Another US ATC stuff up
 

Oh dear, what a damning header to use. The one question not answered at this point was whether the American was given the wrong SID or whether he misunderstood and set up the wrong one. Let's wait and see shall we. For the rest, IMHO ATC handled the situation quite well considering.

Yep, I also liked the way the controller refused to discuss the incident on the frequency., not always easy to do so. Well done.. For the incident it would be interesting to see the original flight plan filed and listen to the read back of IFR pre departure clearance on Ground.

so many flights, so many people - its a wonder there aren't more TBH

No avoiding action given to either aircraft. More non standard phraseology. At an airport like PHX
clearances would normally be delivered by datalink

An observation on USA departures or at least PHX in this case. RWY 25R and 26 both have a BROAK 1 departure. LIDO labels them both the same. As opposed to European airfields where SIDs with the same name are given differentiators LHR 09R MODMI 1J. KUSA doesn’t give runway only SID. Is there a potential cross check missing here to ensure correct runway and SID?

Flightaware shows that flight assigned the FORPE1 SID, but can't tell what was given as clearance delivery.
AA1388 (AAL1388) American Airlines Flight Tracking and History 07-Aug-2023 (KPHX-KJFK) - FlightAware

Interesting; thanks

When headed NE, almost certainly 25R will be the BROAK while 26 will be the FORPE. Many departures in the US only serve certain runways so it's easy to catch a departure mistake in the case of a runway change, but as you noted that unfortunately isn't the case here. It's possible they were offered or requested 26 while taxiing, after being all set for a 25R departure on the BROAK1 (it's a shorter taxi for AA). I'm curious if that happened here, and since they clearly were planning to fly the BROAK, they either missed the departure change or ATC missed giving the change to them. As you said, maybe the solution is to pull 26 from the BROAK and 25R from the FORPE - that would have alerted the crew to a potential issue.

CPDLC runway changes, reroutes, SIDS
 

A runway change or route clearance change will not cue up the new SID in my FMC, as noted above, if valid for the runway. You have to change it manually, so it becomes an error to trap with procedure and verification drills. As above, the surest fix is not sharing SID names on runway combinations that can cross routing.

AAL checked in stating the SID (the wrong one) but that didn't seem to allow departure ATC to vector AAL north and leave SWA unmolested.

Might be the best practice to move the guys doing it correctly, when able and then fix the blundering later, like an ILS PRM breakout

I don't think this was an ATC issue. If changed runways or routes and not ready- make time. #1 position to the runway means you are ready unless you speak up.

No, but if you change the runway in the FMS and the prior SID no longer applies, the SID will drop out and the crew alerted as such. Not having the BROAK or FORPE serve both the north and south runways would provide an additional barrier, regardless if the error was on the crew or ATC's end.

7110.65 5-8-2d states “When conducting simultaneous parallel runway departures utilizing RNAV SIDs, advise aircraft of the initial fix/waypoint on the RNAV route.
PHRASEOLOGY−RNAV to (fix/waypoint), RUNWAY (number), CLEARED FOR TAKEOFF.”

Not surprisingly, the initial waypoints for BROAK and FORPE are different.

This type of ATC takeoff clearance is routinely used at airports such as ATL and LAX.

Why not in this incident?

Excellent point, not all US/FAA ATC Tower controllers complu
 

That's an excellent point, ATC is not fully excused and this is far too commonplace.

By default a SID is named after the place it ultimately goes TO not any intermediate point. Some same-name SIDS execute a 180 turn to their ultimate waypoint via a left turn, whilst some turn to the right. Some SIDS of the same name have different stop-altitudes which I myself have fallen foul of. Basically, giving different SIDS the same generic name when they do very different things is a recipe for disaster that could easily be designed out.

Getting a SID and onward route without a runway from KUSA and then blindly inserting it into the FMC is not a process that is foolproof. The SID might infer a certain runway but controllers are very fond of tactically changing runway as you taxy out which may change whole ball-game (and is a nightmare on the 787 with it's FMC/EFB perf process.) :eek: Distractions are very unwelcome.

It is practice at many eastern US airfields to report the first significant RNAV waypoint on the expected departure when acknowledging the take-off clearance. This should bowl out any possibility of turning in an unexpected direction after take-off but the practice seems confined only to certain airfields. Maybe the FAA need to revisit the practice. More importantly, change the practice of naming different SIDS with the same generic name. If you throw enough traps in front of me, sooner or later, no matter how carefully I tread, I am going to fall into one of them.