“…should…”
Oh SWA…how many is this?
- Thread starter SurferLucas
- Start date
Sadly, you are indeed correct here.
Ian_J
Hubschrauber Flieger
First OE trip, first leg at airline. COVID. LAS goes ATC zero and reverts to an uncontrolled field.
Me, a dirty helicopter guy to my LCP: “I was born for this situation.”
Kingairer
'Tiger Team' Member
I am more willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they aren’t incompetent, but rather normal line pilots and I’m interested in now a normal line pilot makes this mistake. I’ve been going into pwm for my whole career and I’ve used that cross way maybe twice. There was likely a strong assumption that other airplanes were using the main runway as well and when they pushed back their position wasn’t obvious? Or maybe they went all in on the idea that the runway opened at :45 and someone got the time wrong.
You got this in the bag! “I’ll solve this situation for us, if you call the ride good, right here, right now.”
I wouldn’t say incompetent either. I get the feeling there was a singular plan in mind to use 29, and all the outside clues showing others using 36, were discounted. Why they weren’t on CTAF, which likely would’ve at least generated an in-cockpit conversation of “hmmm, wonder why everyone is using 36?”, or possibly even one of the other aircraft saying “I believe 29 is still closed” to them. Not being on CTAF seems to have been one of the prime mitigating factors for the whole thing not having been utilized. A lot of SA inaccessible without it; even though other external visual clues should’ve been obvious.
I don’t know whether SWA was even aware of the other departures taxiing out. Just very lucky that one of the departures wasn’t rolling on 36 when SWA decided to start their roll on 29….
I believe it was also stated that the tower controller was there and was trying to get SWA on the CTAF and that's why Bos center was immediately asking the pilots about it because the tower controller was already telling them about it. Not being on the CTAF is by far the most aggregious part to me because the ops/maintenance guys would be on there while working on the runway.
///AMG
Well-Known Member
One time I was bringing an -F from Virginia into KNFL over a weekend when the field was closed, so uncontrolled ops. My trusty WSO must have called the reciprocal/wrong runway like half a dozen times on CTAF after I corrected him each time. My lord, I just about had an aneurism.
///AMG
Well-Known Member
Why is your WSO talking on the radio?
Haha, we make our WSOs work for a living in the Navy, no free rides
Haha, we make our WSOs work for a living in the Navy, no free rides
Lucky they aren’t Marine NFOs, then they’d really be unemployed. Or maybe an infantry company commander.
///AMG
Well-Known Member
Yeah, but again 2406250545 is not a helpful format whatsoever.
Pure, simple English needed badly
I think I’d use a better example. The average student pilot at Joe’s Feed Shack and Crop Duster Training InstiTOOT can interpret that one.
Same.
Lots of “Swiss cheese holes” with this one. I don’t see the total packet of NOTAMS (I probably wouldn’t read it right now anyway because it’d feel like homework) but if it’s closed until 0545, I’d assume it was open at 0546 and suspect it was some sort of noise abatement closure.
I don’t know. I’m reluctant to put it on scale with Mexico City and Western Airlines or Comair and Lexington with a clearly egregious lack of SA.
But what about not even bothering to be on CTAF where the tower controller actually tries to tell them. That to me is the head scratcher especially when there are multiple other aircraft moving around you'd think you'd want to know what their plans are.... That's the part most crazy to me is it was easily avoidable with basic airmanship. The vehicle on the runway even sees the SWA heading there and calls up to reiterate they will be off at :45 probably because he figured the southwest knows and is going to wait until 45.... But then it's just crickets except for the Brickyards that are appropriately announcing what they are doing each step. Its the simple lack of care that is more shocking then anything. It's really not that hard we humans just really make it hard. I'm certainly guilty of it too.
Kingairer
'Tiger Team' Member
What if they had a digit off? like instead of 120,9 they had 121.9 or 120.92 something like that? Theyd be broadcasting and oblivious that they were on the wrong freq.
It’s dark, it’s early, you need to get a clearance from center which, I’m afraid to say, 90% of us reading this are going to screw up the sequence because if you’re a mainline pilot flying between the big airports, it’s not super cut and dry.
I can only look back to my past. Leaving TVC one morning before the tower was open, I asked my new copilot, fresh-ish out of the military, to review non-towered procedures the night before so I wouldn’t be single pilot ops on the ground and in the initial climb. I had to convince him that we needed to call Minneapolis Center for a clearance, and then a release time, were going to communicate over CTAF stating who we were, where we were taxiing, to which runway using the electronic weather we had availble, consistent with the NOTAMS and it was pulling teeth.
“We don’t’ have a taxi clearance!” “We don’t need a taxi clearance, it’s uncontrolled, we state intentions over CTAF”
“Which runway are they going to give us?” “We determine the appropriate runway ourselves”
And so on and so on.
Without telling an entire story over again, I can respect a good deal of confusion and, well, even assumption that the radios are set. Is that the case here? I have no idea, but I’m more apt to give the crew the benefit of the doubt that it was just a series of small mistakes that lead up to a big one instead of intentional negligence.
Especially when I have my own experiences with going from a world of DTW/LAX/JFK/DFW/ORD/ATL and then ending up in TVC with a closed tower on a Sunday at 0500.
