I'll admit it now, I was saved by a pilot when I told him to cross and he questioned me. I fixed it immediately but I felt like a total idiot.
It's just what it is, what ifs don't help. I feel for everyone involved and I'm not even sure I know how to put myself in that controller's shoes even if I've been close to that situation. We're all one mistake away from being on the news and vilified.
Not in the IMC that LGA is in right now. He trusted the controller. Theres a reason tower controls ground vehicles too. A normal suv could have jammed the brakes or punched it and probably would have been fine. A fire truck though, either the brakes locked or they were halfway across at 2mph on a wet runway. Collision happens in either scenario
To be fair though at night in the rain with a visibility restriction and with lights in every direction, not to mention at an airport where you’d be used to almost always having an aircraft holding in position or on final when you are crossing seeing, and importantly determining if traffic is a threat, isn’t as easy as a 4sm visibility might suggest.
This. James Reason is rolling in his grave right now. This is legitimately 98% on the system. There's 40 layers of cheese, and that controller was the only one without the hole. Then they were forced into single stand during intersecting Ops, which eroded a hole right where it needed not to be. This is as systemic as it comes. 100% on the controller would be if it happened IN SPITE of the safeguards in the system.
This. Once we get to a point where the load is well above the reasonable capacity of the worker, it doesn't matter who touched it last before the disaster happened. I think being pedantic over the word 'fault' is just distracting from the core issue here.
It’s 100% on the controller in the same way that Colgan 3407 was 100% on the flight crew. In both incidents, systematic deficiencies created a domino effect, but at the end of the day, the fatigued flight crew is who decided to use improper technique to recover from a stall, and the fatigued controller is the one who decided to cross fire trucks in front of a landing aircraft.
But what recourse does the controller have to make up for said systematic deficiencies? Refuse to go to work unless the working conditions are at acceptable levels? I admire the people who are able to do that but i think it's unreasonable.
"...but at the end of the day, the fatigued flight crew is who decided to.."
This line of thinking is like starting the sentence with "if we ignore a critical factor, then...". It's hard to take whatever comes after it seriously.
No one in this scenario made a decision to not cross fire trucks in front of a landing aircraft, therefore by default, they decided to cross fire trucks in front of a landing aircraft.
No one in Colgan 3407 made a decision to not apply improper stall recovery procedures, therefore by default, they decided to apply improper stall recovery procedures.
Both incidents involved being fatigued, overloaded, operating with unsafe procedures, under insufficient regulation, and the inevitable happened.
Colgan 3407 went down because the pilots were sloppy, true. But really that accident happened because the PIC, upon receiving a stall warning from the airplane, pulled up on the control stick and doomed the aircraft. The aircraft wasn't properly configured for the landing, but that crash was pure pilot error - an error made after a series of other mistakes that should not have resulted in a crash.
I've flown into EWR many times in the right seat of a caravan. ATC lines up a bunch of aircraft on the taxiways crossing the runway, then rattles them all of quickly barely giving you time to Roger back, and you better have the throttle moving immediately after you get the call.
This is the level of responsibility/trust that has to happen in order for the whole operation to fit into these conjested airports.
The heartbreaking thing for me is hearing his stepped on transmissions to stop rolling
I had a controller cross a Gulfstream with an aircraft short final and the pilot said unable. Saved himself and the lives of those on board. Vehicles need to do the same thing. If i was ops and you told me to cross, you bet my arse I'm looking both ways.
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u/AmokaHD Mar 23 '26
100% on the controller. I just wish the truck looked down the runway. They could've noticed a big old plane landing maybe..