Originally Posted by
Pilot DAR
As a volunteer firefighter, I drove any of a number of different fire trucks to emergency calls, there is an adrenaline rush in the response, and you can let your guard down at the wrong time. I could drive at highway speed for fifteen minutes, so lots of opportunity for something to go wrong. We had very few bumps with the trucks during all those years, and none serious, but there were so many times it could have been really bad - particularly at train level crossings. Sad, very sad, and I have empathy for the firefighters, sometimes you just forget something....
I would expect that in a volunteer, and i am absolutely grateful to those willing to spend their time and effort, not to mention risking their health, to help others. I do hold professionals, in any occupation, to a higher standard, even more so if they are professionals in a special environment that an airport certainly is. Basic runway safety demands at least a visual „safe and clear“ check before entering a runway, no matter if you have a clearance as ATCOs do mistakes as well. That should be part of their training, and as it is their job to work on and around aircraft that has to be constantly reinforced.
For those times I have been flying TCAS equipped airplanes (uncommon for me) I've always been a little surprised and amused at proximity warnings about airplanes taxiing on a parallel taxiway when I was on the runway. I now see value for TCAS in all airport vehicles which could plausibly access a runway - the driver would at least get a warning!
That shouldn’t happen. A correct TCAS and transponder installation automatically sets the ground flag and is then not displayed on the (correctly installed) TCAS of other planes. There are a few airports already that have (mode-s) transponders installed on every vehicle for ground control purposes and those have the ground flag set as well.