There will be questions, but will there be answers?
On Wednesday Feb. 15, the Senate Commerce Committee is set to hold a hearing on recent safety concerns in the U.S. civil aviation system, including the incidents at JFK and in Austin, plus a third reportedly (by the WSJ) involving a United flight in Honolulu. Problems with the NOTAMs system also reportedly will be on the agenda, as well as the incidents of airspace intrusion recently. The reporting in the WSJ (website this evening) describes the expected agenda, highlighting the appearance of Acting Administrator Nolen.
But the same article reports that the Administrator (Acting) is convening a high-level summit of civil aviation leaders, including labor, for an unspecified date in March. Which got this SLF/attorney wondering about....
Reading the precise time sequence of events and R/T in Austin posted just above kept bringing back recollections of the July 7, 2017 incident in San Francisco, with Air Canada Flight 759 very nearly colliding with one or more aircraft on a taxiway waiting for clearance to takeoff on the adjacent runway, 2-8 Right. The controller's transmission to the Air Canada flight, "There's no one on 2-8 Right but you." is an unforgettable marker of this near-disaster.
Of course, even an SLF realizes that the causes and effects of the incident in 2017 on one hand, and the incidents of late, are separate sets. The facts of each of them involve R/T calls which turned out to be critically important, as things actually played out (which I've been convinced is not a hallmark of resiliency or redundancy in the system, but is more logcially referred to as luck, as coincidence). So, two questions - and yes if I worked for the Senate Committee as staff counsel I would be advocating for senior Senators to press both of these.
How does the top official of FAA think about these very, very close calls? Is there a defense of "resiliency and redundancy" that the Administrator (Acting) is going to put forward? Or will it be acknowledged that these incidents did not result in flaming wreckage and many fatalities only by grace of the law of averages, or the odds, ... luck? I think this is an important quesiton, not just semantics. Have you noticed that essentially every - or maybe actually every - public pronouncement by aviation officials begins with some recitation of how safe the system is, how hard its participants work to make it that way, and so on, ... wonder is how they don't fracture their arms pattin' 'emselves on the back. If luck is part of how the solid Swiss stays that way, well, is that just the way things always have been and always will be? -- and doesn't the traveling public deserve to know?
Second question. In the aftermath of Air Canada 759 in San Francisco on 7th July 2017, FAA, Flight Standards Service, issued a Safety Alert for Operators, SAFO No. 17010, on August 18 (familiarity with which is presumed amongst this audience). So, FAA-in-2023, what can we expect to see in the aftermath of at least the JFK and Austin incidents, and when can we expect to see it?
Bonus questions about establishing Just Culture, about updating immediately the CVR capacity limits, and even rumblings from the airline trade associaiton and others about 5G, are left to your imagination. The SAFO after ACA 759 was issued promptly. This is six (6) years (almost) later, surely the FAA has improved the effectiveness - the speed and efficiency - of its response to safety incidents of great concern? Or, will we just have to sit back, relax, enjoy the sparring at the Senate hearing, and wait for reporting on what took place at the March meeting?