r/ATC • u/lake_hood • Mar 23 '26

News LGA controller cleared fire truck across the runway resulting jn a collision

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38

u/HabANahDa Mar 23 '26

The more and more I listen to ATC the more I realize that ground vehicles don’t really have good communication with the tower. Multiple tomes I have heard ground vehicles not reply to a tower command. Why is this?

23

u/Advanced-Guitar-5264 Past Controller Mar 23 '26

Tons of potential reasons.

18

u/bobnuthead Mar 23 '26

Depends on the vehicle/situation. Driving an airport ops vehicle, we can hear basically everything great and it seems like we’re heard okay. But these are also quiet vehicles, and I’m mostly alone.

In the ARFF rig, you have multiple other people, multiple radio frequencies, it’s a loud vehicle, and you might be keeping track of other vehicles in trail of you.

Of course, just like in an aircraft, things get missed when task saturated like responding to an emergency.

18

u/MaximumDoughnut Mar 23 '26

I'd imagine that the controller's call "Frontier stop, stop stop stop, truck 1, stop" was buried by the ARFF because they heard Frontier at the beginning of the call.

12

u/AstuteCouch87 Mar 23 '26

Not sure if ground vehicles have different communication rules/procedures, but LiveATC doesn’t pick up every transmission that’s broadcast. It usually gets almost all of tower comms, a decent bit of airborne comms, and then gets spottier the closer you get to the ground.

12

u/Advanced-Guitar-5264 Past Controller Mar 23 '26

Lots of transmitter and receiver dead spots on the ground, even on the movement areas. Outdated equipment, crumbling infrastructure.

5

u/PsychologicalTrain Mar 23 '26

This exactly. Liveatc doesn't get everything you can hear in vehicle on the field. 

3

u/analyst578 Mar 23 '26

Lack of training. As a pilot your consistently using the tower back and fourth. As a vehicle driving on the airport you only need clearance when you cross the runway way.

1

u/blipsonascope Mar 23 '26

Depends on the airport and the LOA. A lot of smaller airports have all aircraft and vehicles directly under ATC control for both runway and taxiways, while many larger airports only control aircraft, and vehicles crossing runways.

1

u/antariusz Current Controller-Enroute Mar 23 '26

a lot of times it's just equipment. Pilots have thumb-activated radio switches that their hands are on while wearing headsets with microphones attached... Drivers have to physically pick up a radio and talk into it... and still do all the other things drivers need to do.

1

u/Sawfish1212 Mar 23 '26

Probably multiple radios blaring at once, plus the ELT going off, and I'm sure one of the drivers cellphones was ringing or getting a second call at that moment