PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Near midair over SFO
View Single Post
Old 8th Apr 2010, 01:50
  #146 (permalink)  
p51guy
 
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: US
Posts: 497
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
I noticed it took 15 seconds from SFO telling the Cessna about the 777 climbing out of 500 ft until she caught up and asked if that was their traffic. The Cessna had already turned behind their path having them in sight all the while and was no factor until the 777 RA went off and they called the tower, FAA, NTSB and especially the press to make this news. An earthquake that day might have given the press something worthy of writing about. Look at the post with ATC audio and the transcript on the other post and write down the times and decide what you would have done if you were the 777 driver. If they had done nothing it wouldn't have mattered. As the controller said he was no longer a factor and contact departure. RAs always have a green arc so sometimes a small adjustment makes it happy again. If you can figure out how to lower the nose a tad with automation or manually will usually do that.

We had TCAS sims to show how to handle an RA without undo maneuvering at our airline. They are still quite crude but are wonderful safety devices. I flew a jet into SAN the day before the PSA midair and was very happy to see the TCAS system developed.

I agree the 777 had the priority and couldn't do much maneuvering at their weight. It wasn't very hard to lower their climb rate however. I would be interested to know what the RA green arc showed as the minimum they needed to lower their nose to satisfy it. The only reason they got the alert was an aircraft passing behind them so with future RA alerts they will fix that.
p51guy is offline