Discussion

LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash

notRobot: There was a single traffic controller handling the entire airport. This was bound to happen and will keep happening unless things change. It's absurd that the US hasn't been able to fix its ATC shortage in like decades.Currently over 41% of facilities are reliant on mandatory overtime, with controllers frequently working 60-hour weeks with only four days off per month.

amelius: I'm going to make myself unpopular and ask if an AI could have prevented this accident.

blitzar: You are absolulety right, the blockchain could have prevented this accident

FL410: This. Go look at the atc subreddit, controllers have been begging for help for ages. This isn't one guy's fault.

MisterTea: When I heard about the crash I immediately recalled the recent articles about ATC shortages and overworked ATC's. And here we are. ONE dude running ATC for LaGuardia. Mind boggling.I place no blame on the ATC as they were doing everything they could given the shit sandwich they were handed. I see this happening all over with staffs getting pared down to minimums, more (sometimes unpaid) over time, prices going up, and no raises.

2c0m: I actually looked into becoming an ATC controller a year or two ago (I love aviation) and they had an age cap of ~30 to start training. I'm 32, so ruled out.

ndiddy: I just hope they don't try to pin this on the controller who was on duty and move on without putting plans in place for some sort of structural change. Controllers are forced to work 60+ hour weeks and overnight shifts, and the controller in question was working both ground and air control simultaneously due to staffing shortages. If you listen to the ATC audio, he was handling finding a spot for a plane that aborted takeoff and declared an emergency, while calling emergency services for that plane, while coordinating multiple planes coming in to land, while also coordinating multiple planes trying to take off. With that kind of workload, an accident like this is an eventuality. Even after the fatal accident happened, he had to work for at least another hour before he could get relieved of his duty. Hopefully something will happen to fix this at some point rather than us collectively deciding that an accident or two per year is worth the cost savings of not keeping ATC properly staffed.

metalliqaz: How do you know it was due to staffing shortages? It is common at LGA for one controller to be handling Tower and Ground late at night.

jakelazaroff: [delayed]

0xy: LaGuardia did have a fully staffed ATC, and there's zero evidence this controller was overworked. You seem to be prematurely ascribing cause when nothing has been investigated yet.

consumer451: > LaGuardia did have a fully staffed ATCAccording to whom? Management, or controllers?https://old.reddit.com/r/ATC/

pklausler: "The system worked yesterday, so it should have worked forever."

jen20: > It is common at LGA for one controller to be handling Tower and Ground late at night.What happens when they need the bathroom, or have some kind of medical problem? If it's really a common case for one controller to handle things, the system itself needs to be fundamentally rethought.

metalliqaz: There are other people there, but the person on the radio is doing both.

cjrp: That seems mad, given the volume of traffic they're working - even without emergencies. My local GA field is single controller, and that's VFR, grass runways, averages 40-50 movements/day.

ryanmcbride: Maybe there should be more than one

metalliqaz: Maybe. Lets see what the NTSB recommendations say.However despite the downvotes I still haven't seen evidence that they were running understaffed at that moment.What I do know is that the developing emergency on the tarmac due to an apparently hazardous smell in another plane is likely the cause of the confusion that led to this incident. That's a trigger that could have been exacerbated by fatigue but we don't have any evidence of that yet.

fyrepuffs: Y'all can maybe think about who you are voting for in the next election -- that is if you are still able to vote.

nathanaldensr: The FAA's problems are systemic and structural. They've existed long, long before the 2024 election.

jordanb: It certainly didn't help.[1][1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-doges-cutbacks-at-the-...

Tyrubias: Yes, but the problems have been driven by the relentless deregulation of critical industries and infrastructure primarily driven by a specific political bloc. In the next US election, we should vote for candidates that promise systemic change and government overhaul, not further deregulation and handouts to corporations.

yieldcrv: Can you elaborate on what change you would like to occur?I have voted based on getting particular people nominated within a federal agency, requires the President to pick someone who will 100% be from their party, and a Senate committee that will confirm thempeople tend to think "I'm voting against my best interests" without knowing that the agency control was my best interest as it will most likely continue shaping an industry far beyond any particular administrationI could see that happening again with your abstract, vague, and ambiguous idea. Just say what you mean specifically, use your words, so I know if it's something that could steer my vote or not

adgjlsfhk1: >This isn't one guy's fault.Counterpoint. It's Regen's fault. He's the guy who decided that a high priority of the government was making sure air traffic controllers had no power to fight back against being horrifically overworked (because unions are evil you see)

jen20: There have been six presidents who could have addressed this since Reagan. Every one of them shoulders some of the responsibility.

_ph_: Yes, they should all have taken actions. But also, it is much more difficult to fix something broken once the damage has settled in. I guess none of them was willing to risk the disruption a fix would have caused. And the system seemed to have held up for quite a while. Weren't there some mass firings of ATC personal at the beginning of the Trump presidency?The bottom line is: don't break things that are difficult or impossible to fix.

jen20: The is a good idea, but once they are broken, you should at least try to fix them, or bear some of the blame for not having tried.

linkjuice4all: You had two options and one was clearly far worse than the other. This nuanced-excuse-making and “the democrats also occasionally do things I don’t like” is lazy. Take responsibility for letting the mob take over - even if it was just by inaction.

murat124: SPOF still applies here. You don't need evidence of fatigue or anything. You have only 1 of anything, you run the risk of ending up having nothing.

fred_is_fred: Does anyone know why the fire truck was driving across the runway in the first place? Was it a patrol, repositioning the truck, or was there an active incident that they were responding to? Seems like reducing the number of times you have to drive across an active runway is in general a good thing, but perhaps at an airport this old this is the only way to get from A to B.

Hovertruck: They were responding to an incident (unidentified odor on another plane)

nemomarx: I believe it was responding to the other active incident that the ATC was also handling where a plane failed to take off?

adolph: It is surprising to me that airports do not use an interlock system for deconflicting the various paths segments that may be occupied by a vehicle. Trains have used mechanical ones since the 1800s [0]. The story and comments seem to indicate the only thing preventing collisions is the mind of one person--that sounds insane.0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlocking

pc86: > the controller in question was working both ground and air control simultaneously due to staffing shortagesHow many planes land at LGA in the middle the night?One controller overnight is completely reasonable.

inaros: >> One controller overnight is completely reasonableSo if said controller has a medical episode?

FL410: And therein lies the problem. Clearly, having one overworked controller running a combined tower is not safe nor sustainable.

pc86: Planes landing at a rate of one every 30-40 minutes isn't exactly "overworked."

bloudermilk: Approximately one per minute in the 15 minute span proceeding this crash, including one that had an emergency takeoff rejection and was being maneuvered along with the emergency support vehicles that were being sent to attend to it

pc86: "Funny" enough if this controller had had a medical emergency (or just bad sushi) and been off the radios, this wouldn't have happened because the fire truck would not have received clearance to cross the runway and wouldn't have. Or at least would have crossed like the airport was uncontrolled, been much more careful and announced itself, and likely have seen the landing aircraft.

MeetingsBrowser: I can’t find a way to read this other than“If we remove regulation, things will be safer because everyone will be more careful.”

VK-pro: I don’t have time to check flight logs but I personally landed at LGA coming from MDW on Sunday. And I also know people who got diverted within the hour coming back to LGA that night. 30-40 minutes doesn’t seem accurate. That aside, if you’ve ever done operational staffing, you’d know that you should probably have at least one redundancy. When there is any chance of emergency or two events happening simultaneously, you should have more than one person.One last meta point. We live in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and the highest air travel prices (some part is a function of longer distances I know). We should expect that we have ample coverage, if not over-coverage, at all times for one of our major metropolitan airports. Pay them.

pc86: "Staffing shortage" doesn't mean "you can fit more people in the tower."You can't think of any scenario having one controller makes sense?

ferguess_k: Looking at the things he needs to juggle at the same time, is it really reasonable? Any standard we are referring here? Sure such cases are rare but that's why we have redundancies for critical positions.

inaros: An empty tower at La Guardia with a bunch of airplanes in the air not getting a reply to their calls is Die Hard 2 stuff. Spare me the Pete Hegseth school of ATC...

annexrichmond: Damn, this comment section is perfect example of how HN is no longer feels like HN. it's just reddit now.

antoineMoPa: > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

caconym_: > One controller overnight is completely reasonable.Do you really think it's appropriate to have zero margin for handling unusually high ATC workloads? Because we just saw what happens when you have zero margin for handling unusually high ATC workloads: people start dying.

gortok: In this case there were two arrivals within 4 minutes of each other and two departures, in addition to the emergency plane that had just aborted takeoff.

pc86: Which is a completely reasonable amount of traffic for one controller to handle. This wasn't the controller's fault. The firetruck received a clearance, had that clearance revoked, and either didn't hear the revocation or ignored it.

amiga386: Agreed. There are a whole bucketload of problems, each one contributing to the staff shortage. The US has problems that other countries don't have (or have less of). It's a long-term organisational issue. None of it is insurmountable, but things need to be done differently, and the politics of that may be insurmountable.Being an air-traffic controller anywhere in the world is a very intense job at times, and needs a huge amount of proficiency that only a small number of people are capable of doing. Couple that with:- the FAA expects you to move to where ATCs are needed, so many of the qualified applicants give up when they hear where the posting is. You can't force them to take the job!- the technology is decades out of date and the Brand New Air Traffic Control System (it's seriously called that) won't roll out until 2028 at the earliest- Obama's FAA disincentivised its traditional "feeder" colleges that do ATC courses to "promote diversity", net outcome was fewer applicants- Regan broke the union in the 1980s- DOGE indiscriminately decimated the FAA like it did most other government departments

busterarm: The issue is the shortage, which that doesn't address. Quite the opposite, in fact.Was in three different unions. Union didn't do squat for me. Mainly kept my wages down and gave the friends of the union rep the best shifts.

anonymars: Firing them all broke the pipelinehttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47495739

fred_is_fred: Was the 2nd plane on a runway still also?

RankingMember: > I still haven't seen evidence that they were running understaffed at that moment.I think the disagreement you see is based on the definition of what "understaffed" means. Having one ATC to do ground and air control simultaneously seems like an under-staffing situation to begin with, regardless of whether it's a common practice.

thmsths: There is also the angle of: even if there is an appropriate amount of controllers in the tower at a given time, how they do it can also hint at the issue. Being an ATC is a taxing job, mandatory overtime and 60 hours work weeks screams understaffing to me.

SteveNuts: What is the contingency/continuity plan if the single controller becomes incapacitated while on duty with no warning to pilots?

mmooss: > Having one ATC to do ground and air control simultaneously seems like an under-staffing situation to begin withDo we have evidence that one controller did all ground and air? The only evidence I've seen was the NY Times said that, according to a source, two controllers were working and two more were in the building.In situations like this there is as lot of disinformation. The best thing to do is not add to it - a pile of bad information is not improved by piling more on. The best thing is to patiently find reliable info and stick to it.

penultimatename: And if an aircraft needs to land due to an emergency? It’s amazing things work as well as they do, the system relies on only one thing going wrong at a time. This accident was an example of multiple things going wrong at the same time.

pc86: Every accident is an example of multiple things going wrong at the same time.[0]I'm going to pretend to know exactly what would happen in that precise scenario but I'm confident most commercial pilots get enough training to be able to handle it.[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model

eviks: With all the advances in technology, can there be no navigation app that can just tell you you're on a collision course instead of relying exclusivly on playing broken phone between flying and driving meatbags via a sitting one?

krisoft: There is actually a set of lights which should have displayed red towards the trucks.Were they not operating correctly, or did the driver ignore them is one of the questions the investigation will answer.The system is called Runway Status Lights. And in case there is a disagreement between the ATC clearance and the lights the drivers are supposed to not enter the runway.https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl

flakeoil: In the video it looks as if the other emergency vehicles have stopped and only the first truck is driving. Maybe they missed the light or it turned red just after the first truck passed the light.

duped: It bothers me that everyone is laser focused on poor ATC staffing and working conditions (which is very valid, don't get me wrong). I think airport capacity should be fixed depending on ATC staffing. We need to have less air travel.The way I think about it is this: substandard ATC staffing is just as bad as lacking jetways or damaged runways. When the airport can't land planes because of physical capacity constraints, flights get cancelled or delayed (literally happening today at LGA, flights are getting canceled because they're down one runway). The carriers need to eat the costs of forcing too much demand on ATCs.

rekrsiv: You are correct. Robustness requires a system that is working within it's tolerance margin, and stressing that inevitably leads to failure. A fault-tolerant system in this case would require a large amount of redundant humans. Unfortunately, the capitalist mindset prevents accepting any amount of "waste" as tolerable, which makes a robust system impossible to implement over time. Every system touched by an economic optimizer will eventually fail.The idea that waste must be reduced is killing society, and this mindset must be addressed first before any other safety-critical system can be made reliable again.

pc86: I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. The GP is literally about a lone controller in the tower having a medical episode and what would happen after that.

bombcar: The pilots would execute untowered approach procedures, a small airport with little to no traffic and VFR flight you may self-announce on frequency, a larger airport you go back to approach, etc.

bombcar: One of the things you learn as a pilot is how to recognize that you need to go into emergency mode if you will. Call it high-alert if you want.You need to recognize when something is out of the ordinary and treat it as an emergency (perhaps not a literal pan-pan/mayday emergency) sooner rather than later, and do things that may end up to have been unnecessary (like executing a go-around because emergency vehicles were on the move).One controller on two frequencies is another example - that works fine in normal situations, but during an emergency response, perhaps the channels should be mixed; giving the pilots in the air a chance to hear the incorrect clearance onto their runway.After all, an active runway is really more of an "air" control thing than a ground one.

inaros: Hopefully some commercial professional pilots will comment on this thread, but if you go to sites where they normally hang out like:https://www.airlinepilotforums.comYou will see many are terrified ( in commercial pilot terms...) of flying into La Guardia or JFK...

rglover: > https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/major/152572-aircraft-fir...Just a quick read/speculation based on the linked forum post...Short of insane visibility conditions that prevented them from seeing the plane coming, the firetruck operator seems to be the liable party (beyond the airport for understaffing controllers—this seems to be exacerbated by government cuts but that's still no excuse for having a solo controller at that busy of an airport, especially at night).The controller in question seems to have caught their mistake quickly and reversed the order instead asking the firetruck to stop (but for some reason, this wasn't heard).Is it common now to have solo operators running control towers?

mmmrtl: RWSL were red in the video. https://viewfromthewing.com/__trashed-13/ So maybe we'll be looking at training and fatigue for the firefighters too

xeonmc: > I just hope they don't try to pin this on the controller who was on duty and move on without putting plans in place for some sort of structural change.I am reminded of the Uberlingen disaster:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_%C3%9Cberlingen_mid-air_c...

inaros: >> Every accident is an example of multiple things going wrong at the same time.You are defeating your own argument :-) Its exactly because every accident is an example of multiple things going wrong at the same time...that you need...multiple layers of control and safety to catch it through each hole of the cheese.Like...another controller?

rekrsiv: Can a single human being reliably and robustly maintain a safety-critical system alone under any circumstances, ever?Ever?

cucumber3732842: There are millions of people who are self employed in an industry where they could be maimed or killed if they screw up who manage to make it to retirement.I think the better question is how you get a system in which people are only responsible for any one facet to get the same performance out of people that a painter can get out of himself when he's setting up his own ladder that he personally has to climb on.

pythonaut_16: I don't think the GPs point is about personal safety of workers, but rather critical safety systems that rely on one person with no backups. Like an ATC tower for a busy airport staffed by a single person on an overnight shift.A painter who does a bad job setting up a ladder is going to have a bad time, a lone ATC operator having a heart attack potentially puts multiple large aircraft full of people in danger...

joncrane: The controller was talking to Frontier plane when he first said stop, then said stopstopTruck1stopstopstop and it would be easy for there to be a gap in processing for the driver of truck 1 because the verbiage all flowed in the same stanza that was started when addressing the Frontier flight.

inaros: I am afraid the fire truck might have some level of responsibility, since it seems FAA ground vehicle guidance says:AC No: 150/5210-20A - "Subject: Ground Vehicle Operations to include Taxiing or Towing an Aircraft on Airports"https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/...“you must ensure that you look both ways down the runway to visually acquire aircraft landing or departing even if you have a clearance to cross.”

According to the aviation safety reporting system administered by the US space agency Nasa

arjie: > According to the aviation safety reporting system administered by the US space agency Nasa...Aeronautics, yes, but I was still surprised to see NASA and not the FAA here. But folllowing up here https://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/overview/immunity.html> The FAA determined that ASRP effectiveness would be greatly enhanced if NASA, rather than the FAA, accomplished the receipt, processing, and analysis of raw data. This would ensure the anonymity of the reporter and of all parties involved in a reported occurrence or incident and, consequently, increase the flow of information necessary for the effective evaluation of the safety and efficiency of the NAS.Very neat. It's by design. Well done.

0xffff2: I work in exactly this space as a NASA contractor. I don't actually have a massive amount of insight into the FAA, but my impression is that they don't do much in the way of R&D on their own. I think (without hard numbers mind you) the vast majority of FAA R&D work starts at NASA or other government labs and gets transferred to the FAA when it gets to a sufficient level of maturity. In that context, it's even more natural for NASA to host the ASRS system.