Nobody said that there was only one controller on duty, just that there was only one controller working both the ground and local positions. The other controller, after the accident, was probably very busy coordinating emergency services and working with TRACON and the airport authorities on land lines.
If the guy who had the OE and crash had to keep working, there weren't enough people in the tower.
I don't think the traffic level was high enough to hit such a trigger. The workload increased suddenly because of the emergency declaration and need for the CFR equipment to respond. None of that were "operations" that would be counted nor could be predicted.
Right, but if *one* emergency increases the workload enough to cause the controller to commit an error and create a second, much larger emergency, then the traffic level/workload is too high. Where else in aviation do we let one thing go wrong and unravel the whole operation?
I can almost guarantee the CRJ guys were looking out the windshield.
One of them yes, but not necessarily both. PF is going to be eyes outside, but the PM may have a lot of other stuff going on. At my current job, the last checklist before landing finishes around 400 AGL, at which point I go eyes outside and scan for potential incursions because the PF is focusing on the runway itself to get the plane down safely, but as soon as the mains touch I'm back inside calling out "Dump indicating, reverse available, 80 knots, 60 knots, 50 knots" and often by the time that's done ATC is giving us instructions for taxiing off the runway (or more) followed by the after landing flow and the next thing I see out the window is the taxiway.
I have no idea what level of automation the CRJ has for any of that, but in a jet it's far from guaranteed that both of them are looking out the window.
As for the PATCO history I chose not to addess it because prior to the change in testing for the ATC candidates, things were moving at a decent pace.
No. No, it wasn't. And the FAA put a bunch of new rules into place that had the effect of accelerating retirements, making the problem worse, long before any of the stuff you're talking about happened.
I would surmise that a controller who has just had a crash is removed from the tube ASAP? I Find some incongruety in the case here. Where was the backup/alternate? Its not like I don't trust the people in charge.
I am not aware of any other accidents where the controller wasn't pulled immediately, though one could presume Comair 5191 was the same.
Damn, it is just common sense … if you prioritize anything other than 100% pure performance ( be it gender, race , hair color , whatever ) by definition you are sacrificing quality since performance is no longer your only guiding principle.
Unless you have a large enough hiring pool that you have a whole lot of candidates that are at the same level. I'm aware of a (non-ATC) situation where there were hundreds of candidates for a handful of positions, and there were far too many at the same level to choose from, so they chose candidates that had the same weaknesses so that training could focus on those particular areas.
From everything I've seen, the problem is not the lack of candidates with ATC, the problem is the washout rate during training.
And you never cross a runway without LOOOKING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Unfortunately, humans can look and not see. We also don't know whether the truck would have been able to see the plane even if they did look - At the angle they were crossing, the plane was coming from the blind side of a traditional truck, and the plane may have been still in the air when they looked and thus above the roofline of the truck.
1) I agree with respect to situational awareness. If you are looking outside of the cockpit, and you hear the emergency vehicles being dispatched,
I'm not sure they would have heard them even if they were on the same radio frequency. If the plane was in the landing roll when the call was made, there may have been in-cockpit callouts that drowned out the radio.
3) While it wasn't exactly MVFR at the time of landing, the pilots were more likely to have their attention in the cockpit (see #2), either by virtue of the sightline (nose up attitude) or scanning instruments. While it is reasonable to expect that a pilot would have their scan moving in and out of the cockpit, or the PNF focusing outside while the PF was focused inside, it is not unreasonable to believe that they did not have their attention outside of the cockpit at that phase of flight.
The PF was surely eyes outside, but at that phase of flight maybe either didn't expect the truck to enter or simply couldn't do anything about it by the time it did. Once thrust reversers are deployed, a go-around is pretty much off the table.
Not true. The truck reads back the clearance at 7:06 into the stream. The STOP panic starts at 7:12. It's only about six seconds. And a fire engine which ways something along the scale of 18,000 lbs isn't going to accelerate from a standing stop instantaneously. Further, the tower had cleared "and company" to crash. The impact was only with the first vehicle of a stream of them waiting to cross. Even if he'd rocked across as soon as cleared, the plane would have struck one of the following vehicles.
And there were about a dozen trucks that DID NOT cross the hold short line, just the one that did. Maybe the emergency adrenaline got the best of them.
Do we know that they were at a standing stop prior to crossing?
