Originally Posted by
BFSGrad
After listening to LiveATC associated with this incident, some observations:
Female FO was PF for the landing, which implies PF/PM swap after landing.
At times I had a hard time understanding the local controller due to rapidity of his speech and allowing speech to trail off at end of each transmission. Pilots seemed to understand his instructions with no difficulty.
On landing rollout, local controller says “United ah 384, you got [at?] Kilo? Female FO quickly responds, “United 384, turning left on Kilo.” Local controller immediately says, “United 384, hold short Four Left.” Response is “Hold short of Four Left, United (long pause, mic unkeyed and rekeyed) 384.” About 25 seconds later, local controller says, “United 384, continue to cross Eight Left, contact ground, point niner.”
From ADS-B data, UAL384 had a ground speed of 35 kts turning onto Kilo, 24 kts as it crossed the midpoint of 4R/4L on Kilo, and 15 kts crossing the 4L/8L intersection. There was no stop.
My initial assessment is that, upon hearing “you got [at?] Kilo,” UAL384 took this query as instruction to use Kilo, and assumed that if the local controller approved use of Kilo, approval to cross 4L/8L was either included or would follow shortly. I think the local controller was asking UAL384 if they were able (groundspeed slow enough) to turn at Kilo. By the time the UAL384 crew read back the hold short of 4L instruction, they knew they were already over the hold bar and there was no way they could safely avoid entering 4L/8L with their groundspeed.
Agree with your assessment, based on what I see/hear, the controller wasn't necessarily surprised by UAL wanting to use K, even though on the charts it's is not allowed. Might have become an informal thing for UAL WB for convenience, that the controllers agreed to in the interest of convenience for both. Holding short of 4L should still have been the standard though, so I feel it was on UAL to have held short, and it looks like they were never slow enough for that to happen.
But I have to add, I guess you added the "female" because that is how you concluded that a PM/PF changeover had occurred. As gender is pretty much always irrelevant in these discussions, avoiding gender should be preferred, unless it is absolutely pertinent to the situation. Especially since it is invariably stated as "the pilot" versus "the female pilot", but never "the male pilot". Sure, it might sound silly to complain about this, but using only the minority gender when qualifying who it was is wrong, either both, or none. And would you have said "the black pilot" based on a picture of the crew after the event? (rant over. As an old, white, male in aviation)