
How to fix flying - pmcpinto
http://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a20085/how-to-fix-flying/
======
njovin
There's always room for improvement, but even the first incident outlined in
the article shows how far we've come and how safe air travel is.

\- The 777's TCAS alerted them to the problem and recommended an evasive
action, which they took

\- The Controller, despite not having followed his normal procedure prior to
issuing the takeoff clearance, noticed his mistake around the same time the
TCAS went off in the 777 and ordered evasive action to the Cessna

\- The FAA's reporting system allowed the pilot to report the incident which
was followed up on with an official investigation after which several actions
were taken, including training, QA reviews in the SFO tower, establishing a
panel to review the SFO transition corridor, etc.

The road to flight safety is unfortunately paved with tragedy but that's the
case with anything transportation-related.

The author's proposal to break ATC away from the FAA doesn't do much to fix
the problem that caused the highlighted incident (human error). Although a
better-funded ATC system might have more technical controls in place, when
you're dealing with one of the busiest airspaces in the world issues like this
are going to occur. A better solution might be to ban non-commercial traffic
from certain Class B airspaces - not that I'm in favor of that.

~~~
jedmeyers
> The Controller ... ordered evasive action to the Cessna

From the tape it looks like the controller asked Cessna to 'maintain visual
separation', which is a standard procedure for VFR and not an 'evasive
action'.

~~~
njovin
You're right. He was told to 'pass behind that aircraft.' and since the report
stated that the 777 saw the Cessna turning to avoid I sort of conflated the
two things in my mind.

------
route3
HN'ers might appreciate learning the FAA has a developer-friendly program
called SWIM [0] to help facilitate getting realtime FAA data (flight plans,
weather data, etc) in to the hands of coders. I recently attended the SWIM
Developer Workshop at the Volpe Center (near MIT) and really enjoyed it.

There's quite a bit to the SWIM program. The onboarding can be a bit tricky
though and you have to know your way around site-to-site VPNs. I recently
completed the onboarding process and am receiving live flight plan data --
proposed flights, en route, completed etc.

Would be curious to know if there are others on HN that are working with SWIM
data or if there are companies that are hiring in this space.

[0]
[http://www.faa.gov/nextgen/programs/swim/](http://www.faa.gov/nextgen/programs/swim/)

~~~
wrigby
I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on the differences between using
SWIM vs a commercial product like FlightAware. From my cursory glance at SWIM,
it seems like it's probably better for getting flight plans and weather info,
but FlightAware may be more useful for getting in-flight status. Does that
seem consistent with your experience?

~~~
sokoloff
Not a SWIM developer, but it looks like SWIM is the way to get a data feed to
allow you build a flightaware workalike.

~~~
wrigby
Makes sense. I know FlightAware operates their own network of ADS-B receivers,
which augments the FAA data. I should look into whether or not that changes
things, but I imagine the SWIM data feed doesn't have many holes.

------
Animats
Dependence on GPS isn't a panacea. GPS does fail and can be interfered with.
There's talk of bringing back LORAN in case that happens.[1] The FAA is
decommissioning about 25% of the VOR stations, which are usually at airports.
(The big acre-sized circular antenna farm west of 101 just north of SJC is a
VOR.) It's good to have several completely independent systems.

[1]
[http://www.gps.gov/policy/legislation/loran-c/](http://www.gps.gov/policy/legislation/loran-c/)
[2]
[http://download.aopa.org/advocacy/151123_VORs_Approved_for_D...](http://download.aopa.org/advocacy/151123_VORs_Approved_for_Discontinuance.pdf)

------
sokoloff
>Instead of the government paying for air traffic control (currently funding
comes via an excise tax on fuel and airline tickets), flyers would pay for it
directly. A portion of every gallon of fuel or ticket sold would pay for the
national airspace and air traffic control system. If air traffic control were
self-funded, then the use tax could be lifted and ATC could get immediate
access to cash without having to appeal to Congress.

I don't get it. There is already a fuel tax and a tax on tickets (as the
article reports). That's how flyers pay for it directly now. I don't see how
that's different from a portion of every gallon and ticket sold. That's
literally what it is today (and what the article is reporting).

What am I missing?

------
dbalan
Being very bad and ATC sim games, my excuse was that real ATC's use a lot more
tech than a keyboard and map of airplanes. Now I stand corrected.

------
wheaties
I can comment that there's been times when I've been on flight following and
switching to a new ATC controller causes problems. I've been asked to drop to
under class Bravo airspace midway through a transit. I've been ping-ponged to
different people because the new guy has too much workload. I've also had to
play the radio hunt game when the given frequency to report to was currently
not being used.

------
AnodyneComplex
This seems oddly filled with misinformation: flight paths aren't locked into
flying over radar stations.

And what exactly are we trying to fix? The sky is big, it's not like we have a
lack of flight space over the centre of the country... None of the suggestions
seems to imply any big efficiency or safety gain.

~~~
Piskvorrr
it's not like we have a lack of flight space over the centre of the country -
Certainly not. It's near the major airports where things get crowded.

~~~
AnodyneComplex
But none of the suggestions would increase the density of aircraft around
major airports. They're already operating at runway capacity during peak
times.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
They would increase the ability of the controllers to deal with that density.
Or more precisely, they would offload it to software.

As described, there is a lot of tedium, inaccuracy, and potential for human
error in the ATC system. They're passing strips of paper back and forth, and
making sure that no two strips put two planes in the same spot, and relaying
the information over verbal radio commands.

It's begging to be automated.

~~~
bryondowd
Yep, and the FAA is working on automating and improving all the time. Being
tied up by funding seems to be the main issue. I'm a developer working on
flight data input/output, and it amazes me how old so much of the tech we use
is. It's not that we are unwilling or unable to upgrade, it's a lack of
resources. I get to listen to managers talking about how they are finagling
multiple funding sources just to try getting 'simple' things like ethernet
equipment into the towers so we can get off of serial interfaces, and which
group is responsible for what and how much.

I know very little about the financial end of things, or what would or would
not solve the problem, but it does seem like a saner funding system would go a
long way. Most people I've spoken to here seem skeptical at best about
suggestions of breaking us off from the FAA.

------
based2
[https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/4tr3r1/out_of_air...](https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/4tr3r1/out_of_air_traffic_control_how_to_fix_americas/d5jmjh8)

------
d33
Surprised nobody mentioned TSA pre-check. Giving any money to TSA sounds like
a bad idea to me.

~~~
sokoloff
I gave my (company's) $50 to get Nexus (which includes GE and TSA-Pre). If a
tiny slice of that makes it's way to TSA, it's still massively worth it to me.

I can land and Logan from an international flight and be in a cab headed home
in 10 minutes from the gate. On the way in, I can pretty reliably plan for 15
minutes from the cab to my gate. I don't actually cut it that close
intentionally, but it's a massive win compared to the cattle lines.

For the $50 I paid to be interviewed by 2 US CBP agents and 1 Canadian border
agent, I don't think they're making a profit on the Nexus program that I need
to worry about my largess funding the establishment.

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callesgg
That header animation is amazing :)

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dmitrygr
:(

s/sabateur/saboteur/g

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cmurf
It's pretty inefficient. Consider the communications are AM based, line of
sight, and a single frequency can't stand two transmissions at once, or the
transmission as a whole is garbled. But that's how directives are given and
acknowledged between ATC and pilot.

~~~
throwaway_xx9
Those are all features. Line of sight means don't propagate forever. Stepping
on somebody else is evident to everybody of a lost transmission.

The only real complaints about radio transmissions are that better training is
needed, and there's limited number of conversations per hour possible,
sometimes being a limiting factor on landings.

