For those thinking about preventative solutions, there are some existing, all very expensive of course.

The simplest is placing a row of red lights in the ground at all intersections to runways. When an airplane is cleared for takeoff and until it is airborne the controller presses a button and turns all these lights red. Pilots are instructed that regardless of clearance, a red light over-rides that, and to never cross it. These lights are installed at JFK, but apparently NOT at the intersection inquisition. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runway_status_lights).

JFK also has Airport Surface Detection Equipment (ASDE). Which is essentially ground radar including transponder/ADS-B replies. Many have automated alerts when it detects a potential runway incursion. Not known if any such system alerted the controller.

There is obviously room for more to be done in this space.

I flew into JFK in December and was surprised the number of concurrent operations going on… landing queues of 5+ planes in the sky for the two runways, long takeoff queues, so many land operations… once you touch down it sure feels like the pilot knows they have to get that plane off the runway ASAP. Felt much more busy than I have previously going through LAX/SFO/London/Dubai. I wonder if the level of traffic at JFK is appropriate. Maybe Newark and LaGuardia need to take on more of the load. And maybe a city airport shouldn’t be the primary international entrance point for what feels like half the country

I want to offer a bit of a different perspective than the one I'm seeing in other comments which (totally reasonably) wonder if a) JFK is too busy or needs some safety upgrades and b) whether voice contact with ATC is the best way to reduce risk during unusual events like incursions.

I'm just an amateur enthusiast who listens to a lot of ATC, so take this assessment with that grain of salt:

JFK has long had a unique subculture with respect to ATC (embodied most famously by the flourish and wit of Kennedy Steve, but often apparent from the entire ATC corps on both ground and tower during busy times), and strange as it sounds, it might be a part of what averted this disaster. At other airports, it seems to me that it's totally possible that this goes far worse.

The controller did a few things that are unusual in ATC, but not totally unheard of at JFK in particular:

* Completely changed tone of voice. He yelled into the mic. That doesn't happen often in ATC.

* Yelled "SHIT!" to open his transmission.

* Spoke in a way that emphasized speed and urgency even if it cost a little clarity (eg, some news outlets have transcribed "cancel takeoff clearance" as "cancel takeoff plans" because of how intense and fast the controller is yelling)

Assuming the aircraft were on a collision course (something we'll probably know for sure only when the FAA report comes out), this was less than 1.5 seconds (perhaps less than 1 second) from an impact.

A different transmission, like you might hear at say LHR or LAX, where the controller keeps a monotone and simply says, "Delta 1943 cancel takeoff clearance" might not have gotten the attention so quickly and helped the Delta pilot initiate the reject so rapidly.

I think that this incident is an example of a) how JFK's unique ATC swagger may not be just for show, but may actually be a part of the safety culture of that airport, and b) how effective voice contact with ATC is at achieving rapid response from pilots.

Ideally, this investigation prompts some study into what might seem like a silly topic: whether the "New York attitude" of JFK controllers has a positive safety impact that isn't felt elsewhere.

It reminds me of an air disaster that happened about 20 years ago for the same reason. [0]

In that case, the pilot of a plane misread the taxiway number (he confused R5 with R6 [1]) and entered the runway while another plane was taking off.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linate_Airport_disaster

[1] This is what the junction between R5 and R6 looked like that day: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Disastro_Linate-02.png

The animation in the tweet at the end of the article is something. Based on that, the deceleration looked remarkably fast. I imagine that was quite the ride for the folks in the Delta jet.

> strong kudos are due both to the air traffic controller who called off the Delta 737 and to the pilots of that plane who managed to abort their takeoff and stop the aircraft before it crossed runway 31L where the Boeing widebody passed in front of it

Can't agree more

Given that you absolutely never swear (or even waste words) on the radio, I wonder if beginning the transmission with an expletive is actually optimal: it is short, sharp, and immediately conveys the urgency of the command.

DELTA1943: "Alright, and uh, woof!"

ATC: "Delta 1943, are you able to taxi or do you need a couple of minutes to run checks?"

DELTA1943: "Yeah, we can get off the runway" but they're all going to need a change of underwear!!

And I thought the Brits were known for understatement!

For anyone interested in the milieu of plane crashes, Admiral Cloudberg's writeups are amazing.

https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/

Here's a diagram of the taxi paths:

https://avherald.com/h?article=503c9620

- "Excerpt of Aerodrome Chart, red: actual taxi path, green: cleared taxi path (Graphics: AVH/FAA):"

Are we're relying on pilots who are holding many many things in their heads to follow only the verbal directions of air traffic control?

Two alternatives that I would think would be fairly easy to implement.

1) Google maps style directions input by air traffic control showing as well as telling the pilot what runway/path to runway to take.

2) Coloured lighting directing the pilot to the right runway via the correct path. Then the pilot only needs to know that they are following blue, and when it's time for them to move, blue comes up.

I understand this would be more work on the part of ATC, where right now they can verbally communicate, but a system such as this may also help ATC relieve some of the mental load.

Is this already happening? I can't find any links to suggest it is.

> (“Shit! Delta 1943 cancel takeoff clearance!”)

This isn't a real quote, is it? I was surprised to read ATC losing their composure like that, but in the linked video/audio there is no utterance of Shit! that I can hear.

I had a sort-of hobby of learning and listening to ATC at one point. Some of these guys were scary-unintelligible . I remember this Chinese ATC at some major airport saying as fast as he possibly could “clah de leh” which was supposed to be “Clear to land”. It’s amazing the system works as well as it does.

ATC recording: https://youtu.be/9N1gDSZJ5s0

So we don't have computers anticipating the movements of airplanes, and giving warning signals if necessary?

Anyone wondering about map of taxi runways at JFK https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/FAA_JFK_...

Once flying into NYC after passing over the end of the runway to land the plane pulled up super hard back into cursing altitude for landing. Once we leveled off, pilot came on to say, “Sorry about that folks, there was a plane taking off.” - Guess I always assumed this was a common issue.

Ah the old KLM, Pan Am repetition was avoided. For those who don't remember: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster

This is an incredible write-up. Kudos to the journalist who wrote this piece. I wish more current events were chronicled this way.

It's surprising that ATC works in such a human-driven manual way. Compare to train signalling, where tracks are divided into signalled sections, and a train cannot enter the next section until the section ahead is clear, with automated braking if a red signal is run. This system was developed over many tragic accidents. Even the Victorians came up with ways to minimise human error (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Token_(railway_signalling) )

What are the likely consequences of this near miss? Is someone gonna get fired?

I'll be eagerly waiting for the Mentour Pilot[0] incident analysis.

[0] https://youtube.com/@MentourPilot

Watching the animation at https://twitter.com/CaseWade/status/1614342894248394752, I am astonished that ground paths are routinely planned with so many conflicts, all crisscrossing frequently with so little clearance between airplanes.

I counted six other path conflicts in the space of 25 seconds, in this tiny section of the airport. With conflicts happening every few seconds, it's incredible to me that crashes don't happen more often.

Why are paths planned this way? Is capacity pressure so extreme that airplanes have to be crammed together this tightly? Is it not possible for airplanes to travel along taxi-only paths that minimize runway crossings, or wait in orderly queues and achieve nearly the same rate of takeoffs?

As we know from experience trying to use computers, humans struggle to remember a series of words, letters and numbers - like these runway instructions. When we are tired or stressed we'll make mistakes. This is true even for highly trained pilots. We need some additional safety methods like the lights. I imagine the pilot writes it down and tries to follow it. But it's a dynamic env, it might be raining, bright, or dark, planes comes and going. You might not remember the details of this runway. That's my naive view as an outsider. Eventually this system will fail (remembering and following) and lead to crash. I never thought about it but it seems inherently risky to have people "remember directions".

Layman question here, why can't airplane collisions be predicted automatically? Something like an axis aligned bounding box around each airplane and some basic velocity equations. You don't want airplanes to be too close so an approximation should suffice.

Maybe 25 years ago, I'm not sure, there was some collision at an airport and the investigators were all wondering what happened, and were trying to reconstruct which airplane was where. It turns out that there were no video cameras monitoring the taxiways and runways. I asked why not?

"Too expensive"

WAAT? Even a 7-11 had an always on camera.

"Too expensive. How would you get it to withstand the weather? How would you run power to it?"

Me: install it in the control tower, point it at the taxiways, and plug it in.

"That will never work"

Me: Sigh.

I still don't know if they have cameras monitoring the ground ops.

This video does a great job illustrating the situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9N1gDSZJ5s0

Murphy's Law in action. With this many flights per day, you need tons of safety measures to ensure that mistakes like this are extremely unlikely. Like "defense in depth", you can't rely on just a few layers of countermeasures, the more the better. So yes, red lights at every intersection are good, but retrofitting planes with a gps-style map that shows exactly where to go and when to turn is even better (and of course probably insanely expensive).

The article mentions runway 4L was being used for takeoffs. In the ATC communications, you can hear them say "American 185, runway 31L at KE, line up and wait" before telling Delta 1943 to cancel their takeoff clearance. And after the near collision, ATC tells American 106 Heavy "we're departing runway 4L."

Wouldn't the line up and wait call for American 185 mean that they were departing from both 4L and 31L?

Question

Did the B777-200 Pilots assumed the should takeoff from 4R with 2.560m length? Should be enough for a B777-200?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777#Specifications

ATC recordings, plus a diagram more or less to scale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9N1gDSZJ5s0

Recording of the ATC conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9N1gDSZJ5s0

Just like in the movie 2:22... which oddly enough I was watching on Friday night.

Is there any aggregation of near misses? How often do things like this happen?