Originally Posted by
ethicalconundrum
Wow, I guess we should pin a medal on the controller since it was all on those dumb plane drivers.
Just imagine the effrontery of them accepting clearances. How dare they?
7110.65 Chapter 3. Airport Traffic Control - Terminal Section 7. Taxi and Ground Movement Procedures 3-7-5. PRECISION APPROACH CRITICAL AREA
a. ILS critical area dimensions are described in FAAO 6750.16, Siting Criteria for Instrument Landing Systems. Aircraft and vehicle access to the ILS/MLS critical area must be controlled to ensure the integrity of ILS/MLS course signals whenever conditions are less than reported ceiling 800 feet or visibility less than 2 miles. Do not authorize vehicles/aircraft to operate in or over the critical area, except as specified in subpara a1, whenever an arriving aircraft is inside the ILS outer marker (OM) or the fix used in lieu of the OM unless the arriving aircraft has reported the runway in sight or is circling to land on another runway.
OM equivalent fix is 3.3NM in KAUS, so FDX was inside, and it will always take a while to be out of the critical are when cleared for T/O before line up. And every 121 pilot in the US is (should be?) aware of this. So yes, both sets of pilots could have done better. SWA should have refused the T/O clearance, FDX should have questioned it. The whole cheese theory is that the multiple levels of safety only work if everyone is doing what they should after a mistake is made. Here, everyone sat back till the last moment. The controller gave SWA T/O in error considering the traffic on short final. SWA took accepted it, and sat on the runway for a while. FDX didn't GA until they saw SWA. Just because they didn't hit each other doesn't turn it into a success story.