<story><title>‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin</title><url>https://fallows.substack.com/p/as-bad-as-it-gets-without-body-bags</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mcv</author><text>Sounds like a money problem to me. Less time between planes means more planes means more money.&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me like far too many critical safety decisions are being made with an eye on money rather than safety. There were reports warning that Fukushima wasn&amp;#x27;t safe in case of a tsunami, but the company in charge of the plant decided to ignore that. Deep Water was caused by cost cuts. The Boeing 737 Max was made for financial reasons, fixing a fundamental hardware problem in software.&lt;p&gt;Safety engineers clearly need a bigger say in these things.</text></item><item><author>0xFF0123</author><text>I&amp;#x27;d be curious to know how much it actually improves throughput. It seems strange to use optimistic locks in such a safety critical process, when a more fail-safe approach is available.</text></item><item><author>mulmen</author><text>Europe uses pessimistic runway locks but the US prefers optimistic locks.  This improves throughput at US airports with the risk of a rollback on a dirty runway.</text></item><item><author>jnsaff2</author><text>I got my PPL in EU and here it was drilled into me that in Europe there can be exactly ONE plane cleared to use a runway at any time.&lt;p&gt;When the approaching plane is cleared then there is no allowance for anyone and anything to be on the runway.&lt;p&gt;So if there is a departing plane waiting on the runway or someone crossing then the approaching plane is given &amp;quot;cleared approach runway 08&amp;quot; but never &amp;quot;cleared to land&amp;quot;. Which also means that if you are piloting the landing plane then at your decision height you have to go around.&lt;p&gt;Also when someone is cleared to land no-one can be given a permission to enter the runway.&lt;p&gt;There is one clearance that kinda-sorta allows which is &amp;quot;BEHIND landing Boeing 737, line up and wait BEHIND&amp;quot;. It intentionally has &amp;quot;BEHIND&amp;quot; before and after the call to be extra clear that the waiting pilot has to confirm that the plane has passed their nose and they can enter the runway while the landing plane is on rollout. But that plane can not be given a takeoff clearance before the plane on the rollout has exited the runway.&lt;p&gt;We were told that the americans do it differently and I&amp;#x27;ve always found it dangerous.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>njarboe</author><text>The last commercial plane wreck in the US was in 2009 and was a small commuter crash with only 49 fatalities[1]. This does not even make the Wikipedia list[2] of deadliest crashes which shows none since 2001. Bureaucratic over reaction to rare events can create worse problems overall for society than not changing anything at all. Just see the US response to 9-11. The American people solved the problem in about 90 minutes. Don&amp;#x27;t let plane hijackers control the plane. Fight back instead of just wait. Thus UA flight 93. The lesson from that should have been a very measured &amp;quot;We need solid, locking, cabin doors on airplanes&amp;quot;. That&amp;#x27;s it. Not the whole TSA department stand up, 20 year war in Afghanistan, invade Iraq????, Patriot Act forever with secret courts bullshit craziness. Instead of &amp;quot;never let a crisis go to waste&amp;quot; we need the State to be more slow to judgement.&lt;p&gt;[1]&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cnbc.com&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;13&amp;#x2F;colgan-air-crash-10-years-ago-reshaped-us-aviation-safety.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cnbc.com&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;13&amp;#x2F;colgan-air-crash-10-years-ag...&lt;/a&gt;
[2]&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_airliners_in_the_United_States&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;List_of_accidents_and_incident...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin</title><url>https://fallows.substack.com/p/as-bad-as-it-gets-without-body-bags</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mcv</author><text>Sounds like a money problem to me. Less time between planes means more planes means more money.&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me like far too many critical safety decisions are being made with an eye on money rather than safety. There were reports warning that Fukushima wasn&amp;#x27;t safe in case of a tsunami, but the company in charge of the plant decided to ignore that. Deep Water was caused by cost cuts. The Boeing 737 Max was made for financial reasons, fixing a fundamental hardware problem in software.&lt;p&gt;Safety engineers clearly need a bigger say in these things.</text></item><item><author>0xFF0123</author><text>I&amp;#x27;d be curious to know how much it actually improves throughput. It seems strange to use optimistic locks in such a safety critical process, when a more fail-safe approach is available.</text></item><item><author>mulmen</author><text>Europe uses pessimistic runway locks but the US prefers optimistic locks.  This improves throughput at US airports with the risk of a rollback on a dirty runway.</text></item><item><author>jnsaff2</author><text>I got my PPL in EU and here it was drilled into me that in Europe there can be exactly ONE plane cleared to use a runway at any time.&lt;p&gt;When the approaching plane is cleared then there is no allowance for anyone and anything to be on the runway.&lt;p&gt;So if there is a departing plane waiting on the runway or someone crossing then the approaching plane is given &amp;quot;cleared approach runway 08&amp;quot; but never &amp;quot;cleared to land&amp;quot;. Which also means that if you are piloting the landing plane then at your decision height you have to go around.&lt;p&gt;Also when someone is cleared to land no-one can be given a permission to enter the runway.&lt;p&gt;There is one clearance that kinda-sorta allows which is &amp;quot;BEHIND landing Boeing 737, line up and wait BEHIND&amp;quot;. It intentionally has &amp;quot;BEHIND&amp;quot; before and after the call to be extra clear that the waiting pilot has to confirm that the plane has passed their nose and they can enter the runway while the landing plane is on rollout. But that plane can not be given a takeoff clearance before the plane on the rollout has exited the runway.&lt;p&gt;We were told that the americans do it differently and I&amp;#x27;ve always found it dangerous.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ErikVandeWater</author><text>People tend to complain about the safety of airplane even though it is in the top echelon of safe modes of transit.  There&amp;#x27;s no reason to try to reach the highest-hanging fruit trying to make it even safer when people are dying in droves on the road just getting to the airport.  Much better to do something about that low-hanging fruit.</text></comment>