Five pages of drivel and really only one intelligent posting, that being from Uncle Fred. Contrary to the "hang 'em high" crowd, the root cause in this accident is anything but a sure thing.

The RJ700 was not pushed back. They had just arrived from Boston and were headed to their gate. It appears that they stopped short due to a lack of ground crew. It's standard procedure for most airlines to have their pilots stop when there's no ground crew. The question will be if they stopped so that they were encroaching with the taxiway.

Of the same AF A380, in fact. ;)
Maybe it's the fault of the plane. She may be resentful. :E

root cause...ha! the darn plane is big and you better be ready for such things to happen.

encroaching on a taxiway...hey, if you stop, you are entitled to be there unless you hear something like: get out of the way comair, air france is doing warp seven towards you.

many changes will be made I'm sure. But it will all be ''back to basics"...taxi no faster than a man can walk (sure, add ten minutes to scheduled block time!). If you are unsure of wingtip clearance, STOP and make sure.

At some point, airplanes get too big or airports get too small. Which is easier to change?

Well they could always let pilots think for themselves, but many don't want to. I'm referring to what seems to be the RJ stopping short because of no ground personell available to accept the flight.

Also, sure, you may have every 'right' to be there, you also have all the responsibility (assuming they still let people use common sense) to advise ground you were unable to clear the taxiway, after all JFK is busy and based on the audio it seems the ground controller wasn't even able to see the collision and the RJ didn't advise him he was unable to clear.

Lol, this is slightly reminiscent of how the French drive their cars. Anyone who has driven or lived in France will understand.

unless there was a specific clearance requiring comair to clear the taxiway, comair didn't have to do anything! Its not like comair was on a runway, unable to clear the runway.

Air France was on a different taxiway

Situational awareness or lack thereof causes things like this. I'm always surprised to see people preach 'professionalism', 'intergrity' and other buzzwords and then say that it's ok to not advise a change of plans that may not be as odvious to others as it is to you.

I've heard many, many pilots advise ground they would have to hold short of the ramp area, 2 or 3 seconds of (non essential, but intelligent) radio communication can save millions in damage.

aviatorhi

yes, advising things is really a good thing to do. but it may not be required...situational awareness is fine, but that goes both ways.

The cause:

Once again ... a chain of events
Once again ... all the holes in the swiss(french?) cheese lined up

Once again ... it would have only taken one of those holes not to have lined up
Once again ... murphy prevailed

The Cure:

We have to ensure that we take care of our own "holes" ... and that we don't rely on others to break the chain.

For anyone who has flown to, from or within China, this video should be shown to all Chinese passengers who start to jumping around the aircraft as soon (and in many cases before) the aircaft has landed.

NBC had some nice video tonight. There is sort of a pickup truck driving in front of the regional jet.

we all know that there are LOTS of things going on at an airport...tugs pulling baggage carts, pickup trucks, boxes blowing along the taxiway...a myriad of things.

Some nice animation showing how much A380 wing hangs over the standard 75 foot wide taxiway.

The truth is that this plane requi res multiple taxiways (clear) to get where its going.

I don't think ATC will ever take responsibility for wingtip clearance of one plane with another.

So if the RJ was arriving, why was it not on the centerline (which is well illuminated) and way off to the side?

Sounds like they were hanging off on the side waiting for ground crew, but we're clearly leaving their tail too close to Alpha.

What difference does it make whether or not the RJ was rightly on or off the taxiway? Do you suppose the AF captain's argument of "I proceeded because I had the right-of-way" will carry much weight with his bosses when the repair bills come in?

No.

One need only review the nose camera footage of the Apache trying to squeeze in between the trees to be reminded that if you're not sure you can fit, it's likely a good idea to wait. Especially if you're driving the world's largest commercial passenger aircraft.

http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l165/Hvck/jfk.jpg


"Traveling from Shanghai Airport to JFK is like going from the Jetsons to the Flintstones...." - T. Freidman

Again??
 

This is the second time in a short while that an A380 has hit another airplane on the ground. From what I saw in the video, the AF jet was moving pretty fast when it hit the Comair.. Maybe they should tug the airplanes out to a clear spot for start up and taxi. Or if they can put remote cameras in the bumper of a car, then why not wing tips that sound an alarm if something is too close..Good thing no one was hurt (except the CRJ)

Collision was at Alpha Mike, correct?

Moral of the Story.......
 

Don't forget the old law......

If you're off the yellow line and you hit something....... you're stuffed, and if you're on the yellow line and you hit something you're stuffed !!!!

Intersection of alpha and mike.

You can see the tail of the RJ parked at spot P in the right side of the video.

Looks like the accident RJ was sitting somewhere behind spot T. It'd be interesting to know if there's a hold short line for the ramp there, and if so, was he past it.

C-5 vs. 380
 

The C-5 Galaxy has retractable wing tip landing lights that can be adjusted to any angle. When positioned to 45 degrees it can point to the taxiway parallel to the pilots/co-pilots positions and illuminate possible clearance issues. If an object is in the spotlight... it's a possible threat.

In addition to all of the above, why does an RJ need to be marshalled in? If these guys fly in and out of JFK everyday many times, in such a small aircraft surely you know where your nosewheel is. Was it necessary to hold so far out from the gate??? ( if you say it wasn't " so far out ", have a look at its rear end...!)