Hey everyone! I'm late with this video but you guys know I've been out for my pilot exams. I hope you find this video interesting and you understand the situation better with my little explanations. Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for exclusive footage from my flights, video edition, aviation quizes and more :D
I just want to say how amazingly quick it was when tower realized Air Canada was unresponsive and started clearing the runway himself. That turn around time and quick thinking is what really saves lives. Good job SFO tower! @1:45
I'm not familiar with emotional expressions in English. I interpreted the phrase "that's pretty evident." as a expression of his anger (or sarcasm), but is this wrong?
The FAA concluded after speaking to the flight crew and probing other data that the “crew inadvertently switched from the SFO tower frequency to the SFO ground frequency after receiving their landing clearance.” “The FAA deemed this event to be an isolated occurrence and not reflective of any systematic deficiencies at Air Canada,” according to a FAA spokesman.
This is exactly what I guessed. Radio problems my ass. What really ticked me off is the pilots didn't own up. VAS Aviation is teaching me what airlines to avoid.
@@LilleyAdam Rasheed Khan wasn't saying the radio was out of the problem. He was saying all people whou were assuming that the radio was dead had it all WRONG. He bases his understanding of the thing by the fact the ACA pilots didn't attempt to establish contact in any other way, nor look out of the window for "no-go red flash", had they noticed the radio had failed or had been switched to another frequency. They did nothing and continued on the landing simply because *they didn't notice* , hence, there were no failure at all in the first place. Switched to another frequency, yes ! However, Air Canada is a good airline, good records, I don't agree people should avoid that airline. Just like Ethiopian, despite the Max crash, despite the brake smoke at Kinsasha, despite the vira video of the B777 in heavy turbulence and prayers all over the place, I would fly Ethiopian anytime. It's not because several highly mediatized informations pop out in a row on the internet that I'll fall in dramatic fear of this airline or another.
@@LilleyAdam radios don't just switch. Pilot monitoring tuned the frequency and hit the transfer switch. It's an honest mistake, sadly in this case it could have been catastrophic.
I've heard rumors that in Canada they always land the other direction, backwards and upside-down, and that all their radio comms are in whispered Canadian. Also heard witness reports that their airports have flying tugs, so they can tow airborne planes with technical problems.
I like how the controller kept his cool. If it had been me, by the third "Air Canada 781 go around" I would have been SCREAMING into the headset microphone! (and this is one of the many reasons I'm not in air traffic control)
Amen brother. I am in SFO up to 4 times daily dropping or picking up people for a limo service. I was on my way into SFO when I saw the smoke from the Asiana crash.
I'm pretty positive this board is being trolled by Air Canada front-office employees, because no one could be so dumb and gullible as to believe the flight crew's version of events.
Ground: Air Canada, taxi to the ramp Air Canada: taxi to the ramp Ground: Air Canada, I have a number for you to call Air Canada: looks like our radio is acting up again...
@Zaphod Whiskers Thats not how it works. There was no mistake on behalf of the controller, the situation on the ground changed and the controller took action to avoid conflict. THATS THEIR JOB. Clearance is cancelled fairly often. There is no right to land after you get initial clearance. The controllers job is to keep everyone safe and avoid collisions, not guarantee your landing. Stating unable when you are actually able is also going to get you written up. If the graphics are at all accurate that pilot had plenty of height left to go around up until the last call or 2.
@Zaphod Whiskers that happens dude. Let's say a plane gets a landing clearance then all of a sudden a plane or vehicle taxis down the runway without instruction is a valid reason to cancel the clearance or go around.
What absolutely stuns me whenever I think about it (and DEFINITELY every time I fly) is the sheer number of "moving parts" that can go wrong in air travel...and how seldom they actually do. You have to rely on EVERY pilot (both professional and civilian), the ATC, the ground control, the regional control, the ground equipment operators, maintenance, security, all the other staff and tens of thousands of physical parts of the airplanes AND ATC equipment to work flawlessly, somewhere on the order of 100 THOUSAND times per day. All of this with the aging radar/transponder system in the US and other places. On top of that all the other things (birds, animals, weather, wind shear, morons with lasers) that no one can control. It is a testament to the skill and dedication of all the people who work in aviation that there are not more disasters. I have SO much respect for all of them.
They go wrong ALL the time. The system is designed where one or two or three “broken” parts won’t break the whole system, however. In this case a controller took up slack for the pilots. Pilots often do the same for controllers. Heck, there’s two pilots in every cockpit to help out and watch out for each other. Add technology and specially designed procedures to the mix for even more safety. There’s A LOT of thought and planning that goes into it. Edit: look up the “Swiss cheese model” of risk management. Each “part” of the system is like a layer of Swiss cheese with holes at random locations in it. It would be easy for a risk to pass through any one “layer” of “cheese”. Stack several layers together though, and there’s very little risk the holes will all line up and there’s no way a risk won’t go unmitigated.
3:31 You know that feeling when you get called to the principles office over the school or the teacher asking you to step out side for a "private" chat... YOU "Oh shit" Everyone else listening "ooooo he's in trouble..."
That's because if he stops working the other traffic effectively, it's going to needlessly disrupt other operations and it'll be hard to catch up. When SFO is running parallel arrivals on 28L/R and parallel deps 1L/R, the radio is almost non-stop. All that said, I agree, still impressive that he didn't waiver at all and kept working the other traffic like a boss. No tunnel vision.
That's what a professional sounds like! Emotions don't add any value to high risk situations. Figure out the safest route to be taken and deal with the issue after.
“Possible pilot deviation, I have a number for you when you’re ready.” - Words you don’t want to hear from a controller. This is like being on a highway and suddenly you realize there's cop behind you that turns on his lights and is asking you to pull over. That's not going to be fun time.
@@dylanhafner7608 The tower controller wants to have a discussion with the pilot that is too long or inappropriate for the airwaves. So they have them call a private number to have the discussion. Contrary to what you'll see people stating, this isn't always necessarily bad, though the majority of the time you'd hear it it's because the person being given the number is in trouble. The seriousness of the trouble depends on the seriousness of the potential violation. They may be able to explain it to the satisfaction of the controllers that the controller will simply let it go, they have the discretion to do that, or (as I suspect happened in this case) the controller may file a report to the FAA who will then initiate an investigation into the incident. If indeed these pilots simply had a momentary glitch in their communications then nothing bad will come of it for them, but if they are found out to be telling lies, they could be in trouble.
Feels like a similar problem to what we had in my previous aircraft type which would suffer from 'sleeping radios' - without knowing it, they would stop receiving transmissions and only burst into life again once you had made a transmission yourself. Often the first you'd know about it was when ATC had gone eerily quiet and when you radio checked them you'd find out they had been trying all sorts to get hold of you!
Dude that feels chilling. Imagine being another aircraft on that frequency, wondering how that will play out, still having to concentrate on the work at hand.
*The FAA determined the Air Canada pilots did not hear the tower instructions because the pilots inadvertently switched from the SFO tower frequency to the SFO ground frequency after receiving permission to land.*
That's baloney. They happen to lose their radios at the exact moment they receive instructions to do a go-around? Then they suddenly and magically re-establish communications at the exact moment they come to the first available taxiway to exit the runway? (all while ignoring repeated light signals from the tower)
@@sean2015Did you even read the comment you are responding to? They switched freq. after getting clearance. That was a mistake in cockpit procedures and pilot training was revised after this incident. This is the FAA's investigation result after probing several sources of information to reconstruct the events. Also note that most a/c have two or three radios, so recovering from a radio failure doesn't necessarily mean a broken radio starts working again. It could also mean they dialed the freq. on their backup radio. In this case, they probably dialed the Tower freq. back into their main radio when they noticed it is set on Ground freq. Then also note that landing is stressful. Pilots need to focus first and foremost on steering their plane safely. Short final is not the place to fix your radio. Once you are on the ground and slowing down on the RWY, you can take the time to investigate your radio failure and recover from it. Not everyone is risking hundreds of lives (incl their own) to cut a corner and get home 15 mins early.
*Tower controller shouldn't have put the aircraft in conflict on short final... clears Southwest flight for takeoff then just 6 seconds later clears Air Canada to land... across the SW's path on take-off, controller realizes his mistake then tries to correct his mistake.*
How do you 'inadvertently' switch a radio frequency to another precise frequency? Even if by some weird concidence you accidentally brush the dial and turn it (which is unlikely in the first place) to go precisely to GND frequency by accident is hard to believe.
After landing clearance checklist: - GEAR down - FLAPS landing - RADIO off* * After a clearance has been issued, Tower will sometimes cancel it or instruct for a go around. This is only to delay your flight and use more fuel so that you pay more at the airport. To avoid this, simply turn off the radio until touchdown.
While you were joking, pilots don't care about billing the airline for more fuel lol. They are going to go around if they get a request, they aren't going to risk their and everyone's lives to get on the ground a few minutes sooner. I believe this was a genuine radio issue (though it is odd it fixed itself as soon as they landed)
I’m a pilot, Most large airports have two frequencies a ground frequency for after you land and clear the runway to talk to you and direct you where to go on ground and they have a Tower frequency which is who you talk to when you takeoff and land and are in the air space. This is a basic breakdown of how it works. But it sounds to me based on my experience that he might have swapped over to ground on Radio One. Typically on a airliner you have about six different radio sets that you can use. One for the ground traffic one for the weather frequency one for the airport tower and three others that you can pre program with different frequencies. However you can only listen to two frequencies at once. So when I sometimes fly I’ll listen to the tower and I’ll listen to the (AWOS) airport weather observation system. But it sounds to me in my opinion like the pilot just swapped over to a different frequency when he clicked the switch button on his display to listen to a different frequency to listen to ground early while at the same time listening to tower, but did not realize he flipped the tower frequency off and not double listen. This is just my opinion based on my experience as a commercial pilot as to what could have happened in this situation
The nature of Ground transmissions are quite different in nature and recognisable as one or the other. Its hard to believe that there wee no ground transmissions at a busy airport for that whole "radio problem" period.
@@si_vis_amari_ama that is a good observation, just a thought, I fly charter aircraft to a large number of smaller towered airports around NorCal, such as executive, where ground controllers frequency can be pretty dead and have not flown into sfo myself, but around in the area in the bay and to Oakland, and in the aircraft I fly as an FO, a similar situation as to this happens to another crew at Oakland.
@@UnusualPilot It is a remarkable coincidence the radio was fixed once the runway traffic had vacated, and it was very possibly intentional. Hence they got the dreaded phone number. Note that Air Canada stated a "problem with the radio" and not "sorry wrong frequency" or similar. If true that it was deliberate, its surprising to see such poor airmanship and lack of CRM from a reputable airline crew. Plus there would have been collusion on the flight deck to allow this to happen, perhaps the latter is the most worrying.
@@si_vis_amari_ama couldn’t agree more 💪🫡 absolutely true Even at our small charter our SOP calls out guidelines for radio communications, and lost radios procedures when it comes to communicating with tower or ground control once you get coms back online One of our last resort procedures, it says on our guidelines is to literally call the tower phone number that is listed in the supliment, obviously, that is still a different situation than this, but you hit the nail on the head with that, was such a well-trained crew you would believe that something like this wouldn’t happen
Richard Herbst today pilots Focus their attention on the airplane flight Path And instruments and the tecnology reliability creates an atmosphere that suppress the expectation of reciving red flashlights from the Tower. Generally pilots will pay attention to these lights when the radio problem has been already detected with suficcient antecedence and they come to land already knowing the problem. However, after doing a normal approach with working radios And recive clearence to land, it is Very unlikely that pilot will realize that he had a failure on the radio until the moment after landing, when he Will notice that taxi instructions are "delaying".
Maybe when an airplane is approaching the airport and is let's say less than 10nm the crew could tune COM1&2 radios to the same frequencies. Just for the case like this one. I think that in this case emergency frequency 121.5 doesn't need to be tuned because if something happens on the airport the TWR or GND will contact them. And if some other plane is transmitting emergency message, they will not go to help them, because they are landing. There are other airplanes nearby which can help. EDIT: Why on earth is my response here instead of under Nikolas B question?
+Dremwolf I've simulated a radio failure on arrival in a c152, the light from the ATC tower isn't that obvious, and you would only see it if you were closely watching for it. (Green light)
kewkabe if you are cleared into the airspace and experience a comm failure writhing the airspace, you're supposed to land as soon as practicable. They probably didn't know they had a comm failure or whatever happened anyway. They were told to cleared to land, and they acknowledged, that became their new clearance limit. When the radios went to shit, they did what they were instructed to do whether they knew their radios were messed up or not.
+Tom Cameron -- No, their radios didn't fail suddenly on short final after they checked in. They were either ignoring the go-around instruction, or have flawed procedures that result in switching their active radio to some other frequency at a critical phase in flight.
Great job by that air traffic controller! He stayed calm and cleared the runways as quickly as possible! That takes skill! Especially in situations like this!
I was an Air traffic Controller for 34 years 10 months in the military as well as 25 years in at least 6 facilities in the FAA, some of them the busiest in the country. I was also an accident investigator for the last two years of my time with the FAA. The controller erred when he did not have UAL 2065 cross Runway 28 Left much sooner . That would have made room for Air Canada 781 to land without having SWA 3117’s tail sticking across Runway 28 Right. The controller had a good plan but got confused when he saw SWA 3117 could not go forward because of UAL 2065. The controller had all kinds of time to correct this. This presentation was much better than the one I saw on another site. Well don! This is controller error. Equipment failures happen which is why stacking aircraft up on exit taxiways is never a good idea. The controller finally did the right thing just in time.
thanks for that context - i would say controller got confused when SWA 3117 had already initiated T exit when he had intended for them to go D exit. but your point(s) still stand.
Ground: Air Canada 781 possible pilot deviation. I have a number when you are ready AC781: **making pretend noises into mic** uhh, sorry....can't hear you....we have radio problems....try and call us again after we pull into the gate AC781 pulls into the gate.... Pilot to First Officer: Quick! Let's get out of here before they call us!
Canadians don't say 'eh' too much. That's more from Northern Ontario and Quebec ._._ and maybe Newfoundland once in a while. Just like New Yorkers don't have a Texas drawl.
A few years ago I took a tour of the Norfolk International FAA tower and was seriously considering becoming an ATC myself, but watching and listening to recordings like this makes me glad I reconsidered. I don't think I'd be able to handle watching a potential catastrophe happen right in front of me with nothing I could do about it. Good thing it all worked out!
An ATC who was only a few months into the job (still in the untrusted hawk watched phase) got into a situation where at LAX this private pilot was straying into what is called a restricted airfield zone where it was close enough to jet transit lanes to be unsafe, dangerous, and potentially lethal. As he was trying to coax this guy out of the "birdcage" there was another situation where an Air Mexico jet was closing in on what was an unidentified object which most likely was another private plane. He tried to get the Mexicans out of danger but they crashed with both planes totaled and littering the ground with innocent dead. When he realized he indeed was witnessing a crash incident in his responsible area he left the ATC never to return to work again. The surviving intrusion lost his own license, however.
As soon as I heard “ cleared to land”, I suspected immediately that he switched to ground, why did tower not think of this too? Aren’t they in the same room? “Hey ground! Tell 781 to go around!” Maybe?... also why is there such a disconnection from tower to ground. That has baffled me for years! When I first got into flying at 15 I thought was odd.
Good point, still it was one of multiple possibilities. If he had tried that and it wouldn't have worked, he might not have had enough time to clear the other aircraft off the runway/taxiway. To me, an amateur, it seemed like a calculated, calm but fast response. This way he always had UA ready for go around and primarily made sure that the AC could have a normal landing. Trying to reach AC via other frequencies could've cost valuable time.
Just my two cents.... and I'm not sure how the ATC works, but when a aircraft is in-bound and on final approach (and that close).... that's dangerous to have them abort their landing. Because in my mind, that's what that is... an aborted landing all because ATC was late in giving instructions.
@@jbeaverhausen3809 What's dangerous about it? It is not any different than taking off. As a pilot in the process of landing you have to be ready and capable of going around, until the point you are on the ground and it is not possible to take off again. Pilots practice touch and go landings, and if you have not touched down yet it is just that much easier.
2:02 I like how United 1736 pipes in to remind everyone that they're still approaching 28L when they hear the ATC instructing people to cross their runway. Wouldn't be the first time an ATC forgot they cleared someone to land/take off while planes are crossing...
This is a good(?) example of the accident chain in action. Planes aren't usually crashed due to a single failure or mistake; usually there are backups and redundancies. It all starts when a controller clears an airplane to land on a runway that is not clear of traffic. That could result in a collision, that's the first link in the chain. Possibly thinking the airplanes were going to clear at separate taxiways, two airplanes get stacked up on the same taxiway. Controller correctly tells the landing aircraft to go around. Landing aircraft does not respond, possibly having switched frequencies, that's the second link in the chain. Pilots don't seem to react to the sight of an airplane still obstructing the runway, possibly because they don't see it due to time of day or weather, that's the third link in the chain. The tower should issue a light gun instruction to the aircraft, blinking red for do not land. Other comments suggest this instruction was given, and was not obeyed. Fourth link in the chain. The tower managed to make room moving other aircraft, and the situation was concluded safely. How many more links get added to that chain before someone gets hurt?
the second link was actually the second plane getting stacked up on the taxiway. He as about to be told to go to taxiway Delta, it's in the recording (delta is the next, further taxiway) but he just autopiloted to the taxiway without instruction. Except in reality that's not even the 2nd. it's the first. the controller clearing the aircraft to land is perfectly legal in the US. Some other countries require you basically have the runway clear before you give final clearance. The US doesn't however, they basically give and reject clearance instead of using the standard of you have to listen for the clearance towards the last moment and be ready to abort if you dont hear it. So the first part was the plane picking it's own taxiway. The second was the pilot on the plane swapping to ground freq prior to being on the ground. There was actually basically zero chance of this becoming a real incident though. He could have also got both planes safely out of the way by rejecting the landing of 28L since 28R wouldn't listen and cleared THAT runway for them so they could cross 28L and not have to sit on the taxiway.
The ATC apparently didn't fully grasp the ground traffic when he cleared Air Canada to land. Of course the pilot was in error if he prematurely changed frequencies, but that's probably not a unique event. However, the ATC managed to get the runway cleared in time, so give him credit for that. With different ATCs regulating Tower and Ground traffic, there must occasionally be some potential conflicts.
I wonder if FAA would further consider transmitting a go around instruction on Ground frequency after 3 attempts from ATC as this is the channel they would most likely be alternatively tuned.
Tower tried to instruct them to take DELTA, but I guess they just passed it, so it left TANGO which was blocked. As UAL was cleared to land on 28L ATC could not clear the aircraft on T to cross 28L.
But that's the thing, if you look on google earth delta taxiway comes after tango, .So SWA couldn't have passed it. It kinda seems like ATC got confused.
What happened is that the SWA plane had already started their turn onto TANGO as ATC was bout to instruct them to use DELTA. ATC starts to tell them to use DELTA: "Southwest 3117, go down to DELTA, please..." then realizes that they've started to turn onto TANGO: "...Alright - Southwest 3117, use TANGO there, hold short of 28L." I imagine that TANGO would typically be the exit they use, so they started their turn even before receiving the proper instructions. Obviously, they should have waited for ATC instructions or confirm with ATC that they could exit at TANGO.
I'm amazed they are relying solely on radio comms, I'd have thought as a backup they would be able to change the runway lighting to abort the landing and initate a go around.
Whoa, happened to me numerous times at two airports. Can be frustrating at times. What we have done in the past is to try and ctc the no rdo acft on guard/emergency freq 121.5, if no avail, and if their is still time, we ask other acft on the freq to relay msgs. But this controller did it right, cool and calmly mitigated the situation. Good job! Pilot definitely needs to be questioned and possibly reprimanded if it was pilot error and not equipment malfunction.
A possibility...... When I'm landing at an airport with a tower, I have one of the radios tuned to the tower frequency. It doesn't matter which one, there is no main or secondary. I have the other one tuned to ground control. Often, especially at a busy airport, there is too much talk on both freq.s combined, so I turn the volume down on the ground control radio. It's completely possible that the Air Canada crew tuned the other radio to ground control during the approach, decided there was too much chatter and accidentally turned down the volume of the tower radio. This would also explain why it suddenly started working once they had landed. These are not facts, just an opinion. It may have been something else.
No criticism, just wondering. Why would you tune Tower and Ground simultaneously? It may well lead to the described situation that there are calls on both frequencies at the same time and you unterstand neither. Why not have only Tower tuned and Ground already dialed in as standby frequency so that you can switch quickly when instructed, but are not distracted.
@@matthiaspatzelt3085 Anytime I'm flying, I usually have one radio on whatever frequency I'm using and the other on what the next one will likely be. For example, on approach, one will be the approach controller the other will be the tower. At an uncontrolled field, one is ATC the other is unicom.
Edit to add.......Yes, during busy times, there can be too much going on but it's good to 'get a feel' for where other traffic. In the event of a catastrophic emergency, it'd be good to know where everyone else is.
@@matthiaspatzelt3085 Same reason that in the maritime industry you have 3, 4, or 5 radios. You need to do different things on different frequencies and sometimes go back and forth. You can miss stuff if you keep messing with 1 radio
you know what out of all the yahoos in the comment section essentially shitting on the pilot for changing frequencies, yours makes the most sense. As they would have been too busy with landing procedures to mess with the radio to correct the volume issue.
There was a plane with its tail sticking onto the active runway (28R) on which ACA aircraft was initially cleared to land. Because of that, the tower realized and told ACA aircraft to go around (full throttle and abort the landing). He never responded. This is a potential deviation per the FAA regulations (FARs), and the pilot will be written up and perhaps charged. In this case, it appears he was not charged although the write-up stays for the length of his career. The quick think of ATC cleared the tail of the aircraft by really squeezing them close together on the taxiway between the two active runways (28L & 28R). Hope that helps.
@@chrisj6917 There are also people saying this was also a "possible controller deviation" since the controller cleared an aircraft for landing before actually clearing the runway.
@@chrisj6917 ATC cleared the situation by advising the machine in the front to cross runway 28L without delay to give the other machine more space on the taxiway between the runways. He did not "squeeze" them together.
For those of you wondering, the pilot inadvertently switched to the ground frequency after receiving landing clearance, causing him to miss the go around callouts by atc
Then how did 781 hear the tower after touching down? Did they switch to ground and then switch back to tower after they touched down and then switch back to ground again?
According to the NTSB report, logs show that the pilot switched to ground right after “cleared to land. “ The pilot typed in ground frequency in anticipation of switching over after landing but accidentally hit the enter button too soon. It was the pilots only time doing this showing that it’s an isolated incident but should have had the sense that something was wrong when there was a plane that hadn’t cleared the runway and that there was silence for a long time.
The plane may have actually cleared the runway in practice even if it hadn't from an ATC organizational perspective so they may not have had a visual indication that anything was wrong.
SFO GND: "Possible pilot deviation. I have a number. Let me know when you're ready." ACA781: "Uhhh... *kkzzzxhcjjc* more *kzkzxkzk* radio problems *kzzkxzkxkx* can't *kzkkz* hear *kzzzkxxk"
seems like a bad combination of pilots afraid of being penalized for delays and airlines trying to save money by pushing their pilots to land when it would be better to wait at bit and follow ATC's instructions.
@@cathleenrocco4804 That's silly. Which pilots have been penalized for being waved off by control? Which airlines have told crew, or even remotely suggested to crew, that they should disregard critical instructions? Get real.
If radio contact is lost, you fly as per your flight plan or ATC clearance. AC871 were cleared to land, so if they had radio problems, regulations state that they should do what ATC last cleared them to do. That is what they did. I understand that ATC also used standard red flashing warning lights to indicate to AC871 that they should go around. But I wonder how many pilots would even notice them, unless they knew that their radio were dead?
How interesting (and convenient for the flight crew) that they happened to lose radio contact at the *exact* moment that they were on short final, after having been cleared to land. I'm suspicious of the flight crew.
@@sean2015 I am suspicious of this as well, but I was running radios on 737 for maintenance on the ground and made my call and was to hold short of a runway. So I did, then they cleared us across and to our gate. And right then and there the radio shit out. I couldnt reply, couldnt acknowledge... Nothing... :/ Thankfully our fellow company was right behind us and relayed for us. (We all carry handheld radios for maintenance.) So it just goes to show that things can just suddenly stop working.
@@Rekkoff think about it and use your common sense and intuition. Not only did they lose their radios at the exact moment they were on short final, they suddenly re-established contact right at the exact moment that they were exiting the runway? AND they failed to see repeated light signals from the tower. I don't believe the flight crew for one second. Their radios were working just fine; they ignored the tower to avert a go-around. Simple as that.
@@sean2015 The FAA has investigated the incident and concluded that the ACA781 "crew inadvertently switched from the SFO tower frequency to the SFO ground frequency after receiving their landing clearance." "The FAA deemed this event to be an isolated occurrence and not reflective of any systematic deficiencies at Air Canada," according to a FAA spokesman. The crew made a mistake and switched to Ground too soon. Mistakes happen, they are reviewed and in this case lead to a change in pilot training. Nothing to go all mental about, or accuse anyone of selfishly ignoring ATC, on RU-vid.
@@TheNewTimeNetwork the CVR was apparently never pulled, so the FAA's verdict was based solely on the word of the flight crew. I think we all know how they're going to answer to the question _"Did you ignore the tower and fake radio problems to avoid a go-around?"_ Doesn't take much common sense to know what happened here. This was no mistake, it was deliberate on the part of the crew. Tell me, which department of Air Canada do you work in?
When I was in the Army in the 80s, I was literally within a couple hundred meters of my platoon in my M113, and lost radio contact. We were being attacked, and I became separated. I was unable to regain contact for several hours. There was nothing wrong with the equipment - it was all atmospheric conditions that caused it. In the four years I was in the service, it was rare, but not unheard of. We used PRC77s back then.
+Jack Martin The term is mostly used around airports during take off and landing, incorporated into their call sign so as to warn other aircraft that they need extra distance to avoid this wake turbulence. All wide-body aircraft are classified as Heavy,
I feel ya, Air Canada! Sometimes when I'm flying in one of the Falcon 4 derivatives I'll declare an emergency on approach when I don't actually have one so that I can land right away and not get sent to the stack. :)
That's why I never understand why people are cleared to land in the US when there are still obstructions. If they weren't cleared to land in the first place, they would have gone around due to not receiving clearance to land.
While I see the reason behind all the comments ripping the pilots, I can't understand how in SFO it is considered okay to give a landing clearance while there are still other aircraft on the runway. It is removing several safety barriers, making it possible for simple mistakes, like switching the radio, to be catastrophic.
The most plausible theory I heard (speculation) is that they dialed in the ground frequency on the standby and then accidentally made it active (a habit since that's normal procedure when handed off to new controller) and then didn't realize they were on the wrong frequency till rolling down the runway. Anyway, aside from an annoyed controller the landing was legal, as the runway was clear of traffic and they had been cleared to land prior to lost communications
Tower would have called ground immediately to make sure the aircraft wasn't on the wrong freq. by mistake. This clip is sped up, from the first go-around there are probably 1:30 - 2:00 or longer that elapsed.
Even if that is true, it still doesn't explain how they missed the red light gun or other lights. If it were me, I'd suspend all AC flights into SFO for a week or two and require some remedial training. They are going to kill a bunch of people at this rate.
If they don't know anything is wrong, they most likely weren't looking for light gun signals as they quite possible thought their radios were functioning and or were on the correct freq
If they had gone to ground prematurely by accident, I would have thought they'd know something was up when they heard a bunch of chatter that's more prudent for ground rather than tower. If I heard stuff like "United 71, short of Victor, request taxi for takeoff" I'd certainly immediately wonder what is going on. That said, if I were to give the pilots as much benefit of the doubt as possible, I'd recognize that landing is a critical phase of the flight, and you're going to tune out chatter unless you hear your callsign, and certainly "Go around." For that I'd consider this a dangerous situation that should require retraining of the pilots, and possibly some reprimands. Imagine if this situation were combined with Air Canada's prior near miss. It'd be one of the worst aviation accidents in history. They were lucky the go-around instruction was missed and nothing happened. Many other go-around instructions are made as a result of unavoidable disaster if the landing were made.
