Originally Posted by
double_barrel
It sometimes seems strange that despite such levels of automation, redundancy and independent checking by multiple different systems on both aircraft and ATC, designed to catch even fantastically unlikely errors, some absolutely critical information is transmitted between the two by voice alone. And then it’s held in short term memory in human wetware before being being fed into a/c systems.
How true. You can put all the automation you want on the ground you still depend ultimately on communicating that info via R/T and there are the two main hurdles : Phraseology and crossed transmissions . In both Tenerife and Uberlingen the ultimate calls that would have most probably prevented the collisions were blocked out by crossed transmissions and were not heard by either the other pilot and the controller. and in both cases correct phraseology had not been used and was a contributing factor.
couldn’t there at least be a status flag on both a/c and ATC showing released for takeoff or not?
This will be very expensive to fit all various systems currently in use in different airports around the world and will not help in all cases. In Linate (SAS/Citation ) , it was an unqualified pilot under LVP combined to deficient taxi way markings and in Vnukovo ( the DA50 ) a snow removal driver under alcohol influence and runway markings ( no stop bars on intersecting runways) . RWSL is probably the best system around at the moment , however it is a pure US/FAA system , still defined as an advisory system (*) and only installed in 20 airports in the US. and as far as I know is not for export ( waiting to be corrected if I am wrong)