The National Transportation Safety Board has published its preliminary report on last month’s deadly crash involving an Air Canada jet and a fire truck at New York’s LaGuardia airport, concluding communication failures and a lack of transponders in the truck played roles in the collision.
The report, released Thursday, said the truck’s driver heard instructions to “stop, stop, stop” over the radio, but did not realize the message was intended for them.
After the initial warning, the fire truck’s turret operator heard the controller say, “Truck 1, stop, stop, stop,” and realized the warning was for his crew. By then, the report said, the truck was already on Runway 4 as Air Canada Express Flight 8646 was landing.
The jet and the truck collided seconds after the plane touched down. Pilots Mackenzie Gunther and Antoine Forest were killed, and 33 people were injured, including six who had serious injuries.
I wonder if we could do some sort of virtual ADSB on the ground where it tracks anything on the field and squawks its location?
This would alert about incursions even if the object didn’t have a transponder.
Seems like a great idea, and also would be fairly easy to implement
Hell, a fairly rudimentary system could be built pretty quickly with the airports’ existing surveillance cameras, though I’d want LiDAR and some higher res cameras or even IR as well for low visibility conditions
That’s… not free either. And even lidar will never be as accurate as a radio antenna letting the moving pieces tell you exactly their location and motion.
Right, but I’m saying if there was a computer vision system monitoring the runway cameras and transmitting ADSB signals the truck wouldn’t need a transponder. Another system would be broadcasting its position.
But there is a system and it sounds like it works. It just wasn’t in place. The problem is not a technical one.
Those transponders aren’t free, and I bet that cost probably factored into why they weren’t there.
A virtual one would cover every vehicle at the airport without having to buy them all transponders, on top of tracking anything else.
I’m confused. Do you know what a transponder is?
That is exactly what a transponder is for. Tracking live location. How are you even intending to implement a virtual representation of a live environment without the moving things telling you where they are?!?