B (12:06)
All right. In all seriousness, Dave, we do have some important real news to talk about, and nothing really is more serious than a fatal accident. Once again, a preventable fatal accident that shows just how rickety our air traffic control system is. I'm referring, of course, to the LaGuardia collision of an Air Canada Jazz regional jet and a New York, New Jersey Port Authority fire truck. The pilots of the Air Canada flight were killed. More than 40 people were taken to hospitals. We know a lot about this accident, but we don't yet know, of course, how the National Transportation Safety Board will assign blame. There's a lot of it to go around. And we know, as we do in every serious accident, that the accident is caused by a chain of events. Not a single mistake. Let's start with the fire truck, which was responding to a United flight that reported strong odor in the cabin. The truck was leading a response group of several vehicles and asked for permission to cross Runway four at intersection Delta. One of the two air traffic controllers in the tower at the time, which was shortly before midnight, cleared the truck to proceed across Runway four. That was about 20 seconds before the collision. And the aircraft, by the way, was a little bit more than 100ft off the ground at the time that the truck was cleared. The truck read back the instruction nine seconds before the collision, just as the aircraft's wheels were touching down. The tower told truck one to stop and and repeated that four seconds before the collision. It's not clear if the driver even heard the stop order. The truck wasn't on the Runway when the first call went out, so maybe they had a chance to stop in time, but we don't really know they'll play out in the investigation. What's most puzzling to me is why the truck went into the Runway without seeing the landing jet. Everyone who drives on an airfield goes through training. And that training includes, just as it does for every Cessna 150 pilot and everybody on up, imperatives, that you never cross a Runway without first looking one way and then looking the other. Clear left. Clear right. You gotta do that. And that's what I don't understand. Visibility wasn't great, but they certainly should have been able to see the lights of the jet as close as they were. The system is designed to to operate on more than eyeballs, however, and here again is a failing. The truck did not have an active transponder on board that would have specified its location for the controller and would have made the truck more identifiable for the airport surface detection equipment installed at LaGuardia. That's a ground radar system designed to prevent Runway incursions just like this. The lack of a transponder is crucial. Ground radar has a hard time distinguishing between objects amid clutter. A transponder on a vehicle does a handshake with the radar so it's clear what it is and what it's doing. From the preliminary information, the NTSB released the ASDE X system, that's the ground radar system, did an alarm to the controller. The trucks may have only appeared on the surface display as two blobs. According to ntsb, on a dark night with rain, mist and fog and visibility of only 4 miles, the controller sure could have been helped by a good display, especially if it had alarmed to the impending danger as it's designed to do. Also, we don't know the status of the Runway intersection lights. At the intersection of Runway 4 and Taxiway Delta lights embedded in the taxiway pavement are supposed to turn red when the Runway is occupied. A visual cue to other aircraft and vehicles when it's not safe to cross. Controller instructions can override Runway status lights. And there's some evidence that the lights were not red when the truck crossed. And there may be technical reasons for that. In short, it's just not clear what was happening with the lights and whether or not the truck went through red lights. But I hope we get answers to that and improvements as a result of what we learned from it. First lesson I think, however, is quite clear. It's unconscionable that the Port Authority had not equipped its fire trucks with transponders. This has been an faa, an NTSB recommendation, but not a requirement. And shame on the FAA for that too. Why the heck wasn't it a requirement? Even so, shame on the Port Authority. You could have voluntarily done this and it just would be smart and safe. You've got a very busy, very crowded airport and you can't spend $5,000 on a transponder so that your million dollar fire truck can be seen accurately and save lives. Shame. Okay, how about the control tower? There were two controllers in the tower cab at that time. Normal staffing. The FAA says the midnight shift. The other controller cleared the Air Canada flight to land about two minutes prior to the accident. There will be of course questions about coordination between the two controllers. More importantly, I think will be questions about the staffing level and the workload they had. Normally, arrivals and departures slow down at night. Overnight, thus reduced tower staffing on the overnight shift. On that Sunday night, March 23, traffic was apparently still pretty heavy at LaGuardia at 11:30pm and that happens. Of course, flights get delayed all day. 11:30 at night can still be very busy. But here's the thing. The administration, Trump administration, like others before it has, have insisted that the system is safe, even with old equipment and a shortage, a huge, serious shortage. We even talked about this in the mailbag last week. Huge shortage of air traffic controllers, because what they say is they will slow traffic to meet safe staffing levels. So if we're short controllers, we're going to slow traffic to make sure we're not overloaded. And except in this case, they didn't. Daytime staffing would have twice as many controllers, if not more, in that tower. But you have a busy Sunday night and you go ahead and reduce staffing. Seems to me that you have to live by the safety principle you preach, the promise you made to all of us, the assurance you gave. Either you need more controllers in that tower on a busy Sunday night, at least for a while, until things slow down, or. Or you need to meter out that traffic to an appropriate level for only two controllers. And by the way, those two controllers were also dealing with an emergency with the United flight. Right. Those things happen, and staffing should anticipate that. So don't tell us you're going to safely match traffic to staff and then don't do it. It's not the controller's mistake. It's the mistake of the people managing this rickety system. Little early in the show for one of my rants, Dave, but this one is really infuriating. Pilots, controllers, travelers, firefighters, we all deserve better.