Delta knocks tail off other plane on ground

That CRJ is in the tail dock at work. Don't want to say much as I'm just a worker bee. I looks repairable but a heck of a lot of work... in a CRJ the aft equipment bay is home to parts of the APU, the air paks, 2 of the 3 hydraulic systems, elt. If they don't fix it they will have to cut it up. Its not flying anywhere. Not sure if the engines would be 'good' as they were running and might have had FOD injestion. With any luck I'll get some OT out of it.

We were told not to talk about it.. but its not like there isn't video/audio/eyewiteness reports etc.
 
I believe the engines can can be bore scoped in place; however, I would think that they would be removed to facilitate what will be a very complex air frame repair.
 
tspear said:
Curious, why you say it was the A350 responsibility. I asked earlier, only the taxiway design regs were listed.
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Because they could see the RJ, while the RJ could not see them nor were they moving.
tspear said:
What responsibility does GND have?
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Well... See below.
tspear said:
ATC has responsibility in the air?
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There is no ATC responsibility that absolves a pilot from any of their own responsibilities.
tspear said:
With a tower on the field, I have always assumed (and this so far worked for tiny GA planes) that GND provides separation once you enter the operating area. In fact, this is what I was told at KBED by the controllers. But I never questioned this assumption, or had a reg to point too one way or the other.
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It's probably in the 7110.65 somewhere if it's true, but I'm not seeing it. Everything is in relation to whole aircraft conflicts, not parts of aircraft that may contact parts of other aircraft.
mandm said:
3. Shouldn’t both airplanes declare an emergency?
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You could make the case that neither one knew whether they were spilling fuel or otherwise at risk of fire, but other than that I would say no, simply because at that point they don't need special handling, no lives were in danger, and no aircraft were imminently in danger beyond the damage that had already occurred.
Zeldman said:
I don't know what all the beef is about, everyone knows that the bigger airplane has the right of way...
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Not quite, though it's an easy mistake to make.

The bigger aircraft has the right of weight. :D
 
I keep wanting to post that had they put some masking tape on the other side of the tail, it might have made the cut cleaner so easier to repair. But that seems in poor taste so I haven't said it.
 
pfarber said:
That CRJ is in the tail dock at work. Don't want to say much as I'm just a worker bee. I looks repairable but a heck of a lot of work... in a CRJ the aft equipment bay is home to parts of the APU, the air paks, 2 of the 3 hydraulic systems, elt. If they don't fix it they will have to cut it up. Its not flying anywhere. Not sure if the engines would be 'good' as they were running and might have had FOD injestion. With any luck I'll get some OT out of it.

We were told not to talk about it.. but its not like there isn't video/audio/eyewiteness reports etc.
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We replaced the horizontal and vertical following a Ground handling mishap in CLT years ago took a month with lots of support from BBD crews.

I later put the vertical in the van and hauled it to our hanaher for the new guys to practice sheetmetal work on.
 
hindsight2020 said:
None of the crews are losing their job, or getting a *post-facto training failure added to their airman file, so what inducement is there for any of this to matter?

*In the military, they checker/mess up your FEF (flight evaluation folder in blue bird parlance, e.g. checkride records) after the fact, knowing it hurts future civilian flying employment prospects. The DoD recognizes money is seldom an effective inducement for .mil folks at the commissioned officer level. Many are members of the upper middle class before they even got to the military, and most who resemble the remark consider their time in military aviation as merely "their regional years" anyways. Not defending the draconian/petty approach, but that's how the cookie crumbles over on this side of the indentured servitude line.

So remember to thank your union rep prior to your next block out, you guys are playing LifeTM in Peaceful mode, to grab a reference from my kiddo's Minecraft.

*break break*

TLDR forewarned Uncle HS story time:

I've been close to getting hacked up as collateral damage by the .mil system. They tried to burn me with a Q3 for something the other qualified instructor in the aircraft (T-6A), senior in rank, did off-station during a formation landing (back when we could do those things). Decides to impromptu snatch the aircraft from me on landing rollout to shine his ... in front of a pos guppy from his new employer (former AirTran, at the time newly SWA-acquired pilot) that was following behind on a 3 mile final.

Something about taking taxiways like they do at the airline...real dumb, taxiway in question wasn't a real high-speed anyways, and proceeds to lock, smoke and blow out the living life out of both tires, with wingman witnessing/following the whole thing less than 20 ft off our wing. And apropos to this thread, we did have a UPS 767 taxi past us with wingtip overlapping our aircraft wing footprint, while we waited for airfield management to figure out how the hell they were gonna get our airplane out of the way.

The FBO with the .gov fuel contract refused to tow with flats, so there we sat on the wing, as I waved at the people in the pax terminal in my full "top gun dressup", and the offending IP stomping his feet and trying to barter with me with insolent "why didn't you take it from me!?!" straw-grasping. It was a real crapshow.

Where it got real for me, was when Massa then tried to hook us both for it. I MAGNUM'd back with 'what is this "we" business'. In the end, airline dope came clean and told them I had nothing to do with his imprudence. And he knew I had him dead to rights, as I had transmitted " XXXX 69, unable taxiway Juliet" on the rollout to tower, right before cowboy decides to snatch the controls and pull the stunt. It took a few days to figure out, which was injustice enough, but I was ready to go all-in and really burn my future civil employability over it.

Since then, I've been largely disabused from the desire to fly with other qualified people in the seat, any more than I'm absolutely required to. To say nothing of my disinterest for crew aircraft flying, which was already stipulated when I ran away to the training command in the first place. 10/10 will always rather fly with the worst performing student actively trying to kill me, than share a pit with a qualified peer. Nothing I have more distaste for in this life than moral hazards.
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I will take Ranch dressing with that word salad, Thank You.
 
I know JS about commercial jets...
But for f**** sake, we have backup cameras as standard equipment on even cheap cars these days.
No one has had the thought of sticking cams on the wingtips and nose gear of these airliners where the wingtips aren't visible from the cockpit?
This is insanity.
 
It's not that deep. It's largely not viewed as a problem, so firms prefer not to incur the [certification et al] costs. Latter which are unnecessarily outsized in the first place. Two things can be true at the same time type of thing.

In the conext of this accident what does strike me as pennywise pounds foolish, is the lack of consideration/outright dismissal of incurring the logistics of wing walkers.
 
tobnpr said:
I know JS about commercial jets...
But for f**** sake, we have backup cameras as standard equipment on even cheap cars these days.
No one has had the thought of sticking cams on the wingtips and nose gear of these airliners where the wingtips aren't visible from the cockpit?
This is insanity.
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How much would it cost to equip the fleet to avoid something we could avoid IF WE USE OUR EYES?
 
RyanB said:
Am I the only one that’s a bit surprised by how apparently easily it snapped off? Considering the slow taxi speed, it seems like it didn’t take much to break it off. I realize the A350 has a lot of mass, it’s just hard to fathom.
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Dan Thomas said:
A big wing full of fuel, striking the top of the fin of a bizjet, should easily bust the fin spars. Lots of leverage, lots of mass, maybe some speed, against a structure designed to handle high winds, basically.
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They don't make CRJ900s like they used to. some years ago, an A380 merely spun one around. The tail remained attached. I'm a little surprised no one posted this one yet:
www.channel4.com

Airbus crashes into another jet at JFK airport

Watch the moment an Airbus pilot drove the world's biggest jet into the back of a commuter plane at JFK airport in New York.
www.channel4.com www.channel4.com
MauleSkinner said:
the link says it was “breaking news.” Ever notice how they never have “fixing news?”
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More like broken news. The airplanes were broken.

tobnpr said:
I know JS about commercial jets...
But for f**** sake, we have backup cameras as standard equipment on even cheap cars these days.
No one has had the thought of sticking cams on the wingtips and nose gear of these airliners where the wingtips aren't visible from the cockpit?
This is insanity.
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It doesn't happen very often enough to justify the total expense- installation, certification, maintenance, weight, etc. On a car, it is just parts & labor to install.
 
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Cap'n Jack said:
It doesn't happen very often enough to justify the total expense- installation, certification, maintenance, weight, etc. On a car, it is just parts & labor to install.
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I would suspect that a big part of the overhead on such a feature would be avionics certification. Prove on paper and in testing that there is no possible failure mode of the new camera, display, or wiring that can interfere with the operation of anything else in the plane. And do that certification in a post-MCAS environment. I wouldn’t bid the project for less than the cost of a few tails and wings.
 
tobnpr said:
I know JS about commercial jets...
But for f**** sake, we have backup cameras as standard equipment on even cheap cars these days.
No one has had the thought of sticking cams on the wingtips and nose gear of these airliners where the wingtips aren't visible from the cockpit?
This is insanity.
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The Air France A350 that we took to Europe a couple of years ago had a belly cam and a top of tail cam that were visible from the pax screens. My sons had fun watching the ramp crew trying to get the chocks out that were wedged under the nose gear.
 
hindsight2020 said:
In the conext of this accident what does strike me as pennywise pounds foolish, is the lack of consideration/outright dismissal of incurring the logistics of wing walkers.
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This accident didn't happen in the terminal environment, where wing walkers are standard protocol. This happened on a taxiway near the end of an active runway. Are you proposing wing walkers on the airfield as well?
 
midwestpa24 said:
This accident didn't happen in the terminal environment, where wing walkers are standard protocol. This happened on a taxiway near the end of an active runway. Are you proposing wing walkers on the airfield as well?
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Walk the wings all the way to Vr. Passengers will pay extra for the entertainment.
 
midwestpa24 said:
This accident didn't happen in the terminal environment, where wing walkers are standard protocol. This happened on a taxiway near the end of an active runway. Are you proposing wing walkers on the airfield as well?
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In the context of the bellyaching about proximity radar/cameras being too costly/onerous to implement, I figured wingwalkers for certain wingspans wouldn't be the end of the world.

I do concede my bias having operated an exceedingly ground handling handicapped slant heavy for a while. Universally hated by airfield managements, hatred i certainly shared, but it was the cost of not knocking out everything sticking more than an inch off the ground on the airfield with our tips and outrigger gear....offense which we still accomplished (as a community) with incredible regularity anyways lol.
 
I'm going to guess B-47. And if my quick google is right, I think I'd let any aircraft where the minimum and maximum bomb load are both measured in megatons pretty much own the airport if they wanted. A problem there would have the potential to be very, very loud.
 
He certainly seems to hate the B-52. Quite the opposite of a B-52 pilot I met at an airshow a few years ago. I asked if it was fun to fly it and his eyes lit up, he broke out in a big grin and said “oh yeah!” He was one of the highest time B-52 pilots and said he just loved to fly it.
 
Simple solution: only one aircraft not parked at a gate. An aircraft is not allowed to land until all other aircraft on the airport surface are parked at a gate.

This will save us for the expensive horror of aircraft trading paint.
 
Bob Noel said:
Simple solution: only one aircraft not parked at a gate. An aircraft is not allowed to land until all other aircraft on the airport surface are parked at a gate.

This will save us for the expensive horror of aircraft trading paint.
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Hope that was sarcasm. How would you explain to your passengers that you're number 89 to push, and that might happen in 14 hours.
 
“Ladies and gentlemen good morning and welcome aboard delta 1234 non stop service to Birmingham. Well flying at 20000 feet and a speed of 500 mph. Takeoff to landing is 14 minutes. Currently we’re number 89 to push off the gate. I’ve instructed the flight attendants to serve refreshments, feel free to use your cell phones. Sit back, relax, let us know if there’s anything we can do to make the flight more enjoyable. We should be underway in 14 hours. Thanks for flying delta”

Something like that, insert James Earl Jones low low voice!

If the flight cancels, escape through the cockpit windows… DO NOT open the door.
 
Yup, you just described tuesday at the ffd carriers. Hell, even swa does things like that for a living. The punchline of course is, you can drive it faster lol. (iah-sat in my present case, but ive done the atl-bhm shuffle too for years).
 
iamtheari said:
I would suspect that a big part of the overhead on such a feature would be avionics certification. Prove on paper and in testing that there is no possible failure mode of the new camera, display, or wiring that can interfere with the operation of anything else in the plane. And do that certification in a post-MCAS environment. I wouldn’t bid the project for less than the cost of a few tails and wings.
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I get the red tape, but I think in this particular application it's an unfortunate roadblock.
Simple, separate isolated system. It's only application is what we're referring to- and if it were to fail, the crew (and passengers) are no worse off than they'd have otherwise been if they didn't have it to begin with. All upside, zero downside.
 
pfarber said:
We were told not to talk about it.. but its not like there isn't video/audio/eyewiteness reports etc.
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Discretion is the better part of job security: I know of folks who had to fight for their jobs for posting stuff they were told not to talk about.
flyingcheesehead said:
The bigger aircraft has the right of weight. :D
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Unless the smaller aircraft is stolen, or a rental.
MauleSkinner said:
I thought the FAA allowed you to just duct tape a GoPro on the wing. ;)
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Well, that's how I used to do it, before I became too lazy to track-down the boom lift every time I went out to the plane. Now I just look out of the windshield.
midwestpa24 said:
This accident didn't happen in the terminal environment, where wing walkers are standard protocol. This happened on a taxiway near the end of an active runway. Are you proposing wing walkers on the airfield as well?
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It doesn't have to be complicated. The first step is to recognize the potential conflict (the issue at the heart of the matter). The second step is to stop the aircraft before things get too interesting. At busy airports, the ground controller will quickly notice that you have stopped and try to resolve the matter before gridlock ensues. If that doesn't work, a simple request will bring an airport operations vehicle out to assist. And if that doesn't work, restart the APU, shut down the engines, and get a cup of coffee.

The idea that I want to convey (on this GA-oriented forum) is that regardless of what aircraft you are operating, help is almost always available at tower-controlled airports, and may be available at any airport with staff on duty. That said, it is still up to the PIC to determine whether guidance given by such personnel should be relied upon.
 
hindsight2020 said:
I do concede my bias having operated an exceedingly ground handling handicapped slant heavy for a while. Universally hated by airfield managements, hatred i certainly shared, but it was the cost of not knocking out everything sticking more than an inch off the ground on the airfield with our tips and outrigger gear....offense which we still accomplished (as a community) with incredible regularity anyways lol.
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