EVA B777 close call departing LAX

[aterpster]

horizon flyer:

The question do we expect the USA to change ? Don't expect so they have a very poor concept of what they call Aliens. Their cabin crew and airports are terrible when dealing with international travellers, I know of people who travel the opposite way round the world to avoid passing through a US airport, so don't expect ATC to change they just don't get what the problem is.

That sounds almost vindictive and all, except the part about ATC, is irrelevant to this thread. As to ATC, most of the staff at the Southern California TRACON are professionals who use standard ICAO phraseology. Had the majority of them made this mistake, once it became apparent, they would have said, "EVA 15, make an immediate left turn to heading one-eight-zero," or whatever heading was felt appropriate. "Southbound" would not have been used by the vast majority of them.

[MrSnuggles]

thwpit

Except that in this case, it isn’t.

Oh dear, goodness mee, I didn't realise this. I was under the impression that it had something to do with ties and knots. And I thought I was above average in English: I never use subtitles when watching English or Murican films/tvseries/whathaveyou anymore and I am fairly fluent in writing. In Sweden we always subtitle all foreign language shows so most Swedes are surprisingly good at English because our ears get used to it from an early age. I know in other parts of the world they don't have this luxury.

Which I think only reinforces your point that it could cause even an advanced English speaker to hesitate if they weren’t familiar with the phrase!

Yep, I totally made this point obvious. :-)

[HarryMann]

Bound.. boundary... rebound...
Complicated but nothing to do with 'Bind' Germanic Binden

Has several roots... Latin French Old Norse...

Hundreds of meanings

Dreadful word !!!

But probably to do with boundary, getting to the edge of something, a noun now an adjective or adverb?

Most unfortunate...

[armchairpilot94116]

Guess we may never hear anything further officially about this incident.
It will all be dealt with internally by EVA as far as the crew and by the FAA as far as their controller and/or procedures.

[aterpster]

That's my feeling, too. Having said that, my sources have just told me that the NTSB has sent an investigator to the TRACON to investigate. I don't know whether it is an official or ad hoc investigation. But, apparently the incident has piqued their interest.

[ATC Watcher]

That will depend if EVA files an occurrence report and pass it to the Taiwanese ASC. (the Taiwanese NTSB equivalent) they are pretty good and are known to investigate even minor occurrences.
If ( big if) there were EGPWS alarms generated, those will be on the QAR and likely to generate a report from the crew.
If it was only an R/T misunderstanding issue with no safety consequences, then it is up to the crew to decide to make a report or not.

But for the moment ,as far as I can see there is no open investigation of this case on the ASC database ( searchable on line)

[henra]

Originally Posted by aterpster

That's my feeling, too. Having said that, my sources have just told me that the NTSB has sent an investigator to the TRACON to investigate.

Let's hope so!
If there ever was a catastrophic accident to learn from which actually just ever so barely did not happen, this is the one.
If the guys had waited for another 5 seconds to initiate the turn there would be dozens of NTSB investigators crawling through the charred remains since 16th December.
These 5 seconds do warrant a few investigators in my eyes.

[ATC Watcher]

henra :

If the guys had waited for another 5 seconds to initiate the turn there would be dozens of NTSB investigators crawling through the charred remains since 16th December.

This is the kind of posts that sometimes makes me want to leave this forum.

[Uplinker]

.......A simple call " EVA turn right heading 180" at any time during the event would have solved the problem...........She could have even added " expedite" . nothing else.

There are some drop outs on the original youtube recording; hyperlinked at post #1, but:

At 1:44, ATC says "... [drop out]...turn right, right turn heading 180", and this instruction is read back by EVA015.

At 1:50, ATC then says "...[drop out]..015 heavy expedite your right turn".

[henra]

Originally Posted by ATC Watcher

henra :
This is the kind of posts that sometimes makes me want to leave this forum.

Your post is an even better example: Unfounded patronising against all facts but with enormous self confidence.

Did you even bother and check the track posted and the distance to Obstacles at the same elevation as the flight was on?
Obviously not, otherwise you would have noticed that the minimum horizontal distance to obstacles was approximately 500m. Flying at 300 kts equals ~150m/s. The rest I leave up to you. (Even if we assume that the Track isn't 100% accurate there is basically no way they could have continued on their track for more than 10s without changing the shape of the aircraft significantly).
Why is it for some so difficult to grasp that this one was a really close call?

[ATC Watcher]

Uplinker : yes of course but the real confusion starts 30 seconds later when she turn him back left heading 270...and then goes on with her " southbound calls" until the crew finally gets to understand what she meant/wants ..

henra:

Unfounded patronising against all facts but with enormous self confidence.

Which facts ? a FR24 print out posted on YouTube is " facts" ? Common man! (as Obama would say) .
Patronising? me ?
I give you a small clue why :
On post #1 you can see that the timing between the R/T and the map is wrong. Also the ACA is never in conflict with the EVA in there . So the ATC picture on radar was most probably quite different from what is on this FR24 youTube track. Until I see the Tracon radar recording and the R/T sync that goes with it I would abstain from making terrain clearance comments.
.
Now, posting comments like " 5 seconds before ..charred remains" is not going to be winning you much credibility in here.

[gatbusdriver]

Sorry for stating the obvious (again) but would you not expect to hear EGPWS warnings on the transmissions of the EVA if they were 5 seconds from death?

[henra]

Originally Posted by ATC Watcher

Which facts ? a FR24 print out posted on YouTube is " facts" ? Common man! (as Obama would say) .

Agreed, fact would be a bit too much. That said, FR24 and WEBTRAK traces don't have a history of notoriously being totally off.

Patronising? me ?

That's at least how it came across.

I give you a small clue why :
On post #1 you can see that the timing between the R/T and the map is wrong. Also the ACA is never in conflict with the EVA in there . So the ATC picture on radar was most probably quite different from what is on this FR24 youTube track.

Fair point, the question at the end simply is: Is the FR24/WEBTRAK picture completely off or not?! So far I see no reason to assume that we were shown a false picture neither in the video nor in the posted WEBTRAK chart.

Now, posting comments like " 5 seconds before ..charred remains" is not going to be winning you much credibility in here.

That was admittedly a bit harsh, but the idea that NTSB was seriously not clear about investigating this drove me mad. Every small Cessna that dings a wing is investigated and here we have case of a potentially very close call situation for a fully laden Heavy and they are not sure if they need to investigate

[DaveReidUK]

Originally Posted by henra

Fair point, the question at the end simply is: Is the FR24/WEBTRAK picture completely off or not?! So far I see no reason to assume that we were shown a false picture neither in the video nor in the posted WEBTRAK chart.

As a general rule, FR24 positioning (except when they do their dumb extrapolation and unfeasible joining-the-dots) is reasonably accurate provided that the aircraft's ADS-B is GNSS-sourced. As long as you disregard any abrupt track changes, what's left is probably OK. Timings can be subject to some latency because the data is being sent to FR24 over the Internet and isn't timestamped at source, so probably shouldn't be taken as gospel.

WebTrak data originates from the FAA's radars, so what you see is what the TRACON is seeing. Timings should be pretty accurate and the granularity will depend on how many radars are currently tracking the target.

[aterpster]

henra:

That was admittedly a bit harsh, but the idea that NTSB was seriously not clear about investigating this drove me mad. Every small Cessna that dings a wing is investigated and here we have case of a potentially very close call situation for a fully laden Heavy and they are not sure if they need to investigate.

The NTSB delegates non-fatal GA accident investigation to the FAA. Fatal GA accidents are not delegated but some of the field investigations these days are sloppy.

Incidents are strictly optional.

[Uplinker]

Uplinker : yes of course but the real confusion starts 30 seconds later when she turn him back left heading 270...and then goes on with her " southbound calls" until the crew finally gets to understand what she meant/wants ..

We don't know who initially said 'left' because there was a drop-out, but EVA 015 read back "....left turn heading 180...". They got as far as about 010, (a left turn from 090), and their next transmission was a request for high speed climb, NOT to query the turn direction.

"the real confusion", as you put it, actually starts much earlier at 1:44 when ATC realises a problem and EVA 015 are told to "turn right, right turn heading 180...", but which they fail to do, even after reading the correct instruction back and then being told to "expedite your right turn....." six seconds later.

So they were told three times to turn right, AND the heading to turn onto, but they still failed to do so - WTF ? (And this was well before the 29....270 and subsequent instructions).

[aterpster]

In this morning's (Jan 14) Los Angeles Times article about NTSB officially investigating the EVA near-CFIT with Mt. Wilson. I take away from the article that the FAA is going into the bunkers.

[vmandr]

preliminary report

preliminary report here (courtesy Kathryn's Report web site)

https://app.ntsb.gov/pdfgenerator/Re...relim&IType=IA

[surfman96]

There's an excellent analysis of the incident on Medium: ATC nightmare in the hills by Mark Zee

(Former ATC, Airline Pilot, Flight Dispatcher and airline Station Manager)

medium.com/@markzee/atc-nightmare-in-the-hills-680407b9629b

Short conclusion: "ATC agencies should make available to their controllers the same degree of emergency and “unusual situation” training that airlines offer to pilots."

[Jet Jockey A4]

Interesting article and yes perhaps ATC dos need better training.