The controller was in way over her head. The fact that a different voice didn't come on to resolve the mess early on tells me her position wasn't be monitored by a supervisor. LA was "east" and the weather was lousy. The lack of redundancy under those circumstances was bad form, to say the least.

Hope we get to see a final report, complete with ATC transcripts and TRACON radar readouts.

Time for clickable text messaging for ATC instead of voice. There will be more and more non US and non english speaking pilots in the future system. With US pilots no problem but with a global mix we are asking for trouble.

I think there is better technology than text but voice is always faster and mistypes may not get picked up by 'foreign' crews and more and more and more people on this earths speak English every year especially in professional occupations so the language problem will go away.

Which I suppose many of us already have and use in the shape of CPDLC, but in it's current iteration I can't see it being an improvement on "voice" in a busy terminal area ( though it's great in remote areas) ...

I'd pity the poor controllers trying to shuffle the Heathrow arrivals solely through CPDLC...each controller would probably need a dozen "scribes" or more if things started to go off script.

I think part of the issue with US ATC is the assumption that everyone is a native English speaker.

If you listen to a Heathrow ATC tape (probably as good a mix of nationalities as anywhere) and a US ATC tape it is immediately obvious even to a non pilot that the language in the US is much looser and the scope for misunderstandings much greater.

Absolutely correct!

During my airline career it was an issue on the flight deck as well. Few pilots would follow the FAA's phraseology guidance set forth in the Aeronautical Information Manual.

aterpster
 

Was she a trainee? If so she would have had a coach sitting with her. If she was fully qualified why the need for a supervisor to monitor her? With multiple sectors operating it would need a lot of supervisors to monitor each controller. But maybe I'm just misunderstanding what you mean.

You missed my point. Southern California TRACON (SCT) functionally operates as separate TRACONs. There is supposed to be a supervisor on the floor for each of these separate TRACONs. The Los Angeles Sector covers KLAX and a few small IFR airports. At 1:00 the only activity was at KLAX. As soon as her situation got bad he/she should have been alerted and immediately plugged in. But, if he/she wasn't on the floor he would not have known.

KLAX doesn't "go east" that often so it is supposed to be a heads up operation.

I think that if you look at this in real time (and not Monday morning quarterbacking) by the time it may have dawned on her that it had become a real issue it was almost immediately over. She was too busy trying to sort the problem out rather than call the Supervisor over. Perhaps it's different in the USA but where I came from Supervisors did not generally monitor control positions unless requested to do so.

HT, same hold true here.

This notion that there’s a supervisor just waiting to override at any given time is incorrect. If the controller wasn't full performance level qualified (fully qualified in other words) then there was an instructor involved, not a supervisor. If she was a FPL, then the controller themselves or their data assistant called for help.

In my view she became overloaded as soon as she saw EVA turn north. She was more concerned with separation from the departing Air Canada than terrain clearance. Her phraseology went down the tubes. My guess is that the supervisor wasn't on the floor. Hopefully, the NTSB will eventually let us know.

Sorry aterpster, you don't seem to want to listen to what ATC people are telling you. Your notion that a Supervisor would have saved the day any sooner is misplaced. Perhaps you need to go visit one of your TRACONs to get a better understanding.

I have many times, including the TRACON at issue, which is 50 miles from where I live. My last visit was to get a nice briefing on FUSION.

As to saving the day, I would hope we all would see the NTSB final incident report before too many more months go by. What I said is that a supervisor could have (not would have) saved the day.

And I worked at an European equivalent of your TRACONs for 44 years and I fail to comprehend your logic, sorry.

You apparently don't understand how a FAA TRACON is organized. It's not worth the banter.

Ahem, Ahem, HT 44 years in TRACON ?

Though retired for a while, I deem to remember that retiring age used to be 53 and turned to 55 when our Civil Service Organisation became an ATC company. Thought that the 55 years of retirement age for active ATCON was almost identical in all European states.

aterpster
Having had the chance to visit many years ago LAX / SFO / Oakland ATC installations I fully agree in your last comment.

I’m a former GS2152, if you know as much about ATC as you think, you won’t have to google it. HT’s understanding wrt to how a supervisor oversees the area is correct. I respect your knowledge of TERPS, at times reading your web site. That doesnt translate to the nuances of the ATC system. I won’t belabor the point, but if you’re going to continue down this path, go find an active controller at SCT and ask them how it works. There’s a number of them on prune.

aterpster

Being a controller and a Supervisor myself, I can positively state that there is no way on earth that a person not already listening to a frequency can jump in and immediately issue instructions to aircraft accurately let alone in the case of recovering from an error. no way, no how. never.

Do you think that the Supervisor is walking around with a headset on, Jack in hand hovering behind each and every position waiting to jump in and enact furious recovery vectors all shift long?

Whilst I don't have 44 years on the floor, my experience is measured in decades and in all that time I can think of only one instance where a qualified controller had the frequency taken off them and that was during a particularly ugly weather scenario. The controller who took the frequency was already plugged and and monitoring due to the complexity and it was easier to take it than explain what the problem was. It is still spoken about a number of years later as it was such a rare event.

I don't fly but I would expect that the suggested course of action would be like a dead heading pilot on the jump seat jumping in and executing a go around.

Probably the most absurd comment I have ever read on pprune with respect to the expectations of air traffic control.Im so annoyed by this I had to edit twice.

Correct. However, you make an incorrect assumption. My figure of 44 years is correct, thank you. Now you tell us which sort of unit you were a Supervisor at? How many sectors operated simultaneously at your unit? Did you monitor all your fully qualified ATCOs on all sectors at all times? I'm just curious how you come to a conclusion which no other ATCO/Supervisor working at such a facility would.

Sorry, I am not intending to join a peeing contest on who is correct with his / her assumptions.
It is obvious that something went wrong and that the help of a "second" person on the side of ATC might have delivered more satisfying results.
But once again it appears also that "the native language " problem may have played a role, in addition to the probable use of non standard phraseology.
As was said before the results drawn into the coming Incident report will be interesting.