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Originally posted by PHPaul:
This is from a friend of mine who is an airport/spaceport firefighter with many years of experience currently at Wallops Flight Facility in VA:

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Do I think the truck should have looked for himself? Sure. It's a busy airport and he should have known he was crossing the active runway. But technically he had clearance. He even read it back to the tower, confirming it. This is standard procedure. And he should have been able to reasonable expect the tower to wave off any incoming traffic while they were responding to an emergency on the airfield.

This is why I maintain that pilots are better served by learning to fly at uncontrolled fields. When you understand an internalize that YOU are holding primary and ultimate responsibility for the safety of your aircraft and everyone in it, you understand that a clearance is something that you (absent an emergency) have to have, but just because you have a clearance to do something doesn’t mean that it is safe or that you have to do it.

A good pilot understands as much as he can about what the controller is trying to do, tries to work cooperatively with the controller to make both their lives easier and get the best route for his flight. He tries to maintain the big picture and help keep the system moving efficiently and safely, but he never gives up his responsibility for ensuring the safety of his aircraft and occupants.

There have been a few videos talking about the runway status lights and how it appears that they may have been red and that even if you have a clearance, you cannot enter the runway if the status lights are red.

My question is were the firemen trained on the status light system? Did they understand that a clearance isn’t supposed to mean jack if you have a red light?

From the comfort of a non-moving easy chair, it is easy to find things that everyone involved could have done better. So what. I’m much more interested in how the system can be improved to prevent or at least reduce the possibility of something like this happening again.

Should the pilots have heard at least the tower side of the conversation clearing someone onto “their runway”? Absolutely. Was there enough time to recognize and go around in that airplane? I don’t know.

Should the fire fighters have considered the clearance as a “Great, it’s legal to cross now, Is it safe? Absolutely. Were they trained that way? I don’t know. Were the status lights in front of them red? Were they trained on the status light system? I don’t know either of those either. Did a lookout on the right side of the truck take a hard look? I dunno. Even if they did, was it possible to pick the airplane out of all the other lights?

This time the Swiss cheese lined up badly, and that really sucks. I hope that we can have changes coming out of the investigation that prevent a reoccurrence.

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Originally posted by trapper189:
At what point in the landing sequence can the plane not go around?

Once you stick the rear wheels, spoilers, brakes and reversers deployed, it is either normal procedure to not attempt a go around, nor likely to be effective in this situation. (avoiding an obstacle). But if clear (visual) conditions, and enough remaining runway to safely reach takeoff speed, that might be a viable option.

That "decision point" is really about a whole new "V1" point. And speed, runway remaining and aircraft performance (spoilers/reversers stowed and engine core RPM/thrust sufficient and still going positive).

That's an awful lot of variables and decision making and a very compressed point in time, while the world is whizzing past.

(short version, with exceptions. "if your on the ground and shit is going bad, stay on the ground. If you're off the ground and shit is going bad, stay in the air.")

According to the NTSB summary of the CVR, 20 seconds before the CVR stopped recording, the tower cleared Truck 1 and company to cross the runway, at 19 seconds before an electronic 100' enhanced ground proximity warning system callout was heard, and at 8 seconds before there was a sound consistent with an airplane's landing gear touching down.

Just to be clear, you can reject a landing at any point UNTIL you deploy the thrust reversers. There is no V1 calculated or actual for landing. If you land in the touchdown zone, which they did, at any point until you actuate thrust reversers any transport category plane has the capability and performance to reject that landing.

Speed brakes or spoilers have nothing to do with that decision. If you add thrust (forward motion) the spoilers will automatically retract.

It is the deployment of thrust reversers that take away the ability to reject a landing.

To add more detail to the go-around possibility, it is a big who-knows. Once thrust reversers are deployed, it is SOP (literally in the manual) that you cannot go around. That's because the amount of remaining runway is a total unknown, as is the speed and weight of the aircraft, from a prior planning perspective.

It, however is possible to de-select the thrust reversers and power back up. With enough runway one could take off again.

The runway at LGA would almost certainly not be long enough to attempt it, and where the fire truck was certainly would not be enough room to go around.

They probably could have gone around as late as main gear touching down. But they landed flaps 45, which is high drag and lift. Go-around would call for flaps 8 iirc, which is low drag and much less lift. It would have been a challenging maneuver to pull off.

Air Canada was put in a no win situation. They did the best they could in a short period of time and saved everyone else on that plane. They paid the price for others mistakes.

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Originally posted by Fly-Sig:
To add more detail to the go-around possibility, it is a big who-knows. Once thrust reversers are deployed, it is SOP (literally in the manual) that you cannot go around. That's because the amount of remaining runway is a total unknown, as is the speed and weight of the aircraft, from a prior planning perspective.

It, however is possible to de-select the thrust reversers and power back up. With enough runway one could take off again.

The runway at LGA would almost certainly not be long enough to attempt it, and where the fire truck was certainly would not be enough room to go around.

They probably could have gone around as late as main gear touching down. But they landed flaps 45, which is high drag and lift. Go-around would call for flaps 8 iirc, which is low drag and much less lift. It would have been a challenging maneuver to pull off.

Our manual (737) says not to attempt a go around once the reversers are deployed in case one (or both) fail to properly stow which would be uncontrollable. With regard to runway remaining: while it's true that there isn't performance data in that case also remember you're already at or near flying speed, so accelerating and lifting off again will only need a fraction of what it would require to takeoff from a standstill. I have little doubt it could be done on most anything but the shortest runway, but that's pretty much a moot point.

They definitely could've gone around at any time before reverser deployment. We now practice balked landings (at or after touchdown) just about every year in the simulator. While I can't officially speak for the CRJ in question, a commercial jet especially at or below max landing weight will climb just fine with full flaps on a go around. Again you have momentum on your side as you're basically still at flying speed. Upon initiating the go around you'd typically call for flap retraction to the prescribed setting. In our (737) case it's 15, normal landing is either 30 or 40.

There was a time, well before mine and simulators, where airline training was done in the airplane. As I recall it was not unusual to do touch and goes in normal practice. Not sure if they had performance data for that or if they just "winged it".

The FO was at the controls and handed the plane off.
They didn't see the truck until they were on it.
There was absolutely no chance for a go-around.
From the time the controller said GO AROUND, the captains reaction time put them on the truck.

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Originally posted by 229DAK:

quote:

Originally posted by KMitch200:
You’d be surprised at the acceleration of an airport truck. They have the same engine as an M1 Abrams tank

So, you are saying airport trucks use Honeywell AGT1500 multi-fuel turbine engines?

Was told that by an engineer at the airport approximately 17 yrs ago - so a sample size of 1.

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Originally posted by KMitch200:

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Originally posted by 229DAK:

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Originally posted by KMitch200:
You’d be surprised at the acceleration of an airport truck. They have the same engine as an M1 Abrams tank

So, you are saying airport trucks use Honeywell AGT1500 multi-fuel turbine engines?

Was told that by an engineer at the airport approximately 17 yrs ago - so a sample size of 1.

LaGuardia modernized their firefighting fleet in 2017 with the purchase of 4x4 and 6x6 Oshkosh Striker ARFF.

The firetruck struck was a 6x6 Oshkosh Striker ARFFF which has a Scania DC16 V8, 16.0L Diesel.

The Abrams tank uses an AGT1500 gas turbine.

About the same torque but the gas turbine is nearly double the horsepower (1500 hp vs 670-770 hp) and 450 lbs lighter.

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Originally posted by Puckpilot78:

They definitely could've gone around at any time before reverser deployment. We now practice balked landings (at or after touchdown) just about every year in the simulator. While I can't officially speak for the CRJ in question, a commercial jet especially at or below max landing weight will climb just fine with full flaps on a go around. Again you have momentum on your side as you're basically still at flying speed. Upon initiating the go around you'd typically call for flap retraction to the prescribed setting. In our (737) case it's 15, normal landing is either 30 or 40.

There was a time, well before mine and simulators, where airline training was done in the airplane. As I recall it was not unusual to do touch and goes in normal practice. Not sure if they had performance data for that or if they just "winged it".

Yup, we did all the permutations for go-arounds and engine failures in the sim. The 900 normal landing is flaps 30. At 45 the 900 likes to float if there's any excess speed at all. With all the modern airline line ops theory for additions to raw Vref, usually it floats then suddenly drops in. Done right is pulling power to flight idle at 10 ft radalt call, flare continuously to touchdown. The nose attitude is high whether done right or dropped in. If a go-around were attempted at main gear contact, the nose needs to be lowered slightly and there is the delay in engine spool up. (The flaps 30 technique is quite different, so this crew gets kudos for touching down in the tdz).

Taxiway D is about 3000 ft from the threshold, so there was about 2000 feet available for such a go around if they'd initiated at main gear contact. It would have been doable but without much margin.

These days, everything is done in the sim including the type ride. Back before about 2008 there was a final training flight in the aircraft and then a checkride of a few maneuvers that weren't approved to be done in the sim. They used to do touch and goes in that training flight to save time/$ but there were some events which convinced them to not. The touch and goes used a lot of runway once the nose wheel was down.

NTSB preliminary report:

https://www.ntsb.gov/investiga...ages/DCA26MA161.aspx

Juan Browne's thorough explanation, 20-minute video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0-o6_Bsv5I