The Chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee of the House of Representatives kicked off the hearing last week (February 7) to begin the process of FAA reauthorization. (For readers not quite familiar with U.S. legislative processes, authorization creates the legal mandate for federal agencies to conduct their activities; appropriations legislation is the funding. Hence authorization (and periodic reauthorization) holds by far the heavier policy implications and effects. Sorry for the pedantic detour, but after all, this is PPRuNe, where information is cheap, cheap, yet understanding may be dear.)
The Chairman, Congressman Sam Graves, stated as follows:
"[R]ecently there have been incidents that reemphasize why getting an FAA reauthorization done on time is critical. On January 13th, a runway incursion occurred at JFK International Airport when two passenger planes nearly collided as one crossed an active runway. And just this past weekend, at Austin International Airport, a cargo plane was attempting to land on the same runway where a passenger plane was beginning to take off.
It shows that even following the safest decade in our history, our aviation system is clearly in need of urgent attention. As Mr. Boulter says in his testimony, complacency and stagnation are equal threats to a safety culture. The previous conventional wisdom for regulating safety focused on addressing concerns after aviation accidents. Now, the FAA seeks to mitigate risks before accidents happen.
In addition, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has several open safety recommendations that warrant review. The Committee will be reviewing all such recommendations while reauthorizing the NTSB as part of the FAA bill." [Note: David Boulter is the Associate Administrator for Aviation Safety (Acting) of FAA.]
In reporting on the opening reauthorization hearing, the Wall Street Journal (Feb. 8) noted that current NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy (in an interview) had cautioned against, with regard to the two runway incursion incidents, saying "this is a trend." The WSJ article also quoted a former investigator for FAA and NTSB as saying, "two incidents so close together is more of a coincidence than an indication of a systemic problem." (This SLF/attorney isn't using that person's name here since he is not
afaik a public official or public figure.)
However, note the comments by former NTSB Chair Robert Sumwalt, as reported by the Journal:
"the close calls didn't appear related or part of a broader trend. Both appear to have resulted from human error, [Sumwalt] said, and the outcomes point to the exceptional safety record of the U.S. air-traffic system and aviation industry. 'It shows that
given there there were failures, that there was enough resiliency or enough redundancy in the system to have prevented a catastrophic event in both cases.', Mr. Sumwalt said." (emphasis in quotation added)
So, first, with regard to a video representation of the events (and/or non-events) in Austin that is highly inaccurate, count this poster as one who sees no utility or usefulness whatsoever in such a video, for informing, aiding, facilitating, or otherwise being helpful, in the nascent public policy and legislation process which ultimately will lead to FAA reauthorization. Wanting to play with computers and video programs? - fine, no problem. But posting such output here is only about ten (10) years or more behind the times (see, for example, the thread on the accident in August 2013 in Birmingham AL, UPS Fl. 1354, in which thread a good number of posters contributed very informative graphics and computational items.) And, needless to remind the serious pro's who populate this forum, the video showing Air Canada 759 in San Francisco in 2017 was indeed very informative, helpful, and so on.... but it was evidence, not fun-time.
Second, I think there is a fair question - possibly even an important question - about what meaning to take away from both incidents, whether looked at as only quite marginally related or connected to each other - or as connected in some as yet-undefined manner beyond being in close temporal proximity. Is it actually random chance that small steps in each incident - for example, the Southwest flightcrew not "aborting" their takeoff roll (if they even had heard the FedEx call) - contribued to a serious tragic accident not occuring? Or is it something other than random chance, something closer to what most people fluent enough in English to parse definitions would identify as "resiliency" or "redundancy"?
Or, . . did a previous poster make this all less interesting, by saying there are no "reserves" - the term I had tried to apply to what Chairman Sumwalt called resiliency and redundancy - but instead there are "layers and back-ups"?