problems and expensive per-item fixes. How is it that all middle and senior management roles don’t seem to be educated about how real life works? 😂
Can it be that the rise in numbers in near misses is also due to the fact that some airports have started allowing planes to take off or land at shorter intervals in certain weather conditions? I remember reading a few years back that Heathrow Airport was clearing planes to land every 1.5 minute if the wind was strong enough to dissipate the vortexes. Which would have doubled the amount of planes coming in to land, because before that, the separation had to be around 3 minutes. So, same number of ATC controllers had to handle twice as much traffic. Unless, of course, they hired more, but I don't know anything about it. Love your videos, please keep them coming!❤
I think (for what it's worth) that the up-tick in flights allowed might have a contribution, but that it's not as simple as that... Otherwise, you'd have noticed the upward trend in incidents at or around the same time. Aviation authorities are very careful about calculating the risks and returns for allowing closer proximities around airports for any reason, and largely because they've been bitten in the ass before. BUT the industry is just as susceptible to world events as everyone else. That means, they're also dealing with the hiccups in supplies, logistics, and personnel requirements with the surreptitious endings to the lockdowns that had been instated for TWO YEARS prior. Already lots of pilots that had been reliable, seasoned hands at the controls were retired, and suddenly demand was up. At the same time, ATC has been the unsung heroes of the sky for decades, and with the lockdowns, a LOT of their seasoned people also retired rather than linger about a job that's no longer fit to pay the bills... and now demand is up incredibly, ONLY nobody seems to remember the ATC until sh*t hits the fan. One after another restrictions are lifted, and the world just keeps turning, whether we (or ATC or FAA or ANYBODY else) is ready or not. So without access to a certified (as in qualified to work) army of personnel, there are planes that have been on moth-balls for months or years that are needed in the fleet. Pilots have WAY passed their required hand-flying times in the lockdowns, OR they've retired outright, and even with a pay incentive to come back, they aren't any better off until they've had the check-outs and training... The same goes for ATC personnel, and some of them simply don't want to come back any longer. They could've starved to death waiting on the industry to do anything to help out or for some government program that didn't help... SO they're already "in too deep" with a new life and livelihood to go back now... and students are trying to get through their courses, but that takes time and money... and some things just can't be forced, no matter how much money a company throws at it. Travel demands are up past pre-pandemic levels by a majority of accounts, and we simply haven't stabilized it between supply and demand... It's going to take time and resources to accomplish that, and the HOPE is that the FAA and ATC will find their ways to manage it and mitigate any future hazards to incidents diminishing in frequency over time, but avoiding any outright accidents as much as possible. ;o)
@@gnarthdarkanen7464 well, as Petter always says, there are always a number of things that need to go wrong to lead up to an accident. I named one he didn't mention in the video, and you named more. All that and possibly more, leads to all those near misses, and quite possibly an accident down the line. Governments around the world should support airlines and airports financially to help them get back on their feet, because air travel affects a county's economy greatly - all those tourists coming to spend their hard earned money there. But governments didn't do a very good job during the pandemic, and now they just follow the same trend, unfortunately. That's as far as I know, of course.
I remember over 40 years ago, sitting on a rooftop in Uxbridge, watching the aircraft approaching Heathrow from the East. I could see about 6 or 7 queued up on the approach, and the interval between them was around 90 - 100 seconds. It was a nice sunny summer's day, not particularly windy, hence me sunbathing on the roof. There was certainly a lot less than 3 minutes separation then. Although I suppose they could've been alternating 27L - 27R, it seems unlikely that all departures would be held for a significant time.
@@The_1_Assassin Well, Governments have never been particularly good at crisis management, and the larger they are, the worse they seem to do. Personally, I think there's a deeper seeded problem with old fashioned "forethought"... Agencies like the CIA have a booklet or protocol to fall upon for damn nearly anything. They've largely even planned on what to do in case we encountered "little green men" on the moon, believe it or not, and the President during the '69 Apollo mission had a speech ALREADY prepared for delivery in case the whole thing went to hell in a handbasket. Yet, with the 1919 flu pandemic, and outbreaks of Ebola, Dengue Fever, Tuberculosis, Plague, and countless others since, you'd think we had at least the rough framework of a decent plan ready for something like this... even only about 20 or 30 years post Cold-War, when biological and radiological warfare were ongoing concerns even taught about in schools... complete with drills. BUT no... Not a hint that anyone in all of DC (or most other capitals around the planet) had a CLUE IN HELL what they were on about. Mostly hand-flapping and bitching their way through a circus-act version of "The Blame Game"... Yeah, Petter didn't pinpoint many of the issues involved in the near misses... He DID specify that he wasn't really prepared to get into details, since the NTSB and FAA hadn't completed their sides of the paperwork and reports... SO even my hack at it, is largely a mix of dubious research on some interviews with "experts" (???) and a fair chunk of supposition... Frankly, I based a good part on that Safety Summit meeting of the FAA "et al"... Because it's a public and obvious show that they at least know they have a bigger problem than a "minor computer glitch". I could get into how the Reaganomics from 40 years ago still have the tax code upside down, and that those with the resources to do anything utterly refuse, but that's going to just sound mean or malicious... ;o)
The last part about worrying more about where there are no reports reminds me of survivor bias. Planes on a war front needed armor. Initially, armor was proposed at places with the highest concentration of bullet holes on returned aircraft. What was needed was armor over the other places; places where bullet holes resulted in aircraft not returning at all.
The Austin incident is the one that's really concerning because the Fedex seemed to be the only party with situation awareness; the controller was oblivious, and I'm not convinced that the Southwest knew what was going on (to be fair they weren't in a position to see the Fedex plane). In the other events that I know of, the controller had caught what happened and the pilot rejected on time, which meant there was more than one remaining layer of defense. Not so in the Austin incident.
The reports I saw say that the Fedex was on a Cat111 Autoland and that the ILS airport rules were not adhered to. I think that this is one of the most serious incidents.
That controller placed the Southwest aircraft onto the runway in front of the approaching FedEx aircraft with less than the minimum required separation of a departing aircraft and a landing aircraft. He put the lives of all souls on both aircraft in grave danger. There was a subsequent ground incident at Austin, the audio of which suggests that the responsible tower controller had been demoted to ground, and was still incompetent.
Both the FDX and SW aircraft would have been shown on each aircraft’s TCAS display on the navigation screens, both crews should have seen the traffic… It’s obvious that FDX saw SW moving on the runway, whether or not SW saw FDX isn’t clear…
9:01 Correction: In the USA, company requirements are never lower than FAA, statutory, and regulatory requirements. Company requirements are always on top of government requirements. So, if company requirements were lowered it would have an impact on who was hired, their competence, and their fit with the work. They would still be "qualified" because they meet government requirements, but they might not be the best. That is how it works in Canadian and US labour law. You cannot hire unqualified, but the government does not take into account a company might want to hire the best.
This is the same way it works everywhere in the world. Government competency requirements have never been anywhere close to what most airlines require. I feel it’s a disingenuous argument to even bring up the fact that government requirements haven’t changed. What we are really interested in is if airline requirements have changed. We already know for a fact that recruiting priorities have changed. The only remaining interesting question is if changed priorities have affected standards.
But check out the videos of the confirmation hearings for Biden's nominee for head of the FAA, Phillip Washington. He didn't know squat about aviation. Fortunately the nomination was withdrawn, because even some Democrats weren't going to vote for him. But don't discount the danger of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion hires, when the DEI goals supercede merit as the primary criteria for hiring.
As I recall it, it was the pilot unions that insisted on the cockpit voice recordings being extremely limited in duration. There was concern that private conversations in the cockpit might be used in disciplinary action against pilots even if not related to an aviation incident.
Not arguing or calling you a liar. I would sincerely like to see evidence of what you say. I do doubt it very much. I don't have any beliefs to begin with, and you're asking us to believe a pretty big stretch.
I can imagine that. However, part of the job being a pilot is people watch over your shoulders all the time, because safety is too important. You can have private conversations about stuff outside work time.
Would that not require EVERY flight, regardless of any issues having their tapes reviewed before the aircraft were allowed to resume it’s scheduled flights? Not to mention that it does little good for long haul flights…. Though I could see their concern on Privacy of their conversations, as a frequent flyer, Safety and Focus should be exercised when they are flying. I’d hate to experience a situation where something happened that come to find out, Pilot-Billy Joe Convo was distracted and too jovial that he missed something important. 😶
Thanks, but I have been a senior Auditing NDT technician certified in the US and Australia including aviation. I retired 1 month earlier than my 65 birthday simply because I had NO confidence in the company I worked for. One of the main reasons was the watering down of the certification process. The new system was geared to supply trained personnel quickly and cheaply. In my eyes and from what I could see, technicians were not up to standard. It will be my guess that, just as many industries water down qualifications dangerous issues will arise more frequently and be more serious. The US has been at the forefront of this process in my view, and the current state of diplomacy and law enforcement are reflections of cost cutting, shifting the responsibility, rampant drug use and poor training. Just an opinion, thanks again
I have a 20 acre farm in Washington state, USA. Right in the flight path to Boeing Field, SeaTac and JBLM. We heard far more coverage about the ramp agent incident than the runway/airport incidents. I’m glad that it has been covered like it has.
I can tell you I used to be a controller for 18 years, I quit because I was tired of being overworked and understaffed. My guess is they’re letting more people through the cracks because everyone who hasn’t quit is tired.
And the ones who stick around are being pushed even harder. It's happening in rail too, and I'd be surprised if trucking and shipping won't start seeing similar issues.
Loss of experienced personnel has been an issue in many industries since Covid -- especially low-wage positions. I'm a lowly deli-clerk in a grocery store and find myself in the position of being the only person in the department other than the manager who knows how to sharpen a slicer. The manager complains frequently that people aren't doing certain work and I'm asking myself if they even know that they're supposed to. Just this past week I had to train someone to do part of her job that she didn't know was part of her job -- because she'd only had one day of training for that position. When I learned that position I had 3 days of formal training before having to work it alone. I'm sure it's the same for the low-wage grunt work at the airport too.
As a teacher, the exact same thing happens with new teachers and I believe all professions regardless of wage. Experience is invaluable, it allows one to be sufficiently prepared and to immediately recognize faults in the process. There is no way an inexperienced person can have such insight, no matter how witty they are.
I will say that at a friends airline they used to disseminate (to the pilot group) their own safety incidents in an effort to educate them. With social media now and pilots airing “dirty laundry” on Facebook etc. the company has started to rescind this practice. Now details and context are left out and in some cases certain events are completely redacted for review. Safety culture is giving way to social media and narcissism imo.
@@snorttroll4379 Sim events are usually only every 9months to a year depending on the type of training certification. There’s a ton of stuff that couldn’t possibly be covered in a career. And some things are better simply briefed but you add gravitas to a policy/procedure if you can point to a legit operational reason.
The aviation industry relies so much on driven, capable, and resilient people. Everyone has an extremely important role to play, which makes it even more beautiful! Incidents like these are always worrying, but I'm glad that steps are being taken to ensure the safety of passengers, pilots, cabin crew, ground personnel, etc. Thanks for another insightful video, Petter!
Because of that one incident, all of us who work on the ramp have had extra training this year with emphasis on the chocking, cone placement around arriving aircraft, and GPU usage.
What happened to that ramp agent that was killed is criminal and should have been covered much more. Those contractors work them to death and ignore safety for time and the majors look the other way for cost savings. I feel so bad for her family and the pilots involved. Even the mechanics and crew that must have had to clean up that mess :(
The ramp agent was warned multiple times by co-workers to stay clear of the engine. She ignored them. The San Antonio incident - where a man was ingested into an engine - was a suicide.
Your last comment on incident reporting density reminds me of a story from WW2 when a group looked at where bullet holes were on returning aircraft to look at further armour protection until someone pointed out it should be going where there are no holes as those aircraft never returned.
In WWI they introduced steel helmets and head injuries went through the roof. It was determined that head injuries increase because prior to steel helmets alot of those people would have outright been killed.
@@MentourNow yeah, "should" race/gender/WTFBBQness affect pilot hiring? no, absolutely not! does it in actuality? hmm.... hard to say for sure. :/ hiring managers are people... sometimes people with weird ideas.
What's weird is saying "hard to say" about something so obvious. Anytime your stated goal is to hire based on anything other than merit, there is an affect. Of course there is. I don't think doublespeak and ambiguity help. We should all have courage in our convictions. Or not. But when you're talking about placing the heavy responsibility of human lives in someone's hands, motives and agendas have no place. Save that for the voting booth.
When I was flying general aviation in the 70s out of Palm Beach international my FBO was located on the east end of the field. Most of the time I would request a midfield takeoff because this runway is quite long. On one occasion I got cleared to takeoff and luckily I had looked to my left, which was to the west and saw a Commercial airliner barreling down the runway on takeoff before I entered the active runway. I called the tower and ATC was freaking out when they realized what they had done, but I was already on the radio, telling them that I have not moved.
It’s understandable that there is a voice recording that is designed to survive a crash, but with modern technologies there is no reason why there can’t be weeks worth of voice and video saved to a thumb drive that doesn’t have to survive impact.
It's also important to note that random events seem clustered to our human perception. So determining if any given cluster of incidences is really abnormal is best left to statisticians and not political commentators.
Also worth mentioning that with modern media coverage and internet, we might get shown things based on media trends. If these same instances occurred in 1995, how many of us would know about them?
Statisticians noticed the trend,it's now on politicians to react. Everything IS politics unfortunately. Noticed any other "trends" in society and how are those delt with both from statisticians and politicians ? Not encouraged by either.
Like the plane protection program during WWII. They carefully examined where the damage was occurring on all returning aircraft to see where it should be better armored. Then somebody pointed out. There were little or no data points for common areas on all aircraft examined. Those aircraft that could not be examined were not returning due to battle damage. You're not looking for where you have a lot of data. You're looking for where you have none.
Regarding the ground crews suffering attrition during the pandemic - Not only did they lose lots of experienced workers, but they also lost a lot of morale. Workers who didn't lose their jobs lost working hours and pay early on in the pandemic, then had to work extra hard when airline travel ticked up suddenly late in the pandemic without any real warning. These workers also faced unusual work procedures that were meant to improve worker health, but were generally perceived as uncomfortable or inefficient (e.g. mandatory masking while performing manual labor, temperature screenings when arriving to work, etc.) This was all done without any compensation to make up for the stress and adverse working conditions that arose during the pandemic. Almost nobody got hazard pay, and those who did didn't get enough to justify the extra stress. In short, the workers who didn't lose their jobs were burnt out. Burnt out workers = Less attentive, less thorough, less care put into their work. This doesn't just affect airplane-related incidents, but all aspects of the airport, such as increased rates of stranded and lost luggage (up 30% from 2019 according to one report published in 2022). Burnout also means higher turnover of employees in the long run. Frankly, the companies should and could have handled their employees' needs a bit better, and I'm not sure what they could do to fix it now.
As a very recently retired pilot and check airman for the last ten years of my career, I am not surprised. The attitude I came across from the young pilots I met as I was on my way out the door was horrifying. They knew better than anyone else and were very resistant to the "old way" of flying. The old way they speak off bridged gaps between wars and aircraft development. I lived thru pre WWII freighters to the most modern of jets and had to deal with the training of automation to hands on pilots.. Skill is still called for. Automation will never fix the unexpected .
I would be very worried though about accusations of "woke". What that usually is, is a method for politicians to gain more power to cure it. I will expect the republicans to try to gain more power in the FAA and to try to do more to dictate how pilots should behave.
@@jakejacobs7584 The title of the video. Marinus18 was adding to your observation by bridging it back to the clickbait title of the original topic, and why the title is so attractive. .
@@MentourNow There was a story in the US sometime last year that FAA changed their hiring priorities for ATC from people who excelled in math or other studies to prioritize hiring of people who played in school sports. It was officially done in the name of diversity. Make what you want from it. 🤷
@@mofayer I can't seem to find anything remotely like that. Maybe since you're making a pretty outrageous claim, you could tell us what source and date that was so we can find it and read or watch for ourselves. I really think you must be misremembering; Petter covered that in this very video, and you seem to be contradicting him here.
As always, a thoughtful and balanced take on a difficult situation. Thank you. One observation I have is that, being a long time listener of LiveATC at JFK, is how sloppy a (very) few pilots are at reading back hold short instructions. Honestly, you would have thought that was piloting 101. Why do I hear in every hour session, one or more failing to do so? Of late it is interesting that ATC now insist on readback - a positive development. However, I think some pilots need a change of attitude (mental) and get with the programme; it was disgusting to hear ATC ask of one (mainline US carrier) to read back a hold short instruction that they hadn't done, which the pilot then read back - without callsign - then ATC asked to repeat again with callsign and the pilot clearly thought this was below him and a real inconvenience: that kind of attitude should not be tolerated - time for a tiny of minority of pilots to start taking their job more seriously and earn their considerable pay cheque. How do you shake those people out of the system? (Much as the recent JFK American pilots could do with a change of attitude if you ask me - flying across the Atlantic after a major near miss - how could they mentally do that? Did they do that so that the cockpit voice recorder would not be preserved and to try to make it not flag up on the airline's management radar? And then not to agree to discuss whilst being recorded - again change the attitude guys!)
I'm 15 and I absolutely love your videos. Aviation is so interesting and you really make me to want to learn to fly! The breakdowns of incidents on both the main channel and this one are always so fascinating, and the safety of the whole industry is really quite comforting. I hope you have a great easter break :)
@@MentourNow Wish i could get training but havent got a snowballs chance in hell of passing the medical due to 1) being slightly colour blind and 2) suffeing from a systolic murmer of the heart 😢.
@@jaws666well you never know what will happen in the future. learn things for their own sake as you’re doing, and if something changes you’ll be prepared.
You are amazing - i am not a pilot and never will be, however your spirit inspired me to look at my life from your perspective and the way you spin out the simple cause and effect which I can apply to my life - I have been watching you about 2 years and my life and my way of thinking and decision making have successfully all fallen into place - You are my spiritual healer and MENTOur - You parents should be very proud - The impact that you made on my life is enlightening
The fact that the AA crew didn't pull the CVR C/B is mindboggling to me. They just had a runway incursion, it honestly makes me think that it was intentional and they had done something seriously wrong like completely ignoring sterile cockpit rules.
@@bordershader Sterile cockpit means that there is no non operational talk below 10000 feet. Meaning below 10000 feet you don't talk about anything that's not strictly important to the safe operation of the aircraft
Pilots and routes have been shuffled in a manner never seen before, when the airlines re-hired the pilots after the 2020 closures. Pilots are surely very proficient at piloting the aircrafts they are trained on, but are not completely acquainted with each airport layout, and the local ATCs behaviour on departure and arrival. Thank you Mentour Pilot for another well thought and well laid-out video on an a current hot topic.. Greetings, Anthony
Pilots have flown varying routes for ages. The public seems to think that we have assigned routes and only fly one or two, but this is almost never the case, and really hasn't beed in decades.
@@michaelproulx3051that’s true, but if you’ve flown for one airline in one base for years, you’re probably pretty familiar with a certain set of airports, and then if you leave for another airline in a different base with different routes, you may be flying to airports you’re not familiar with more often.
@@nathanmcguire932 flying to airports you’re not familiar is not anything special and exotic. It is basically business as usual. Easier for the high lQ pilots though, than for the two digits lQ pilots.
Petter, I believe you made a great call at 14:08 about the issuance of cross clearances several minutes before aircrafts reach that runway. The situation, in particular at major airports, is continuously changing: controllers may have predicted a different evolution than what later develops. Issuing the whole taxi clearance in advance may save time on congested radio and traffic but time should never be bartered against safety.
I think it is a good idea to have more simulator training where there is no automation, only hand flying. Have them come out of challenging situations totally by hand.
When we implemented Positive Train Control (PTC) as a safety overlay system for railroads, all logs are offloaded to a server every time the train reaches a WiFi hub at a yard or depot. This is totally independent of the normal onboard recorders.
Our CASA several times mentioned in their official safety publications about loss of competencies due to COVID lockdown. Some experienced older pilots and controllers retired at all, those who left on duty had a year of very relaxed work, staff numbers were decreased and so on. So when operations started to return back with planes taking off in Sydney every 3 minutes it appeared that they can not safely cope with it.
Brilliant as always Peter ! June 9th. 2005 how one US Airways pilot made a split-second decision to keep his B737 from lifting , to allow a Aer Lingus A330 to go above his B 737( an almost counter- intuitive manoeuvre, ) the US Airways crew were awarded superior airmanship certifications.
As one who was involved in the marketing and crisis management of airlines and handling before I retired, I was, as I have learned over the years to expect, thoroughly impressed by your totally impartial ad professional, detailed examination in this video. I believe it should be compulsory viewing, not only for those involved in aviation, but also those affected by the increasing effects fashionable 'woke'! In every respect you are an utterly sane voice in the industry whose videos are both instructional and thoroughly enjoyable. Thank you for all you do to help the safety and enjoyment of flying - and for those of us who have an incurable love of it, though no longer possible being, as I am, an old codger! Rob
As someone planning on doing a lot of air travel this year you put my mind at rest. I agree that it's better to be flying somewhere that safety is a top concern. Thank you as always for a great video.
Peter, i am in marine Industry. Regarding black boxes we have overcomed these issues long time ago. Our recordings are "looped" for 1-2 days only(our travel time is really more extended than yours) BUT we have an ""emergency"" button, that when we press, it KEEPS in memory the last loop. This will lead to some issues of WHEN to press, WHY to press, liability for captain etc, but it really helps. Keeping in mind that a remote storage is quite more cheap than fixed SSDs, could be really helpfull tool, not to an accident ( as it can be destroyed outside of the protected box) ,but at least to the "Near misses" I have seen a lot of your videos, and i understand that there are MORE that you cannot say publicly, especially for the category of ""en route malfuctions" that later on vanished, or other strange behaviors of aircraft..... . In such cases, if you could store ALL data , even for 30 minutes and present to your technical team, for that specific period, could help identify a lot of "holes" of the Swiss cheese, and prevent further strange behaviour of aircraft /systems/ or handlers at all. No need to use satellite links, no need expenses, only one EXTRA space , of a size a mobile phone, where a USB stick is attached and 2 buttons , one at each side for emergency record. When you land, you deliver that USB to your technical team...and that's it!
Aircraft already have that, and always have. There's a procedure to pull the breaker for the CVR so that it stops recording, preserving what's already on it. The issue is, you don't generally want to be disabling the CVR at the start of a flight because if an accident then occurs on that flight, you've no CVR record of the accident itself. As far as your various other ideas, it's probably easier (and even cheaper, in the long run) just to get current CVRs upgraded to 25 hours of storage than to have some complex, half-certified system requiring more training and human intervention to use.
@Curt_Sampson i am not talking about ""disable"" the VDR. What I say, what we have in ship's is I.e. You have a loop for 24 hrs. Your voyage starts at 20 of the month and is expected to end at 29 of the month. On 23 of the month you have an incident. By pressing the button, data of the last 24 hours (running loop) is saved in an external device (usb), BUT VDR continues operation and continues to record without affecting its program. This means that on arrival 29 of the month, the data INSIDE capsule will be the last loop only, (from 28 to 29) but you have separated the loop of 22 to 23 in an external device. My English is not very good...I hope you understand.
The extra recording capacity isn't very useful if the data cannot be recovered or, as in the case for MS370, not located. Better yet to upload periodically during flight. With today's advanced compression, this is not a lot of data. Even limited amounts of video could be included -- think of CVR -- Cockpit Video Recorder, not just audio.
I’ve never liked to fly. It scares me. My family thinks I’m crazy for my fascination with these reports, but I think they help me put the risks into perspective. Thanks for always being thorough and honest with your videos.
If there were 200 of these incidents every year, the statistics would still be overwhelmingly in your favor. Just think of all the other shocking crap the news is talking about as if it's common but is actually vanishingly rare. Doesn't excuse individual events, but if let it rule your life then you're overreacting.
It's easy to see all the incidents in the US since they are so easily available to the public. Try to find information about these incidents in France or the UK. For some reason, those records are not released unless you have a "Valid interest" as determined by their governing bodies. I wouldn't be surprised to see similar incidents. About 25,000 flights originate or terminate in the US everyday, thats 1/4 of the entire world's daily flights, so I would expect to see about 1/4 of the incidents happening there. Wish we could see statistics about other countries instead of them being hidden by their aviation authorities.
Thanks Petter. Excellent analysis. Nothing I can say will add to your review of this matter. Please keep up the good work. You have excellent TH-cam channels.
In other words, the system works. By analyzing the data they can make it work better. In Canada we have an occurrence tracking system (CADORS) that covers everything from flat tires to major incidents. I get a daily report and read it carefully. My own plane was the subject of a CADORS report a couple of years ago: the alternator failed, I flew the approach on battery and gave ATC a heads up (PAN PAN) that the plane had a problem. They held a couple of other planes until I was down and offered to roll the equipment.
Some automobile dash cams have a "save" button that you can press and it preserves the last few minutes so it is not overwritten. That's good to use if you _witness_ an accident but were not involved. The cockpit recorder could have something similar.
They should also look at some airport layouts. Compared to airports elsewhere some US airports have unnecessarily complex layouts. If I remember your and Kelsey’s videos correctly there are some US airports with an landing-taxi-landing layout close to the ramp area, which can lead to confusion like what potentially happened with Turkish Airlines.
Still, there are **VERY** obvious differences between the markings of a runway and the markings of a taxiway, and at night the differences in lights are still blatantly obvious. That a trained airline pilot would mistake a taxiway for a runway in any situation calls that airline's hiring practices into question, whether Turkish Airlines or Air Canada. Confusing a taxiway for a runway **IS** a fatal error, literally.
@@arinerm1331 Theres 3 hold short points for rwy 28R and after, on the same taxiway, theres a hold short for rwy 22L. So you can mistake 22L for 28R. Trained pilots should be watching for the signs, but it still a very complicated and unnecessary layout.
@@chl0e1977 I said nothing about confusing one runway for another. I said that a pilot who confuses a taxiway for a runway should call his (or her) airline's hiring practices into question.
I watched a Virgin 787 taxi in a recent clip, and the Southwest 'uncontrolled gate' push back in front of them (74 Gear)....how is this stuff even possible?
In today’s day and age I’m not surprised by the amount of reported events, simply because safety and monitoring have both increased massively. What I’d like to see is some way of saving the data if a plane continues a flight
Having internal storage on a black box makes sense, having that storage last as long as possible makes sense. What I never understood was why they do not upload to a server either during flight when communication is in range or have that data transferred while the flight is on the ground going through refueling ect. It's not a huge leap in technology as these things already exist today, and airlines also get real time data from their aircraft already.
Love you content. Although about your conclusion about manual flying I feel like practicing only every 6 months in the sim is not enough to create spare capacity. My airline has strict Manual Flying SOP but allows us to do it on the line. And to be honest, I felt like my capacity has increased tremendously since I started to fly raw data approaches.
Yes, great, I’m glad you do this. I personally hand fly mostly below 10000 feet. I’ll turn off the auto throttle even and get rid of the flight directors. I convince FO’s to do the same. I’ve seen too many accidents and incidents where pilots didn’t know how to fly anymore. Think about Asiana in SFO and Turkeys Airlines at EHAM.
He works for an airline where hand flying without FDs is forbidden since 2016. Their manual states that manual skills should be practised in the simulator as if it could actually replicate the various aspects of real flying correctly. I personally agree with you 100%!
@@tommyorla91 I disagree with those SOPs. FDs is one thing. You can keep those on if you want. But I believe pilots should hand fly in the real aircraft. Air Asia crashed a few years back of the coast of Indonesia. The captain had flown nearly 1000 hours the year before. Their SOPs encouraged to engage the autopilot at 400 feet after take off and to make 2 out of 3 landings with auto land. They figured out that out of 1000 hours flown, he hand flew less that 8 min total.
I think most pilots would like to hand fly more, but the reason they don’t (especially on terminal approach) is that it doubles the workload of the pilot monitoring, and they don’t feel like doing that to their flying partner. Not to mention that devoting most of their attention to hand flying and making their PM way busier in a dense ATC environment could compromise safety. The sim is a great option, but the aircraft is great as well, and far more available. It’s up to the Capt. to brief this and let their FOs know that they don’t mind working some extra knobs and buttons in the name of flying proficiency. Also point out when you would prefer them to use the automation (weather, terrain, high traffic, etc).
12:52 I just want to say how much I appreciate your videos especially on the Mentour Pilot channel because while I initially thought I was become more nervous about flying, the incredible amount of knowledge you portray and your presentation of just what the facts are in every case AND what should be done to prevent future incidents has greatly increased my confidence in flight and given me SOOO much more respect for pilots in general, not that there was a lack of respect before, just a general lack of knowledge 🤙
@mentor I was excited to see that at 23:08 was a shot of Autumn, my wife’s friend. They were FAs together at Allegiant back in 2020. Her goal has always been to be an airline pilot and she is making look easy.
New concept: free to use if implemented. When landing, the CVR recording automatically gets flight and timestamped and uploads to cloud storage, freeing up the recorder and permitting possible context if maybe something was strange with an accident plane beforehand.
We were discussing at work what you could do differently with the Embraer incident. Apparently the ground crew were given a safety briefing directly before attending the aircraft to go over the fact that the APU was not working properly and there was no ground power and the (left?) engine was being left on and idling to keep the power going and what they would have to do differently to stay safe. An individual briefing, for that flight specifically, immediately before attending, and someone still died. The only thing that we could come up with that could have been done differently was to go back and change the everyday process so these staff NEVER walk in front of an engine, on or off, not at any time, and make that the process they have to follow under all circumstances. I'm not 100% sure of my information above so don't quote me!
That actually sounds like a good suggestion to not walk near the engines. Although it seems elementary to most people you always check to see if a car is coming EVEN when you have a greenlight to walk. That's the closest example I could think of to compare that to.
@@Cartier_specialist Unfortunately ground handlers under standard process attend the plane with the engines off. The APU will be on. However if a specific safety briefing about a specific aircraft having one engine on at idle because the APU is not working right before you go out to the aircraft and the additional safety steps you need to follow is not enough to prevent an accident, the only thing I can think that could be changed is the everyday process.
When I lived in Taiwan they had a show on tv that with things caught on video and they showed an airport worker get sucked into an engine. They showed this clip over and over. It wasn’t graphic at all. Even when they slowed it down. It was night time, grainy, and possibly black and white, but that could have been just the light. He didn’t walk right in front of it, he was somewhat to the side. At least it was very very quick.
I’m not sure it’s possible for rampers not to go into the ingestion zone of an aircraft. The zone extends to a point just before the forward doors at the front of the aircraft. We have to place cones, chocks, the stairs or jet bridge itself, and access the cargo holds. Pushback is a different beast entirely and can actually be a little unnerving as the wing walker.
We need 24 hr cockpit voice recorders, with the recording downloaded daily and stored at least 30 days. That would end the overwriting of the information that is needed for investigations.
I guess we are still coming out of the covid pandemic and things are getting back to normal. Staff have been furloughed, getting back to things, a lot of experience has retired, and of course the airlines and airports want to push for efficiency as well. At least things are being looked at. Thank you for the video Petter.
In February, 2023, I was on an American Airlines flight landing at JFK airport. When we were just a few hundred feet on our descent, the pilot suddenly floored it and we went back up. Like most of the passengers, I froze and continued looking outside from my window seat. As we continued flying, the pilot came onto the PA and said that another plane was a little too close so he aborted the landing. About 15 minutes later we were finally on the ground at JFK. I observed no one indicating alarm and everything was calm. I gathered the impression that this was nothing new. It sure was new for me !
As for black boxes. Add video to all parts of plane. Then the memory be replaced every flight with removable storage. To be stored as back up investigation reasons. Plus ad the capability to live stream both black boxes to outside storage like cloud. Transponders that locate the plane where ever it is. Transponders that can not be turned off either by design or by pulling breakers... I don't understand why this hasn't happened. Cameras in the cockpit would go along way to insure safety and to improve training....
One thing is for sure. Since the release of MSFS2020, especially the console release, general interest in aviation is MUCH higher than it was previously. I was wondering if that was behind the apparent increase in media reports. Plus an extra focus on the business after covid issues. Side note, decades ago, my uncle was called back by United to retrain staff on manual handling after that was identified as a problem following a series of crashes. Recipient of The Wright Brothers Award.
@@williamkreth I believe that he covered that in another video on his other channel. It would be good, but there are problems with consistence, adding anything new to an airplane, plus privacy concerns. (Privacy, since currently nobody ever review the recordings unless there is an incident. If the cockpit audio, and possibly video as well, were streamed, pilots might face scrutiny or harassment unrelated to the job.)
@@dancroitoru364 no, but you are if you use youtube. I think it more likely that the FAA for example is having issues/ unequal treatment first than the airlines.
@Mentour Now! Could you please look into the crash of Alaska Airlines Flight 1866 which happened back in 1971? This flight flew into a mountainside near Juneau, AK. I remember when this happened and it was shocking and heartbreaking. There were several theories about the cause but would love to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks!
One aspect that may be a factor is overall ATC experience, in the US that is. Remember that after the 1981 strike there was a massive loss in ATC experience. There was also a massive drop off in air traffic. Air traffic and experience among the workforce ramped up side by side. When all those 1980's hires retired they were replaced again by no and low experience hirees, all while running far more than 80's traffic levels. What we are seeing today, I believe, is wave three and the associated growing pains of a relatively new workforce. If it could be done I would imagine that we would see a rise in ATC incidents that corresponds to 1981 thru 85, (lower traffic not withstanding), another hump in 2003-2007 and now wave 3. Two cents worth from an 80's hire.
Increasing the storage capability seems like such an obvious thing to do. I'd even go further: make it so that after each landing, the data from the recorders is downloaded and kept for a number of months. That way, you have data of previous flights if something happens and there is a need to find out whether a problem may have occurred (and was noticed/reported) before.
A good idea, but better yet would be uploading the data in real-time or at least near real-time, like hourly. If you wait to upload it until after the flight is over, what happens if the plane crashes?
@@Shermanbay I think Petter already did a video on that and why that isn't feasible with the current infrastructure. And in case of crashes? Those boxes are build to be robust for a reason.
@@HappyBeezerStudios A robust box didn't help (at least so far) to solve the MH370 mystery. And technology is getting cheaper and better by leaps and bounds. It's time to consider the inevitable near future, not only the costs, but the advantages.
@@Shermanbay here is the video I mentioned on why they don't do it as of now th-cam.com/video/qMWZCuTQpds/w-d-xo.html and yes, MH370 is mentioned as well
@@Shermanbay MI185 had black boxes too but the captain switched them off just before it crashed. There was thus some suspicion that the caption had something to hide e.g. that he wanted to commit suicide as he'd lost money in the stock market, with the crash happening during the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997
Excellent video captain, as always! I was wondering, why do they clear somebody to land in the US when they are actually number 2 or there is traffic departing from the runway? Also, giving clearances to line up and wait after landing traffic and such, to me it all just seems like another safety risk for runway incursion or collision. Why not just keep things simple, when “cleared to land” means there is nobody and nothing on the runway. Seems like this could have prevented some of these incidents, and it’s a simple fix.
Tis a shame that the news outlets won't approach you as a professional consultant, but that's because you never offer speculation as fact. That's good.
Ok, all incidents such as highlighted by Captain Petter have to be very carefully studded. What is today's near miss could well be tomorrows accident, we know that. I think it's worth noting though, such incidents are still extremely rare when you consider the millions of flights that are performed without any hiccups at all, even in the USA. Another very interesting, slightly diverse subject matter Captain Petter. All your case studies are very thought provoking and I love the way you never place blame on any individual.
The layout of JFK is a challenge for Tower controllers and an absolute nightmare for Ground controllers. JFK takes good controllers, 30-somethings in the prime of their careers, and breaks them so they can never work in the field again. It takes a very special person with unique personality traits to cope with this frustrating puzzle day after day for many years. The famous Kennedy Steve used his sense of humor and his always-sarcastic "Splendid!" to survive or even thrive in a job role that is psychological torture for those without such coping mechanisms. The US has a handful of such problematic major airports, mostly in the Northeast region, that are of older vintage and have evolved inconvenient layouts that are impractical to fix. Boston Logan is another example and was home for many years to Boston John who thrived there for similar reasons. These brutal jobs will eventually compel them to either laugh, cry, or flip out.
I haven't heard about any "Woke Pilot" problem, but I will say that basing an opinion on ones "previous" experience in an industry doesn't have much merit today since things have dramatically changed just in the past few years. My cousin was a R&D Scientist for a Big Pharma Corp and she refuses to believe what's going on in that industry today, citing it wouldn't be possible based on how things "used" to be. Yet here we are.
Agreed. I've been in the IT industry for decades, and, though racism, sexism, homophobia, islamophobia, antisemitism, and ableist bias definitely still exist in many places and in many forms, it seems far better now than it was in the 1980s or 90s.
Part of these events seem to have more to do with ATC rather than pilots from what I've noticed so when the FAA said it was considering a rule change for pilots I wasn't overly concerned about it because the intent was more training WITHIN the company and this is companies fighting over available pilots IMO because in general we have a shortage of work force in different fields including the airline industry. So, getting a potential into a company and providing more training as discussed I think in another video seems like a good idea to me. It also reduces the cost for the pilot going through all the training they need and as inflation hits almost everything especially anything involving fuel, that's a big deal no matter WHO the pilot in training is. It shouldn't just be millionaires that can easily afford to become a pilot.
I know several Lufthansa long-haul pilots and they regularly complain about American ATC. The Controllers are not speaking clearly, many have heavy dialects, and apparently are generally unhelpful. So I think you are right.
@@bux834 This is old but this comment will still apply. The Federal govt. has cut budgets to whatever agency they POSSIBLY can. Most are just skeletons of what they used to be. I don't mean this to be a political statement in any way, but this is the REAL data. The US govt. could cut every bit of its spending other than the military, Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, and for the revenue they bring in now the govt. can't even pay for that. I don't care if you're in govt. private industry or service sector, when you don't have enough to pay the bills you make cuts, and this has come at the expense of all agencies including the ATC, so the ATC is fighting to get people but they can't pay out really good salaries like many other jobs. The outcome of that is predictable, which is the workforce starts to show the lack of income they're being paid, and it's typically because they have less people to choose from a hiring pool. When I saw the thumbnail of this video showing "Woke", I found that laughable. You get great people when you pay good money, and that's been the case ever since money has been important for people to live.
Thank Peter as usual for your insight on this situation. Don’t you think that we are now witnessing the impacts of the sudden nearly halt of the aviation industry as a whole during the pandemic for like two years? And the subsequent loss of experience/practice in all fields from ATC to pilots to ground personnel?
I wonder if overall stress levels might also be contributing? The past couple years have been rough for everyone & that can take a mental toll, and sometimes with long-term stress it can start so gradually that you don't notice that you're not functioning at the same level you were a year ago. Also I've seen some evidence that if you get covid, the brain can still be affected for a long while after the body has retuned to normal. (My own experience was that I would get weird moments of "brain fog" for a few months after I got covid, even though my body was healthy again.) So it seems possible that a lot of aviation employees might not be working at 100% without even realizing it.
Culture trumps regulations. I'm sure that those "places with no incident reports" have regulations similar to everyone else's. I'm glad you and other like minded professionals are keeping the focus on real safety, and open and honest reporting.
Where my OH worked in engineering, if their site didn't file enough (minor) incidents, they got investigated by the company- the theory being if incidents fell below a certain level, they were either covering up, or such an amazing good example that they need to be looked at.
I’m a retired airline guy and recently spoke with a current Capt at a major “Lagacy” airline. He described the current type of first officers he flys with which simply put are not capable. He attributes this as do his colleagues to low hours and even lack of communication because some are from other countries which creates a clear lack of understanding and communication. However, lack of experience being the primary cause of concern. His one remark which struck home was. “I feel like I’m flying a single pilot operation”. They are unable to provide assistance flying in high density airports particularly in IMC conditions.
Granted, I understand CVRs are necessarily made to extremely rugged standards, but weeks of recordings could easily fit on a modern commercial SD card. It’s crazy to me only two hours are stored given how inexpensive solid state data storage is nowadays.
I'm not so sure about that. 1st is cost. Airliners would have to not only upgrade all of their fleets to be in compliance but they must provide the backbone to even read the data from the new medium. So it *definitely* wont be inexpensive. 2. They won't be using standard data devices as you suggest that it must be rugged.
Going from 2 hrs to 25 hrs is pointless. There's no reason the CVR shouldn't be able to store WEEKS worth of audio. If they're going to change the rule they should go all the way.
Thank you for this very informative video. Sounds like extending the capacity of cockpit voice recorders is a really good idea (I had no idea they were so limited in 2023). I've seen some speculation the increase in incidents could be related to brain damage/impairment in pilots and ATC following multiple Covid infections - I wondered if this is something you have seen anything about? I know some people struggle to get back to baseline after infection. I always enjoy your explanations.
My thoughts on this are that it's a matter of volume. When you have 1500 takeoffs and landings a day (one every 55 seconds) at someplace like LAX, that leaves little time to coordinate things and keep everything spaced apart.
With my background on the railway, I do wonder if a signalling system would help alleviate runway incursions? Instead of relying entirely on oral clearances over the radio, using red and green lights on taxiways and runways, the controller can "lock" a runway for a takeoff, causing all taxiway and approach lights to go to red for that runway, and having some sort of detectors on crossings to confirm that the locked runway is clear. It would probably cost a lot and take some time to implement, but I believe such a system would help lower the amount of incursions caused by miscommunication.
It could be further augmented by a radio system that sends signalling data over the air in real-time so approaching aircraft can see that their runway is green even before they're visual if the weather is bad.
@@thewhitefalcon8539 If visibility is limited, lighting only really helps with seeing where the runway is. It makes it more difficult to see if there's something there because it can drown out the lights of other aircraft or ground vehicles. Red/green lights showing clearance status would be a lot more helpful.
They already exist, and have featured in some of the incident reports by Petter. They add some redundancy certainly but don't remove errors. The workload is simply so much higher for all involved and there's much more that can go wrong.
Regarding the mentioned United 777 leaving Hawaii @3:27 - I had just taken off at night from Hilo airport (Island of Hawaii) in 1968, flying on a DC-8, and after a short few minutes, the plane *_DROPPED_* down, down, down! I was thinking we might smack the ocean. It was terrifying! And the cockpit crew didn’t say a word of explanation.
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Well you put ‘woke’ on the title card and people have taken the bait without watching. Yet another comment section full of hate
I appreciate your clickbait strategy on this one.
A science and engineering focused channel pushing bogus pseudoscience health supplements.
Have you actually been taking AG1 as you said in this video? I'm curious and am pretty skeptical
Woke pilots may not be able to manually fly their aircraft, but at least, they can tell you, if it's sexist, racist, or homophobic!
Honestly it's pretty insane that the airline industry still uses black boxes with only 2 hours of recording time. I'd think that updating the storage capacity whenever possible would be a pretty big priority and it's not like such a procedure would take a lot of time or effort.
Adding extra storage, no. Getting the new model of black box certified, yes, thats almost certainly a very long and expensive process. That said the amount of time it's taken for such things to happen is not ideal.
@@darthkarl99 This is true. Variations to legally mandated equipment like this need to come from the governing body, and in this case the relevant governing bodies should make this change to requirements.
So I can see why the aircraft manufacturers don't _change_ CVRs of their own will, but I wonder why they haven't simply added additional recording equipment; I don't know of any reason they couldn't do so.
@@jhonbus legal culpability. Why add extra chance your company loses money? Nope.
The technology exists. Storage is cheap. Dashcams have a "snapshot" capability to store data when something significant happens. The hard part is getting it certified for aircraft use.
It's bs to say its hard to get it certified. The only hard part is getting the people who are in charge of the certification to do their job.
One of the biggest issues in the industry I work for is the fact that the government specs are 60 years out of date or worse. We've tried to get them to update them, but they typically just copy paste from the old into a new document. This results in a huge amount of errors that confuse the situation even further.
We've started a semi industry wide petition to get them to take a serious look and evaluate using modern standards.
I’m 63, been flying since 1976, flying roughly 900 hrs per year at an airline. I’ve never seen the system in worse condition. The airlines are shoving more and more people into more and more flights. The ATC system is overwhelmed and showing signs of collapse. My average duty day has increased by 31/2 hours over the last 2 years to nearly 12 hours a day. That’s average! A lot of days it’s 14 hours. My rest periods have decreased accordingly. 10-11 hours is normal. That’s from the time we block in plus 15 mins to show time the next day. We are at the hotel 8 hours usually. The newest rest rules actually allowed things to get worse instead of better. ATC delays and short staffing is causing real problems. I’ll be glad to retire soon.
This. This is why I don’t fly. I used to actually enjoy it!
You will enjoy retirement. I spent 45 years working for a flag carrier. One of the best days on my career was doing my last landing at the end of a 16 hour leg .
Don’t miss it at all.
Did the *COVID MANDATES FROM THE GOVERNMENT IN 2021* had something to do with it??
@@kevinthetruckdriver353crazy COVID mandates. Of course they did!
14 hrs a day for a job with concentration requirements of ATC is nuts
Friend of mine who's a retired ATC says ground operations are the most dangerous at an airport because everyone's at the same altitude...
We had an incident in MIA where a lot of pilots complain that ATC don’t speak in terms commonly known and cause confusion to pilots
"Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines."
@@SSJfraz Roger, Roger.
As an avionics mechanic myself, I can absolutely say that I agree with the consensus that loss of valuable experience is a concern. Personally, I feel the lack of past opportunities for newer mechanics in recent years, coupled with the pandemic response from most commercial airlines, really has set the future of aviation up for failure. Valuable time was lost and now we run a risk as older, more seasoned mechanics are retiring, thus new mechanics don't have the time needed to learn from them. As always, education is important in all professions but we cannot underestimate the value of experience within trade positions. Short term economic strategies to save money may ultimately cost companies exponentially more in the future with these oversights.
I am an expert in organizational change and am in aerospace. The loss of experienced people can’t be estimated. We have to team up more experienced people with the less. This is hard to do and won’t happen at all if companies don’t understand it and won’t fund it. They will pay 10X on the 1st lawsuit.
I agree, as I retired 9 years ago after 30 years working for the Airlines and Certified Repair Stations.
@@jamesdellaneve9005 The FAA mandates Airlines have to provide training to maintenance personnel. In my years of experience, I've seen very few hours allotted towards training and expecting seasoned mechanics to train them. The company wants to keep your nose to the grind stone and not in a classroom.
If there were a educational institution opened that looked to hire all the retiring top level pros (and pay them accordingly) to teach the new players that would be an amazing opportunity for all involved. If they (this new university) can garner a great reputation as the top tier level of professional education and consistently graduated skillful talent, that’s where all the knowledge could live and that’s where all the passionate and dedicated would strive to attend. Idk if this exists, or how it would come about if not. Surely tons of folks who adore the industry and want to see it thrive and survive would want their hands in making sure it has ample funding. Aircraft manufacturers, commercial and industrial airlines, hell, even the government would bode well seeing something like this gets its sea legs…
Which one of you can make this happen? I’ve got zero aviation experience, but I know a little in the education field and am currently studying funding education centers and fundraising/capital gains campaigns. I’d love to volunteer my time with something like this…
you calling it "education" instead of teaching is all anyone needs to know about how things will evolve. education is the transfer of behavioral patterns, while teaching is the transfer of knowledge.
My first flight was in 1967. The instant we touched the tarmac at West Palm, the pilot braked extremely hard. About two seconds later, another plane took off directly over us in the opposite direction, from the same runway, really, really low. I don't know if that near miss was reported, but it sure didn't make the news. Hundreds of people were literally a couple of seconds from death. No biggie
Bonus: I don't know which direction the wind was coming from, but at least one of those planes was using the runway in the wrong direction for wind (and therefore had higher ground speed than it should have). Extra little cherry on top of that already-terrifying near miss.
And yeah, no chance that a comparable incident today wouldn't be big news.
@@patheddles4004 Good point. I'm not sure if that last sentence was ironic or not, but we only get told what they want told. BTW, when I wrote really low, the shadow of the other plane was just a little bit bigger than our plane. So, really really low. Life goes on, if you're lucky
@@robertmoffett3486 not ironic at all - I reckon any time in the past 20+ years that would have made news either way, but especially now when there's an existing media narrative for it to serve.
And yeah agreed re near death experiences - they happen, and that very much was one. Just wanted to be clear that I wasn't dismissing it, is all.
😵💫🙀
@@patheddles4004 Maybe the wind was light or calm. In this case runway in use doesn't matter from ops point of view. Who knows, maybe they were in changing runway direction...
The disturbing fact is the error on ATC side.
In the hospital I work in, we have an error and near error reporting system.
Anything that goes wrong that has influence on the patient is an error. And anything that goes wrong behind the scene and is caught before it reaches the patient, is a near error. The errors are collected and analyzed.
We aim to prevent errors by making our processes safer.
You cant ever solve a problem, especially not a systemic problem, without knowing about the (near) misses being reported liberally.
NASA has the Aviation Safety Reporting System for exactly that. Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, and the UK have similar.
That system was pioneered in aviation and Human factors has been trying to get it into medicine for decades. If aviation had the error rate of medicine, we estimate we'd lose a 737 and everyone onboard every single day.
ALL such incidents should be analysed as 'major accidents', when the reason it was not a major accident is simply chance . Or put another way the roll of a dice. If it were to happen again perhaps it would have killed everyone. So best investigate it fully.
My uncle worked for Blue Cross/Blue Shield and my father worked as a lawyer defending the US in medical malpractice cases (malpractice committed by military doctors and hospitals). Between the two of them, I can't tell you how many times I heard about the wrong leg being amputated. At least now they mark the leg with a black sharpie.
Agreed. I'm a professional firearms trainer for a government agency. Every projectile that doesn't land where it's supposed to requires paperwork on my part. If you don't correct the behavior that can lead to accidents, then you will have more actual accidents.
Thanks Petter, as a 30k hour retired heavy jet captain, a great response to these (somewhat disturbing) incidents!
I absolutely believe that CVRs MUST BE upgraded to have much longer storage before wiping over existing recordings. It doesn’t even need to be totally crash proof, as this could be additional recording devices for incidents rather than accidents.
After all- a crashed aeroplane won’t overwrite recordings!
As a 30k captian, you spend a total of 1250 total days flying, meaning you were airborn for almost 3,5 years. That is more than the life expectancy of many different kind of birds.
@@LS-Moto Yep, scary thought 🤣
Happily retired now though, with no more waking to an alarm virtually EVER.
Eh, there’s no reason a CVR with more storage needs to be any less crash proof. If anything, it might need to be a bit larger physically, but even then, you can get a terabyte on a single chip. Chips of guaranteed reliability like what would be used in a CVR and FDR would be of lesser capacity, but still, even just 64 or 128GB would be enough for days of high quality, multi-channel (i.e. many microphones dotted around the place) recording.
@@uzaiyaro Heck, these days a 1 or 2 TB SSD is pretty cheap in comparison to the cost of a 100+ pax airplane and practically indestructible once it's loaded into a shock/explosion resistant container.
IMO the manufacturers are simply not going to voluntarily add more telemetry that could point towards system malfunction (read: lawsuits) instead of pilot error.
With all due respect to all, I'm afraid that cannabis use may have some influence on most of those "inattention" events that are often disguised with a generic categorization like "loss of situational awareness."
I have many sources of information to back up my claim: I hear daily that cannabis has become a habit, just like smoking tobacco or drinking spirits under the stupid label of "recreational use". I know that doctors, engineers, pilots, truck drivers, whatever, 80/90 percent smoke marijuana.
I do not claim that any of the incidents discussed are related to the use of cannabis, what I infer is the possibility of delving into this dangerous subject under the watchful sight of a "non-complacent eye" that could uncover this disastrous trend.
My father was a pilot with more than 20 000 flight hours, split roughly even between agricultural aviation and helicopter. He often stated his opinion that all pilots should be trained in aerobatics, not because they will actually need to do aerobatics, but to develop a more instinctual feel for flying. A feel for how the aircraft will behave when things go strange, and that "seat of the pants" feel which will tingle the "something is wrong" feeling.
Your opinion on that?
I very much agree “seat of the pants” is essential
I know almost nothing about aviation, but my gut tingle thinks that your father is absolutely right. Unfortunately maybe the tingling seat school would cost quite a lot of money...although of course human life would be far more valuable than all the money in the world. My respect to your dear old man. ❤
Sounds like getting a Finnish drivers license .
100%, just common sense. No pilot today could have landed in the Hudson
Although….I get the impression from several MP crash videos that pilots flying seat-of-their-pants rather than responding procedurally according to what instruments and computers were telling them actually contributed to the crash. Plus, in the Airbus (I think) he’s said it’s so fly-by-wire that the joystick controller gives no feedback so you can’t fly by feel.
There has been a lot of discussion in the US flying community about "hand flying" skills since at least the 1990's. I recall a lot of discussion about it in the late 1990's when I was doing my initial PPL training. One of the issues was the elimination of spin recovery training from PPL requirements. After my PPL, I voluntarily took a "unusual attitude and upset recovery" training course, which I felt really improved my overall flying skills and confidence.
Okay…great
Spin training is required for comm cert in the states. I did it in 2013.
And pilots need to lose the rats nest around the mouth. Beards look hideous and unprofessional in uniform. Makes pilots and such, look like dumpster diving bums, a ba d guy from m i d ea st or a follower of ma rxx.
@@MasterCarguy44-pk2dq Wrong. Im a CFI for 2 decades. Spi ns are Only FAA reqr. for CFI cert and only 2 turns on each direction. Easy to do from 4k agl on a Cessna.
I'm not a pilot, I'm just a person on the internet, but I've done spin recovery in KSP. And it's one of the most satisfying things, being able to recover from a problem and return safely to ground.
I quite like the idea of woke pilots because a lot of aviation incidents happened when pilots were half asleep.
I think it's dangerous if they're left leaning.
Lmao. It's crazy that people are using it as a bad word when "Woke" means exactly what it says; that you are AWAKE and aware. It's so silly the nonsense over the word. Why would being woke be a bad thing? "Oh darn! I know the truth and when I'm being lied to"
@@stevecavanagh8033 I think it's dangerous if they are right leaning!
So how about we just give them a cup of coffee and hope they stay awake!
You don't need to bring politics into everything!
Have a nice day, A Leftist!
@@stevecavanagh8033 i wish the real life political spectrum had a bank angle alarm
@@BillehBobJoe they do. Sadly they forgot the " angle " part and only stuck with "bank alarm", they call it "capitalism".
Thank you for making mention of ramp safety. It is something very overlooked outside the industry and even at times within the industry. Airports are a very hazardous place and when you put people out on the ramp with little training and low pay you create a recipe for disaster. We as an industry need to do better at looking out for those who make it possible for the aircraft to even leave the ground. One team one fight.
Absolutely true Curio. As a former "ramp rat" (1995 - 2004/SEA) ground handling is so overlooked. With baggage and cargo loaders, fuel trucks, catering, de-icers, etc., there's a lot of moving parts. Unfortunately most of those people are making very low wages for the work and responsibility they have. And these companies get what they pay for. An overwhelming majority of these people take great pride and care in their work, but it only takes one mistake to ruin a lot of lives. I can say for sure the biggest lesson I learned in my time on the ramp? Don't go drinking with the Russian flight attendants. 😂
When I used to read the help wanted ads, JFK had ads for baggage handlers every single day for years and years. That's because the pay is crap for that crappy job. Only desperate people apply. So when they do slow, sloppy work, that's why. They're basically unemployable anywhere else, and they work un airports. Not good
I suspect it's a tie between ramp work and a carrier deck. Either one can kill you in a second.
I’m grateful that the safety message seems to have sunk in the UK airports. I feel safe on the ramp, though I’m very keenly aware that I’m largely responsible for my own safety. If I follow the rules and stay observant I’ll be okay.
That and jet engines are scary.
I agree. They can record 25 hours. Investigations should always be about finding the truth.. not about blame. I really like your videos... which is kinda odd as I got out of aviation years ago. But I still am very interested in the interaction of crew members and ground crews in regards to safety.
I’m glad you find the videos interesting still!
Why not 150+ hours?
That is over 1 week of audio; or are ruggedized SSDs of that capacity currently too expensive to be widely available?
It’s all about homologation rules. Simply fitting a bigger memory would require a complete recertification. It’s ridiculous that rules can’t accommodate such an improvement but that’s how it is.
I was thinking the same and checked the data generated by 7 days of 10 mono audio streams with CD quality. That would "only" be 600GB of data so absolutely doable nowadays. If they already have to recertify the process they might as well go bigger directly.
As a UK pilot it's always seemed odd to me that in the US more than one aircraft at a time can be cleared to land on a particular runway, and take offs may well be happening on that runway after another aircraft has been cleared to land on it.
In UK, you only get your landing clearance (with the exception of 'land after') when there is no other aircraft using that runway or cleared to use it. That seems a heck of a lot safer to me.
You are so right. ......As a pilot. I wish I'd could live and fly in the UK...
Not only "seems" a lot safer, it IS a lot safer.
Exactly the same sort of thing where in the UK we only have green man pedestrian phases when there is no possibility of conflicting vehicle movements at traffic signals. Not only seems safer, but is safer. Now of course you can still get vehicles making conflicting movements, but that's when people are jumping red traffic lights or emergency vehicles are using their sirens. Much less common and thus much less likely to cause problems.
More landings = more money for the airport and airlines. And the US is all about money. Profits over human lives.
It's really not that complicated to understand.
@@laaaliiiluuu no, it's because without it the amount of flights in the country would be limited and the airspace would be even more congested. There is no danger for issuing a takeoff and landing clearance if the minimum separation criteria have been met. 1000s of aircraft land every day safely using this method. So yeah, I think it's safe. You are just using one event to justify your ignorance.
That advice about not worrying about flying in or out of places where there are many reports of minor incidents reminds me of when I worked in security. A company I work for would sometimes get clients cancelling service after some time because they had problems before and then had no problems for a long time. The clients thought the need for security was over, until the problems came back. We all said that it was the fact that they had good security that they didn't have problems. Good security is all about preventing the problems in the first place. Unfortunately, in these sorts of matters, safety and security, too many people don't think about them the right way. Obviously, with frequent safety reports of minor incidents it indicates that people are paying attention to safety. If it's not all about prevention then it's not about safety.
😊
Amen.
Sounds like IT. Try to cut costs because you hardly ever have problems and suddenly you have constant problems and expensive per-item fixes. How is it that all middle and senior management roles don’t seem to be educated about how real life works? 😂
So the assumption is that the more safety violations you have, the safer you are because it means people are reporting all your unsafe behavior? 🤨
Can it be that the rise in numbers in near misses is also due to the fact that some airports have started allowing planes to take off or land at shorter intervals in certain weather conditions? I remember reading a few years back that Heathrow Airport was clearing planes to land every 1.5 minute if the wind was strong enough to dissipate the vortexes. Which would have doubled the amount of planes coming in to land, because before that, the separation had to be around 3 minutes. So, same number of ATC controllers had to handle twice as much traffic. Unless, of course, they hired more, but I don't know anything about it.
Love your videos, please keep them coming!❤
I think (for what it's worth) that the up-tick in flights allowed might have a contribution, but that it's not as simple as that... Otherwise, you'd have noticed the upward trend in incidents at or around the same time. Aviation authorities are very careful about calculating the risks and returns for allowing closer proximities around airports for any reason, and largely because they've been bitten in the ass before.
BUT the industry is just as susceptible to world events as everyone else. That means, they're also dealing with the hiccups in supplies, logistics, and personnel requirements with the surreptitious endings to the lockdowns that had been instated for TWO YEARS prior. Already lots of pilots that had been reliable, seasoned hands at the controls were retired, and suddenly demand was up. At the same time, ATC has been the unsung heroes of the sky for decades, and with the lockdowns, a LOT of their seasoned people also retired rather than linger about a job that's no longer fit to pay the bills... and now demand is up incredibly, ONLY nobody seems to remember the ATC until sh*t hits the fan.
One after another restrictions are lifted, and the world just keeps turning, whether we (or ATC or FAA or ANYBODY else) is ready or not. So without access to a certified (as in qualified to work) army of personnel, there are planes that have been on moth-balls for months or years that are needed in the fleet. Pilots have WAY passed their required hand-flying times in the lockdowns, OR they've retired outright, and even with a pay incentive to come back, they aren't any better off until they've had the check-outs and training... The same goes for ATC personnel, and some of them simply don't want to come back any longer. They could've starved to death waiting on the industry to do anything to help out or for some government program that didn't help... SO they're already "in too deep" with a new life and livelihood to go back now... and students are trying to get through their courses, but that takes time and money... and some things just can't be forced, no matter how much money a company throws at it.
Travel demands are up past pre-pandemic levels by a majority of accounts, and we simply haven't stabilized it between supply and demand... It's going to take time and resources to accomplish that, and the HOPE is that the FAA and ATC will find their ways to manage it and mitigate any future hazards to incidents diminishing in frequency over time, but avoiding any outright accidents as much as possible. ;o)
@@gnarthdarkanen7464 well, as Petter always says, there are always a number of things that need to go wrong to lead up to an accident. I named one he didn't mention in the video, and you named more. All that and possibly more, leads to all those near misses, and quite possibly an accident down the line. Governments around the world should support airlines and airports financially to help them get back on their feet, because air travel affects a county's economy greatly - all those tourists coming to spend their hard earned money there. But governments didn't do a very good job during the pandemic, and now they just follow the same trend, unfortunately. That's as far as I know, of course.
I remember over 40 years ago, sitting on a rooftop in Uxbridge, watching the aircraft approaching Heathrow from the East. I could see about 6 or 7 queued up on the approach, and the interval between them was around 90 - 100 seconds. It was a nice sunny summer's day, not particularly windy, hence me sunbathing on the roof. There was certainly a lot less than 3 minutes separation then.
Although I suppose they could've been alternating 27L - 27R, it seems unlikely that all departures would be held for a significant time.
@@The_1_Assassin Well, Governments have never been particularly good at crisis management, and the larger they are, the worse they seem to do.
Personally, I think there's a deeper seeded problem with old fashioned "forethought"... Agencies like the CIA have a booklet or protocol to fall upon for damn nearly anything. They've largely even planned on what to do in case we encountered "little green men" on the moon, believe it or not, and the President during the '69 Apollo mission had a speech ALREADY prepared for delivery in case the whole thing went to hell in a handbasket.
Yet, with the 1919 flu pandemic, and outbreaks of Ebola, Dengue Fever, Tuberculosis, Plague, and countless others since, you'd think we had at least the rough framework of a decent plan ready for something like this... even only about 20 or 30 years post Cold-War, when biological and radiological warfare were ongoing concerns even taught about in schools... complete with drills.
BUT no... Not a hint that anyone in all of DC (or most other capitals around the planet) had a CLUE IN HELL what they were on about. Mostly hand-flapping and bitching their way through a circus-act version of "The Blame Game"...
Yeah, Petter didn't pinpoint many of the issues involved in the near misses... He DID specify that he wasn't really prepared to get into details, since the NTSB and FAA hadn't completed their sides of the paperwork and reports... SO even my hack at it, is largely a mix of dubious research on some interviews with "experts" (???) and a fair chunk of supposition... Frankly, I based a good part on that Safety Summit meeting of the FAA "et al"... Because it's a public and obvious show that they at least know they have a bigger problem than a "minor computer glitch".
I could get into how the Reaganomics from 40 years ago still have the tax code upside down, and that those with the resources to do anything utterly refuse, but that's going to just sound mean or malicious... ;o)
@@gnarthdarkanen7464 Long, but well written!
The last part about worrying more about where there are no reports reminds me of survivor bias.
Planes on a war front needed armor. Initially, armor was proposed at places with the highest concentration of bullet holes on returned aircraft. What was needed was armor over the other places; places where bullet holes resulted in aircraft not returning at all.
The Austin incident is the one that's really concerning because the Fedex seemed to be the only party with situation awareness; the controller was oblivious, and I'm not convinced that the Southwest knew what was going on (to be fair they weren't in a position to see the Fedex plane).
In the other events that I know of, the controller had caught what happened and the pilot rejected on time, which meant there was more than one remaining layer of defense. Not so in the Austin incident.
The reports I saw say that the Fedex was on a Cat111 Autoland and that the ILS airport rules were not adhered to. I think that this is one of the most serious incidents.
That controller placed the Southwest aircraft onto the runway in front of the approaching FedEx aircraft with less than the minimum required separation of a departing aircraft and a landing aircraft. He put the lives of all souls on both aircraft in grave danger. There was a subsequent ground incident at Austin, the audio of which suggests that the responsible tower controller had been demoted to ground, and was still incompetent.
It's giving Tenerife.
Both the FDX and SW aircraft would have been shown on each aircraft’s TCAS display on the navigation screens, both crews should have seen the traffic…
It’s obvious that FDX saw SW moving on the runway, whether or not SW saw FDX isn’t clear…
@@joer5571 TCAS does not resolve aircraft when either is on the ground.
9:01 Correction: In the USA, company requirements are never lower than FAA, statutory, and regulatory requirements. Company requirements are always on top of government requirements. So, if company requirements were lowered it would have an impact on who was hired, their competence, and their fit with the work. They would still be "qualified" because they meet government requirements, but they might not be the best. That is how it works in Canadian and US labour law. You cannot hire unqualified, but the government does not take into account a company might want to hire the best.
This is the same way it works everywhere in the world. Government competency requirements have never been anywhere close to what most airlines require. I feel it’s a disingenuous argument to even bring up the fact that government requirements haven’t changed. What we are really interested in is if airline requirements have changed. We already know for a fact that recruiting priorities have changed. The only remaining interesting question is if changed priorities have affected standards.
I think you are correct that this is the issue.
But check out the videos of the confirmation hearings for Biden's nominee for head of the FAA, Phillip Washington. He didn't know squat about aviation. Fortunately the nomination was withdrawn, because even some Democrats weren't going to vote for him. But don't discount the danger of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion hires, when the DEI goals supercede merit as the primary criteria for hiring.
If "equity" and skin/gender quotas are made a consideration in hiring, then the consideration related to excellence and capability must suffer.
@@KenAment absolutely true
As I recall it, it was the pilot unions that insisted on the cockpit voice recordings being extremely limited in duration. There was concern that private conversations in the cockpit might be used in disciplinary action against pilots even if not related to an aviation incident.
Not arguing or calling you a liar. I would sincerely like to see evidence of what you say. I do doubt it very much. I don't have any beliefs to begin with, and you're asking us to believe a pretty big stretch.
I can imagine that. However, part of the job being a pilot is people watch over your shoulders all the time, because safety is too important. You can have private conversations about stuff outside work time.
Yep this is true
@@ouwebrood497 What you say is reasonable and true, but in practice, it's not possible.
Would that not require EVERY flight, regardless of any issues having their tapes reviewed before the aircraft were allowed to resume it’s scheduled flights? Not to mention that it does little good for long haul flights….
Though I could see their concern on Privacy of their conversations, as a frequent flyer, Safety and Focus should be exercised when they are flying. I’d hate to experience a situation where something happened that come to find out, Pilot-Billy Joe Convo was distracted and too jovial that he missed something important. 😶
Thanks, but I have been a senior Auditing NDT technician certified in the US and Australia including aviation. I retired 1 month earlier than my 65 birthday simply because I had NO confidence in the company I worked for. One of the main reasons was the watering down of the certification process. The new system was geared to supply trained personnel quickly and cheaply. In my eyes and from what I could see, technicians were not up to standard. It will be my guess that, just as many industries water down qualifications dangerous issues will arise more frequently and be more serious. The US has been at the forefront of this process in my view, and the current state of diplomacy and law enforcement are reflections of cost cutting, shifting the responsibility, rampant drug use and poor training. Just an opinion, thanks again
I have a 20 acre farm in Washington state, USA. Right in the flight path to Boeing Field, SeaTac and JBLM. We heard far more coverage about the ramp agent incident than the runway/airport incidents. I’m glad that it has been covered like it has.
I can tell you I used to be a controller for 18 years, I quit because I was tired of being overworked and understaffed.
My guess is they’re letting more people through the cracks because everyone who hasn’t quit is tired.
I see a lot of industry fatigue post-Covid. We had 30% layoffs. That takes time to recover from.
Or perhaps I'm just getting old...
Think America seriously has to re-evaluate how it treats it's workers. It isn't a healthy balance at all
But we must increase productivity and profits indefinitely. People don't want to work anymore because they're woke socialists. /s
And the ones who stick around are being pushed even harder. It's happening in rail too, and I'd be surprised if trucking and shipping won't start seeing similar issues.
@Casey James thats an understatement.
Loss of experienced personnel has been an issue in many industries since Covid -- especially low-wage positions.
I'm a lowly deli-clerk in a grocery store and find myself in the position of being the only person in the department other than the manager who knows how to sharpen a slicer. The manager complains frequently that people aren't doing certain work and I'm asking myself if they even know that they're supposed to.
Just this past week I had to train someone to do part of her job that she didn't know was part of her job -- because she'd only had one day of training for that position. When I learned that position I had 3 days of formal training before having to work it alone.
I'm sure it's the same for the low-wage grunt work at the airport too.
As a teacher, the exact same thing happens with new teachers and I believe all professions regardless of wage. Experience is invaluable, it allows one to be sufficiently prepared and to immediately recognize faults in the process. There is no way an inexperienced person can have such insight, no matter how witty they are.
I will say that at a friends airline they used to disseminate (to the pilot group) their own safety incidents in an effort to educate them. With social media now and pilots airing “dirty laundry” on Facebook etc. the company has started to rescind this practice. Now details and context are left out and in some cases certain events are completely redacted for review. Safety culture is giving way to social media and narcissism imo.
Put the scenarios in the simulator training but do not tell the plane drivers that these are incidents their colleagues have had
@@snorttroll4379
Sim events are usually only every 9months to a year depending on the type of training certification. There’s a ton of stuff that couldn’t possibly be covered in a career. And some things are better simply briefed but you add gravitas to a policy/procedure if you can point to a legit operational reason.
The aviation industry relies so much on driven, capable, and resilient people. Everyone has an extremely important role to play, which makes it even more beautiful! Incidents like these are always worrying, but I'm glad that steps are being taken to ensure the safety of passengers, pilots, cabin crew, ground personnel, etc. Thanks for another insightful video, Petter!
Effective steps are likely not being taken!
If sleep deprived pilots do not alarm you, I don't know what will.
Because of that one incident, all of us who work on the ramp have had extra training this year with emphasis on the chocking, cone placement around arriving aircraft, and GPU usage.
What happened to that ramp agent that was killed is criminal and should have been covered much more. Those contractors work them to death and ignore safety for time and the majors look the other way for cost savings. I feel so bad for her family and the pilots involved. Even the mechanics and crew that must have had to clean up that mess :(
Puleeeze
@@Rossmelansonthe fuck?
The ramp agent was warned multiple times by co-workers to stay clear of the engine. She ignored them. The San Antonio incident - where a man was ingested into an engine - was a suicide.
Your last comment on incident reporting density reminds me of a story from WW2 when a group looked at where bullet holes were on returning aircraft to look at further armour protection until someone pointed out it should be going where there are no holes as those aircraft never returned.
Survivorship bias.
In WWI they introduced steel helmets and head injuries went through the roof. It was determined that head injuries increase because prior to steel helmets alot of those people would have outright been killed.
Thank-you for brining rationality into at least one of the current problems the country is experiencing.
That was my aim
@@MentourNow yeah, "should" race/gender/WTFBBQness affect pilot hiring? no, absolutely not!
does it in actuality? hmm.... hard to say for sure. :/ hiring managers are people... sometimes people with weird ideas.
@@marhawkman303 Sometimes, people in the TH-cam comments section have weird ideas.
@@brett22btWhat's weird about what he commented?
What's weird is saying "hard to say" about something so obvious. Anytime your stated goal is to hire based on anything other than merit, there is an affect. Of course there is. I don't think doublespeak and ambiguity help. We should all have courage in our convictions. Or not. But when you're talking about placing the heavy responsibility of human lives in someone's hands, motives and agendas have no place. Save that for the voting booth.
I feel like TH-cam channels like VAS aviation also bring more attention to these incidents and news media picks up on it. Love these TH-cam channels.
When I was flying general aviation in the 70s out of Palm Beach international my FBO was located on the east end of the field. Most of the time I would request a midfield takeoff because this runway is quite long. On one occasion I got cleared to takeoff and luckily I had looked to my left, which was to the west and saw a Commercial airliner barreling down the runway on takeoff before I entered the active runway. I called the tower and ATC was freaking out when they realized what they had done, but I was already on the radio, telling them that I have not moved.
It’s understandable that there is a voice recording that is designed to survive a crash, but with modern technologies there is no reason why there can’t be weeks worth of voice and video saved to a thumb drive that doesn’t have to survive impact.
It's also important to note that random events seem clustered to our human perception. So determining if any given cluster of incidences is really abnormal is best left to statisticians and not political commentators.
Exactly, that’s what I was trying to say.
Also worth mentioning that with modern media coverage and internet, we might get shown things based on media trends. If these same instances occurred in 1995, how many of us would know about them?
A friend of mine once said something that stuck with me: "if these events were evenly-spaced, they wouldn't be random, would they?"
Statisticians noticed the trend,it's now on politicians to react. Everything IS politics unfortunately. Noticed any other "trends" in society and how are those delt with both from statisticians and politicians ?
Not encouraged by either.
Like the plane protection program during WWII. They carefully examined where the damage was occurring on all returning aircraft to see where it should be better armored. Then somebody pointed out. There were little or no data points for common areas on all aircraft examined. Those aircraft that could not be examined were not returning due to battle damage. You're not looking for where you have a lot of data. You're looking for where you have none.
Regarding the ground crews suffering attrition during the pandemic - Not only did they lose lots of experienced workers, but they also lost a lot of morale. Workers who didn't lose their jobs lost working hours and pay early on in the pandemic, then had to work extra hard when airline travel ticked up suddenly late in the pandemic without any real warning. These workers also faced unusual work procedures that were meant to improve worker health, but were generally perceived as uncomfortable or inefficient (e.g. mandatory masking while performing manual labor, temperature screenings when arriving to work, etc.) This was all done without any compensation to make up for the stress and adverse working conditions that arose during the pandemic. Almost nobody got hazard pay, and those who did didn't get enough to justify the extra stress.
In short, the workers who didn't lose their jobs were burnt out. Burnt out workers = Less attentive, less thorough, less care put into their work. This doesn't just affect airplane-related incidents, but all aspects of the airport, such as increased rates of stranded and lost luggage (up 30% from 2019 according to one report published in 2022). Burnout also means higher turnover of employees in the long run.
Frankly, the companies should and could have handled their employees' needs a bit better, and I'm not sure what they could do to fix it now.
Plane.and simple.flights should not.of been taking place.during the pandemic.
As a very recently retired pilot and check airman for the last ten years of my career, I am not surprised.
The attitude I came across from the young pilots I met as I was on my way out the door was horrifying. They knew better than anyone else and were very resistant to the "old way" of flying.
The old way they speak off bridged gaps between wars and aircraft development. I lived thru pre WWII freighters to the most modern of jets and had to deal with the training of automation to hands on pilots..
Skill is still called for. Automation will never fix the unexpected .
I would be very worried though about accusations of "woke".
What that usually is, is a method for politicians to gain more power to cure it. I will expect the republicans to try to gain more power in the FAA and to try to do more to dictate how pilots should behave.
@@MrMarinus18 Who mentioned woke or politics?
@@jakejacobs7584 The title of the video. Marinus18 was adding to your observation by bridging it back to the clickbait title of the original topic, and why the title is so attractive. .
@@WestAirAviation I see, so many tangents are generated in this section. I apologize.
@@jakejacobs7584 No apology needed, Captain. Happy retirement!
Funny how most of these incidents happen in the majors not regionals were most “inexperienced” pilot are.
That’s actually a good point!
@@MentourNow There was a story in the US sometime last year that FAA changed their hiring priorities for ATC from people who excelled in math or other studies to prioritize hiring of people who played in school sports. It was officially done in the name of diversity. Make what you want from it. 🤷
@@mofayer I can't seem to find anything remotely like that. Maybe since you're making a pretty outrageous claim, you could tell us what source and date that was so we can find it and read or watch for ourselves. I really think you must be misremembering; Petter covered that in this very video, and you seem to be contradicting him here.
@@laras678 I can't link a website here, but search "lawsuit, Brigida v. Chao".
@@laras678 search for "Fight Escalates Over Race-Based Hiring Program at the FAA" from 2019.
As always, a thoughtful and balanced take on a difficult situation. Thank you. One observation I have is that, being a long time listener of LiveATC at JFK, is how sloppy a (very) few pilots are at reading back hold short instructions. Honestly, you would have thought that was piloting 101. Why do I hear in every hour session, one or more failing to do so? Of late it is interesting that ATC now insist on readback - a positive development. However, I think some pilots need a change of attitude (mental) and get with the programme; it was disgusting to hear ATC ask of one (mainline US carrier) to read back a hold short instruction that they hadn't done, which the pilot then read back - without callsign - then ATC asked to repeat again with callsign and the pilot clearly thought this was below him and a real inconvenience: that kind of attitude should not be tolerated - time for a tiny of minority of pilots to start taking their job more seriously and earn their considerable pay cheque. How do you shake those people out of the system? (Much as the recent JFK American pilots could do with a change of attitude if you ask me - flying across the Atlantic after a major near miss - how could they mentally do that? Did they do that so that the cockpit voice recorder would not be preserved and to try to make it not flag up on the airline's management radar? And then not to agree to discuss whilst being recorded - again change the attitude guys!)
Thanks for your insight!
I'm 15 and I absolutely love your videos. Aviation is so interesting and you really make me to want to learn to fly! The breakdowns of incidents on both the main channel and this one are always so fascinating, and the safety of the whole industry is really quite comforting. I hope you have a great easter break :)
That’s awesome to hear! Best of luck with your training. 💕
@@MentourNow Wish i could get training but havent got a snowballs chance in hell of passing the medical due to 1) being slightly colour blind and
2) suffeing from a systolic murmer of the heart 😢.
Thanks for a refreshing optimistic non-cranky post!
I hope you do become a pilot one day.....what a great dream to follow. ☆☆☆☆
@@jaws666well you never know what will happen in the future. learn things for their own sake as you’re doing, and if something changes you’ll be prepared.
You are amazing - i am not a pilot and never will be, however your spirit inspired me to look at my life from your perspective and the way you spin out the simple cause and effect which I can apply to my life - I have been watching you about 2 years and my life and my way of thinking and decision making have successfully all fallen into place - You are my spiritual healer and MENTOur - You parents should be very proud - The impact that you made on my life is enlightening
The fact that the AA crew didn't pull the CVR C/B is mindboggling to me. They just had a runway incursion, it honestly makes me think that it was intentional and they had done something seriously wrong like completely ignoring sterile cockpit rules.
Indeed.
I agree with you too....
'Sterile'? Could you please explain?
@@bordershader Sterile cockpit means that there is no non operational talk below 10000 feet. Meaning below 10000 feet you don't talk about anything that's not strictly important to the safe operation of the aircraft
It could be worse: stress/post stress behaviour as a cause. And then they should have not continued as temporarily unfit after a stressful event.
Pilots and routes have been shuffled in a manner never seen before, when the airlines re-hired the pilots after the 2020 closures.
Pilots are surely very proficient at piloting the aircrafts they are trained on, but are not completely acquainted with each airport layout, and the local ATCs behaviour on departure and arrival.
Thank you Mentour Pilot for another well thought and well laid-out video on an a current hot topic..
Greetings,
Anthony
Thank you for watching and engaging!
Pilots have flown varying routes for ages. The public seems to think that we have assigned routes and only fly one or two, but this is almost never the case, and really hasn't beed in decades.
@@michaelproulx3051that’s true, but if you’ve flown for one airline in one base for years, you’re probably pretty familiar with a certain set of airports, and then if you leave for another airline in a different base with different routes, you may be flying to airports you’re not familiar with more often.
@@nathanmcguire932 flying to airports you’re not familiar is not anything special and exotic. It is basically business as usual. Easier for the high lQ pilots though, than for the two digits lQ pilots.
@@elbuggo that kind of attitude is what causes pilot error runway incursions…
Petter, I believe you made a great call at 14:08 about the issuance of cross clearances several minutes before aircrafts reach that runway. The situation, in particular at major airports, is continuously changing: controllers may have predicted a different evolution than what later develops. Issuing the whole taxi clearance in advance may save time on congested radio and traffic but time should never be bartered against safety.
I think it is a good idea to have more simulator training where there is no automation, only hand flying. Have them come out of challenging situations totally by hand.
When we implemented Positive Train Control (PTC) as a safety overlay system for railroads, all logs are offloaded to a server every time the train reaches a WiFi hub at a yard or depot. This is totally independent of the normal onboard recorders.
Our CASA several times mentioned in their official safety publications about loss of competencies due to COVID lockdown. Some experienced older pilots and controllers retired at all, those who left on duty had a year of very relaxed work, staff numbers were decreased and so on. So when operations started to return back with planes taking off in Sydney every 3 minutes it appeared that they can not safely cope with it.
Brilliant as always Peter ! June 9th. 2005 how one US Airways pilot made a split-second decision to keep his B737 from lifting , to allow a Aer Lingus A330 to go above his B 737( an almost counter- intuitive manoeuvre, ) the US Airways crew were awarded superior airmanship certifications.
As one who was involved in the marketing and crisis management of airlines and handling before I retired, I was, as I have learned over the years to expect, thoroughly impressed by your totally impartial ad professional, detailed examination in this video.
I believe it should be compulsory viewing, not only for those involved in aviation, but also those affected by the increasing effects fashionable 'woke'!
In every respect you are an utterly sane voice in the industry whose videos are both instructional and thoroughly enjoyable.
Thank you for all you do to help the safety and enjoyment of flying - and for those of us who have an incurable love of it, though no longer possible being, as I am, an old codger!
Rob
As someone planning on doing a lot of air travel this year you put my mind at rest. I agree that it's better to be flying somewhere that safety is a top concern. Thank you as always for a great video.
Thank you for watching!
Peter, i am in marine Industry.
Regarding black boxes we have overcomed these issues long time ago.
Our recordings are "looped" for 1-2 days only(our travel time is really more extended than yours) BUT we have an ""emergency"" button, that when we press, it KEEPS in memory the last loop.
This will lead to some issues of WHEN to press, WHY to press, liability for captain etc, but it really helps.
Keeping in mind that a remote storage is quite more cheap than fixed SSDs, could be really helpfull tool, not to an accident ( as it can be destroyed outside of the protected box) ,but at least to the "Near misses"
I have seen a lot of your videos, and i understand that there are MORE that you cannot say publicly, especially for the category of ""en route malfuctions" that later on vanished, or other strange behaviors of aircraft..... . In such cases, if you could store ALL data , even for 30 minutes and present to your technical team, for that specific period, could help identify a lot of "holes" of the Swiss cheese, and prevent further strange behaviour of aircraft /systems/ or handlers at all.
No need to use satellite links, no need expenses, only one EXTRA space , of a size a mobile phone, where a USB stick is attached and 2 buttons , one at each side for emergency record.
When you land, you deliver that USB to your technical team...and that's it!
Aircraft already have that, and always have. There's a procedure to pull the breaker for the CVR so that it stops recording, preserving what's already on it.
The issue is, you don't generally want to be disabling the CVR at the start of a flight because if an accident then occurs on that flight, you've no CVR record of the accident itself.
As far as your various other ideas, it's probably easier (and even cheaper, in the long run) just to get current CVRs upgraded to 25 hours of storage than to have some complex, half-certified system requiring more training and human intervention to use.
@Curt_Sampson i am not talking about ""disable"" the VDR.
What I say, what we have in ship's is I.e.
You have a loop for 24 hrs.
Your voyage starts at 20 of the month and is expected to end at 29 of the month.
On 23 of the month you have an incident. By pressing the button, data of the last 24 hours (running loop) is saved in an external device (usb), BUT VDR continues operation and continues to record without affecting its program.
This means that on arrival 29 of the month, the data INSIDE capsule will be the last loop only, (from 28 to 29) but you have separated the loop of 22 to 23 in an external device.
My English is not very good...I hope you understand.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but I'm pretty sure it takes a lot less time to certify, upgrade, and install new electronics on a ship than on a plane.
Airbus have a a specific button for this.
The extra recording capacity isn't very useful if the data cannot be recovered or, as in the case for MS370, not located. Better yet to upload periodically during flight. With today's advanced compression, this is not a lot of data. Even limited amounts of video could be included -- think of CVR -- Cockpit Video Recorder, not just audio.
I’ve never liked to fly. It scares me. My family thinks I’m crazy for my fascination with these reports, but I think they help me put the risks into perspective. Thanks for always being thorough and honest with your videos.
Same here! Glad to know my family is wrong, lol
Yeah I was also afraid of flying before I got my pilot's license. Now I'm only afraid when I'm the one behind the wheel :)
Same!
If there were 200 of these incidents every year, the statistics would still be overwhelmingly in your favor. Just think of all the other shocking crap the news is talking about as if it's common but is actually vanishingly rare. Doesn't excuse individual events, but if let it rule your life then you're overreacting.
@@alk672 They gave you the license before the lesson where they tell you a plane has a yoke not a wheel?
It's easy to see all the incidents in the US since they are so easily available to the public. Try to find information about these incidents in France or the UK. For some reason, those records are not released unless you have a "Valid interest" as determined by their governing bodies. I wouldn't be surprised to see similar incidents. About 25,000 flights originate or terminate in the US everyday, thats 1/4 of the entire world's daily flights, so I would expect to see about 1/4 of the incidents happening there. Wish we could see statistics about other countries instead of them being hidden by their aviation authorities.
Thanks Petter. Excellent analysis. Nothing I can say will add to your review of this matter. Please keep up the good work. You have excellent TH-cam channels.
Thanks, will do!
Thanks a lot for all the concerns voiced and the shout-out for Aviation Herald
In other words, the system works. By analyzing the data they can make it work better.
In Canada we have an occurrence tracking system (CADORS) that covers everything from flat tires to major incidents. I get a daily report and read it carefully. My own plane was the subject of a CADORS report a couple of years ago: the alternator failed, I flew the approach on battery and gave ATC a heads up (PAN PAN) that the plane had a problem. They held a couple of other planes until I was down and offered to roll the equipment.
Some automobile dash cams have a "save" button that you can press and it preserves the last few minutes so it is not overwritten. That's good to use if you _witness_ an accident but were not involved.
The cockpit recorder could have something similar.
They should also look at some airport layouts. Compared to airports elsewhere some US airports have unnecessarily complex layouts. If I remember your and Kelsey’s videos correctly there are some US airports with an landing-taxi-landing layout close to the ramp area, which can lead to confusion like what potentially happened with Turkish Airlines.
True
Rwy 22L and 28R at Ohare is a tricky taxiway point and theres not even a hotspot marker noting it.
Still, there are **VERY** obvious differences between the markings of a runway and the markings of a taxiway, and at night the differences in lights are still blatantly obvious. That a trained airline pilot would mistake a taxiway for a runway in any situation calls that airline's hiring practices into question, whether Turkish Airlines or Air Canada. Confusing a taxiway for a runway **IS** a fatal error, literally.
@@arinerm1331 Theres 3 hold short points for rwy 28R and after, on the same taxiway, theres a hold short for rwy 22L. So you can mistake 22L for 28R. Trained pilots should be watching for the signs, but it still a very complicated and unnecessary layout.
@@chl0e1977 I said nothing about confusing one runway for another. I said that a pilot who confuses a taxiway for a runway should call his (or her) airline's hiring practices into question.
I watched a Virgin 787 taxi in a recent clip, and the Southwest 'uncontrolled gate' push back in front of them (74 Gear)....how is this stuff even possible?
In today’s day and age I’m not surprised by the amount of reported events, simply because safety and monitoring have both increased massively. What I’d like to see is some way of saving the data if a plane continues a flight
Having internal storage on a black box makes sense, having that storage last as long as possible makes sense. What I never understood was why they do not upload to a server either during flight when communication is in range or have that data transferred while the flight is on the ground going through refueling ect. It's not a huge leap in technology as these things already exist today, and airlines also get real time data from their aircraft already.
Really appreciate your take on this Mentour Pilot, thanks for clarifying such a complex and nuanced issue!
What’s your motto on your videos: ‘your safety…’
Love you content. Although about your conclusion about manual flying I feel like practicing only every 6 months in the sim is not enough to create spare capacity. My airline has strict Manual Flying SOP but allows us to do it on the line. And to be honest, I felt like my capacity has increased tremendously since I started to fly raw data approaches.
Yes, great, I’m glad you do this. I personally hand fly mostly below 10000 feet. I’ll turn off the auto throttle even and get rid of the flight directors. I convince FO’s to do the same. I’ve seen too many accidents and incidents where pilots didn’t know how to fly anymore. Think about Asiana in SFO and Turkeys Airlines at EHAM.
He works for an airline where hand flying without FDs is forbidden since 2016. Their manual states that manual skills should be practised in the simulator as if it could actually replicate the various aspects of real flying correctly. I personally agree with you 100%!
@@tommyorla91 I disagree with those SOPs. FDs is one thing. You can keep those on if you want. But I believe pilots should hand fly in the real aircraft.
Air Asia crashed a few years back of the coast of Indonesia. The captain had flown nearly 1000 hours the year before. Their SOPs encouraged to engage the autopilot at 400 feet after take off and to make 2 out of 3 landings with auto land. They figured out that out of 1000 hours flown, he hand flew less that 8 min total.
@@rtbrtb_dutchy4183 Hand flying is also very appropriate when evading UFOs.
I think most pilots would like to hand fly more, but the reason they don’t (especially on terminal approach) is that it doubles the workload of the pilot monitoring, and they don’t feel like doing that to their flying partner. Not to mention that devoting most of their attention to hand flying and making their PM way busier in a dense ATC environment could compromise safety. The sim is a great option, but the aircraft is great as well, and far more available. It’s up to the Capt. to brief this and let their FOs know that they don’t mind working some extra knobs and buttons in the name of flying proficiency. Also point out when you would prefer them to use the automation (weather, terrain, high traffic, etc).
Good video. The Jan 1st tragedy got fairly heavy coverage within the US at the time, in part because the airport temporarily grounded all flights.
12:52 I just want to say how much I appreciate your videos especially on the Mentour Pilot channel because while I initially thought I was become more nervous about flying, the incredible amount of knowledge you portray and your presentation of just what the facts are in every case AND what should be done to prevent future incidents has greatly increased my confidence in flight and given me SOOO much more respect for pilots in general, not that there was a lack of respect before, just a general lack of knowledge 🤙
@mentor I was excited to see that at 23:08 was a shot of Autumn, my wife’s friend. They were FAs together at Allegiant back in 2020. Her goal has always been to be an airline pilot and she is making look easy.
New concept: free to use if implemented.
When landing, the CVR recording automatically gets flight and timestamped and uploads to cloud storage, freeing up the recorder and permitting possible context if maybe something was strange with an accident plane beforehand.
We were discussing at work what you could do differently with the Embraer incident. Apparently the ground crew were given a safety briefing directly before attending the aircraft to go over the fact that the APU was not working properly and there was no ground power and the (left?) engine was being left on and idling to keep the power going and what they would have to do differently to stay safe. An individual briefing, for that flight specifically, immediately before attending, and someone still died.
The only thing that we could come up with that could have been done differently was to go back and change the everyday process so these staff NEVER walk in front of an engine, on or off, not at any time, and make that the process they have to follow under all circumstances.
I'm not 100% sure of my information above so don't quote me!
That actually sounds like a good suggestion to not walk near the engines. Although it seems elementary to most people you always check to see if a car is coming EVEN when you have a greenlight to walk. That's the closest example I could think of to compare that to.
@@Cartier_specialist Unfortunately ground handlers under standard process attend the plane with the engines off. The APU will be on. However if a specific safety briefing about a specific aircraft having one engine on at idle because the APU is not working right before you go out to the aircraft and the additional safety steps you need to follow is not enough to prevent an accident, the only thing I can think that could be changed is the everyday process.
When I lived in Taiwan they had a show on tv that with things caught on video and they showed an airport worker get sucked into an engine. They showed this clip over and over. It wasn’t graphic at all. Even when they slowed it down. It was night time, grainy, and possibly black and white, but that could have been just the light. He didn’t walk right in front of it, he was somewhat to the side. At least it was very very quick.
I’m not sure it’s possible for rampers not to go into the ingestion zone of an aircraft. The zone extends to a point just before the forward doors at the front of the aircraft. We have to place cones, chocks, the stairs or jet bridge itself, and access the cargo holds. Pushback is a different beast entirely and can actually be a little unnerving as the wing walker.
We need 24 hr cockpit voice recorders, with the recording downloaded daily and stored at least 30 days.
That would end the overwriting of the information that is needed for investigations.
Did you watch the video?
If I was going to become a pilot, I would want to be trained by you as you are so logical and detailed.
I guess we are still coming out of the covid pandemic and things are getting back to normal. Staff have been furloughed, getting back to things, a lot of experience has retired, and of course the airlines and airports want to push for efficiency as well. At least things are being looked at. Thank you for the video Petter.
Thank you for that ... I am an RN and it is bad for us as well. So many retired during the pandemic.
In February, 2023, I was on an American Airlines flight landing at JFK airport. When we were just a few hundred feet on our descent, the pilot suddenly floored it and we went back up.
Like most of the passengers, I froze and continued looking outside from my window seat. As we continued flying, the pilot came onto the PA and said that another plane was a little too close so he aborted the landing.
About 15 minutes later we were finally on the ground at JFK. I observed no one indicating alarm and everything was calm. I gathered the impression that this was nothing new.
It sure was new for me !
Your personal bubble is smaller in NYC. Must be the same for jets. The T-Birds and Angels take off and land in formation guys, don't be so defensive!
As for black boxes. Add video to all parts of plane. Then the memory be replaced every flight with removable storage. To be stored as back up investigation reasons. Plus ad the capability to live stream both black boxes to outside storage like cloud. Transponders that locate the plane where ever it is. Transponders that can not be turned off either by design or by pulling breakers... I don't understand why this hasn't happened. Cameras in the cockpit would go along way to insure safety and to improve training....
One thing is for sure. Since the release of MSFS2020, especially the console release, general interest in aviation is MUCH higher than it was previously. I was wondering if that was behind the apparent increase in media reports. Plus an extra focus on the business after covid issues. Side note, decades ago, my uncle was called back by United to retrain staff on manual handling after that was identified as a problem following a series of crashes. Recipient of The Wright Brothers Award.
MsFS1998 was much more difficult to learn. Make it hard to get interested = only the most dedicated people prevail.
@@sl66ggehrubt should have tried playing since FS2.0 on the C64... commitment was a requirement.. and an imagination!
So strange that any involved aircraft in such incursions is not boarded to make sure the voice recorders are kept.
More shocking to me is that I can pay to have wifi while flying yet there is no network recording for the cockpit
@@williamkreth I believe that he covered that in another video on his other channel. It would be good, but there are problems with consistence, adding anything new to an airplane, plus privacy concerns. (Privacy, since currently nobody ever review the recordings unless there is an incident. If the cockpit audio, and possibly video as well, were streamed, pilots might face scrutiny or harassment unrelated to the job.)
Am I right-wing if I suggest that these new hires might make use of any trick available to make the voice recorder data not be available?
@@dancroitoru364 no, but you are if you use youtube. I think it more likely that the FAA for example is having issues/ unequal treatment first than the airlines.
@@dancroitoru364 How do you know that any of the pilots involved in these incidents were "new hires"?
@Mentour Now! Could you please look into the crash of Alaska Airlines Flight 1866 which happened back in 1971? This flight flew into a mountainside near Juneau, AK. I remember when this happened and it was shocking and heartbreaking. There were several theories about the cause but would love to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks!
One aspect that may be a factor is overall ATC experience, in the US that is. Remember that after the 1981 strike there was a massive loss in ATC experience. There was also a massive drop off in air traffic. Air traffic and experience among the workforce ramped up side by side. When all those 1980's hires retired they were replaced again by no and low experience hirees, all while running far more than 80's traffic levels. What we are seeing today, I believe, is wave three and the associated growing pains of a relatively new workforce. If it could be done I would imagine that we would see a rise in ATC incidents that corresponds to 1981 thru 85, (lower traffic not withstanding), another hump in 2003-2007 and now wave 3. Two cents worth from an 80's hire.
Increasing the storage capability seems like such an obvious thing to do. I'd even go further: make it so that after each landing, the data from the recorders is downloaded and kept for a number of months. That way, you have data of previous flights if something happens and there is a need to find out whether a problem may have occurred (and was noticed/reported) before.
A good idea, but better yet would be uploading the data in real-time or at least near real-time, like hourly. If you wait to upload it until after the flight is over, what happens if the plane crashes?
@@Shermanbay I think Petter already did a video on that and why that isn't feasible with the current infrastructure.
And in case of crashes? Those boxes are build to be robust for a reason.
@@HappyBeezerStudios A robust box didn't help (at least so far) to solve the MH370 mystery. And technology is getting cheaper and better by leaps and bounds. It's time to consider the inevitable near future, not only the costs, but the advantages.
@@Shermanbay here is the video I mentioned on why they don't do it as of now
th-cam.com/video/qMWZCuTQpds/w-d-xo.html
and yes, MH370 is mentioned as well
@@Shermanbay MI185 had black boxes too but the captain switched them off just before it crashed. There was thus some suspicion that the caption had something to hide e.g. that he wanted to commit suicide as he'd lost money in the stock market, with the crash happening during the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997
Excellent video captain, as always! I was wondering, why do they clear somebody to land in the US when they are actually number 2 or there is traffic departing from the runway? Also, giving clearances to line up and wait after landing traffic and such, to me it all just seems like another safety risk for runway incursion or collision. Why not just keep things simple, when “cleared to land” means there is nobody and nothing on the runway. Seems like this could have prevented some of these incidents, and it’s a simple fix.
Mentour: Just so impressed with your channels. Your presentations seem to be "dripping with integrity". Just a great job.
Tis a shame that the news outlets won't approach you as a professional consultant, but that's because you never offer speculation as fact. That's good.
Ok, all incidents such as highlighted by Captain Petter have to be very carefully studded. What is today's near miss could well be tomorrows accident, we know that. I think it's worth noting though, such incidents are still extremely rare when you consider the millions of flights that are performed without any hiccups at all, even in the USA. Another very interesting, slightly diverse subject matter Captain Petter. All your case studies are very thought provoking and I love the way you never place blame on any individual.
Read the NTSB report on Atlas Air 3591 at Houston. FO was unfireable. The US definitely has a serious problem.
Guy did a video on the main channel about a month before you commented. It’s great like all the rest.
The layout of JFK is a challenge for Tower controllers and an absolute nightmare for Ground controllers. JFK takes good controllers, 30-somethings in the prime of their careers, and breaks them so they can never work in the field again. It takes a very special person with unique personality traits to cope with this frustrating puzzle day after day for many years. The famous Kennedy Steve used his sense of humor and his always-sarcastic "Splendid!" to survive or even thrive in a job role that is psychological torture for those without such coping mechanisms. The US has a handful of such problematic major airports, mostly in the Northeast region, that are of older vintage and have evolved inconvenient layouts that are impractical to fix. Boston Logan is another example and was home for many years to Boston John who thrived there for similar reasons. These brutal jobs will eventually compel them to either laugh, cry, or flip out.
I recently found your channel, and it is now one of my favorites.
Thank you for your time and effort.
I haven't heard about any "Woke Pilot" problem, but I will say that basing an opinion on ones "previous" experience in an industry doesn't have much merit today since things have dramatically changed just in the past few years. My cousin was a R&D Scientist for a Big Pharma Corp and she refuses to believe what's going on in that industry today, citing it wouldn't be possible based on how things "used" to be. Yet here we are.
Agreed. I've been in the IT industry for decades, and, though racism, sexism, homophobia, islamophobia, antisemitism, and ableist bias definitely still exist in many places and in many forms, it seems far better now than it was in the 1980s or 90s.
@@larrywest42hello I am in the IT Industry and I contribute to perpetuating all of these things daily. Glad I could be of help!
@larrywest42 No it doesn’t
@@soooslaaal8204 like you have a job
Part of these events seem to have more to do with ATC rather than pilots from what I've noticed so when the FAA said it was considering a rule change for pilots I wasn't overly concerned about it because the intent was more training WITHIN the company and this is companies fighting over available pilots IMO because in general we have a shortage of work force in different fields including the airline industry. So, getting a potential into a company and providing more training as discussed I think in another video seems like a good idea to me. It also reduces the cost for the pilot going through all the training they need and as inflation hits almost everything especially anything involving fuel, that's a big deal no matter WHO the pilot in training is. It shouldn't just be millionaires that can easily afford to become a pilot.
I know several Lufthansa long-haul pilots and they regularly complain about American ATC. The Controllers are not speaking clearly, many have heavy dialects, and apparently are generally unhelpful. So I think you are right.
@@bux834 This is old but this comment will still apply.
The Federal govt. has cut budgets to whatever agency they POSSIBLY can. Most are just skeletons of what they used to be.
I don't mean this to be a political statement in any way, but this is the REAL data. The US govt. could cut every bit of its spending other than the military, Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, and for the revenue they bring in now the govt. can't even pay for that.
I don't care if you're in govt. private industry or service sector, when you don't have enough to pay the bills you make cuts, and this has come at the expense of all agencies including the ATC, so the ATC is fighting to get people but they can't pay out really good salaries like many other jobs. The outcome of that is predictable, which is the workforce starts to show the lack of income they're being paid, and it's typically because they have less people to choose from a hiring pool.
When I saw the thumbnail of this video showing "Woke", I found that laughable. You get great people when you pay good money, and that's been the case ever since money has been important for people to live.
Thank Peter as usual for your insight on this situation.
Don’t you think that we are now witnessing the impacts of the sudden nearly halt of the aviation industry as a whole during the pandemic for like two years?
And the subsequent loss of experience/practice in all fields from ATC to pilots to ground personnel?
I wonder if overall stress levels might also be contributing? The past couple years have been rough for everyone & that can take a mental toll, and sometimes with long-term stress it can start so gradually that you don't notice that you're not functioning at the same level you were a year ago. Also I've seen some evidence that if you get covid, the brain can still be affected for a long while after the body has retuned to normal. (My own experience was that I would get weird moments of "brain fog" for a few months after I got covid, even though my body was healthy again.) So it seems possible that a lot of aviation employees might not be working at 100% without even realizing it.
After 37 years as an airline pilot I’m glad I retired Nothing is the same due to many factors I cannot say what I’d like to say
Culture trumps regulations. I'm sure that those "places with no incident reports" have regulations similar to everyone else's. I'm glad you and other like minded professionals are keeping the focus on real safety, and open and honest reporting.
Where my OH worked in engineering, if their site didn't file enough (minor) incidents, they got investigated by the company- the theory being if incidents fell below a certain level, they were either covering up, or such an amazing good example that they need to be looked at.
I’m a retired airline guy and recently spoke with a current Capt at a major “Lagacy” airline. He described the current type of first officers he flys with which simply put are not capable. He attributes this as do his colleagues to low hours and even lack of communication because some are from other countries which creates a clear lack of understanding and communication. However, lack of experience being the primary cause of concern. His one remark which struck home was. “I feel like I’m flying a single pilot operation”. They are unable to provide assistance flying in high density airports particularly in IMC conditions.
Sounds like he needs to work on his CRM
Granted, I understand CVRs are necessarily made to extremely rugged standards, but weeks of recordings could easily fit on a modern commercial SD card. It’s crazy to me only two hours are stored given how inexpensive solid state data storage is nowadays.
I'm not so sure about that.
1st is cost. Airliners would have to not only upgrade all of their fleets to be in compliance but they must provide the backbone to even read the data from the new medium. So it *definitely* wont be inexpensive.
2. They won't be using standard data devices as you suggest that it must be rugged.
Going from 2 hrs to 25 hrs is pointless. There's no reason the CVR shouldn't be able to store WEEKS worth of audio. If they're going to change the rule they should go all the way.
Thank you for this very informative video. Sounds like extending the capacity of cockpit voice recorders is a really good idea (I had no idea they were so limited in 2023). I've seen some speculation the increase in incidents could be related to brain damage/impairment in pilots and ATC following multiple Covid infections - I wondered if this is something you have seen anything about? I know some people struggle to get back to baseline after infection.
I always enjoy your explanations.
That's an interesting question.
Now that's a hot potato!
Happy Easter Petter and everyone 🐰
Happy Easter!
Happy Easter Mentour
Thank you for doing this video! I asked Kelsey to do one on the recent US runway incursions.
My thoughts on this are that it's a matter of volume. When you have 1500 takeoffs and landings a day (one every 55 seconds) at someplace like LAX, that leaves little time to coordinate things and keep everything spaced apart.
Of course all pilots are woke. We don't want sleepy pilots :P
Hahaha
Unless its ITA Airways
@@chl0e1977 or Ethiopian
With my background on the railway, I do wonder if a signalling system would help alleviate runway incursions?
Instead of relying entirely on oral clearances over the radio, using red and green lights on taxiways and runways, the controller can "lock" a runway for a takeoff, causing all taxiway and approach lights to go to red for that runway, and having some sort of detectors on crossings to confirm that the locked runway is clear.
It would probably cost a lot and take some time to implement, but I believe such a system would help lower the amount of incursions caused by miscommunication.
It could be further augmented by a radio system that sends signalling data over the air in real-time so approaching aircraft can see that their runway is green even before they're visual if the weather is bad.
@@enemixius Or they could just put some lights around the runways
@@thewhitefalcon8539 If visibility is limited, lighting only really helps with seeing where the runway is. It makes it more difficult to see if there's something there because it can drown out the lights of other aircraft or ground vehicles. Red/green lights showing clearance status would be a lot more helpful.
I belive some airports in some parts of the world do have such systems, but it's not universal.
They already exist, and have featured in some of the incident reports by Petter. They add some redundancy certainly but don't remove errors. The workload is simply so much higher for all involved and there's much more that can go wrong.
Maybe they should stop clearing aircraft to land when there is still an aircraft on the runway taking off or exiting
I think that sounds like a very good idea
That is definitely a very good idea but so is gun control.
Regarding the mentioned United 777 leaving Hawaii @3:27 - I had just taken off at night from Hilo airport (Island of Hawaii) in 1968, flying on a DC-8, and after a short few minutes, the plane *_DROPPED_* down, down, down! I was thinking we might smack the ocean. It was terrifying! And the cockpit crew didn’t say a word of explanation.