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What's interesting to me is that if the pilot thought it was indeed 5:45 AM and the runway was open, that would also mean the tower was open and that he should have been talking to the tower anyway.
Didn’t see your comment, but I just said the same thing lol.
I believe TECHNICALLY the tower isn’t actually open till they broadcast to all aircraft that the tower is indeed up and operational though, which probably has a few min variation each day. If they haven’t broadcast that, the airport is still uncontrolled (from what I remember at least.)
Better said both of you, basically same thing I was trying to say, seems you would be waiting until you heard a broadcast saying such.
Runways can be open without the tower being open. It's the normal situation.
Should be a separate NOTAM
Unless he was hoping to get airborne before having to deal with the tower. That may explain why he was in a hurry to get off the ground just a few minutes before the tower was set to open. But that’s just wild speculation
"The clumsy way NOTAMS are delivered". NOTAMS were originally formatted and delivered on the old electro-mechanical Teletype machines, nearly a hundred years old, never to be changed.
And delivered in preflight brief along and with and with equal importance as the weather. SW wtf. Without atc tower manned its even more important to monitor local airport freq.
Along with METARs and PIREPs.
That does explain the interesting typographic style, thanks.
They feel like Telex or Telegram messages - where every letter cost you money. And are intentionally short, presumably so each fits on one line of the printout. But now days you could have dozens related to your flight route, plus all the other info. And have to find the ones related to "now".
@@wendygerrish4964 The problem is far more severe, though, as taking off at a major airport without getting clearance from the tower seems risky? I know being first flight out kind of makes that redundant, but that seems like it would surely be a very bad practice/habit by the pilot to assume that "departure" is "takeoff". "We don't need to talk to the tower because we're the only plane here" and it looks perfectly clear is just asking for trouble. Slow down, take that extra step. This is exactly how several major accidents have happened in the past - "looks clear to me" is just asking for that one time it really wasn't.
Also, yes, it looks like and old stock market ticker tape from the 50s. Everything is compressed to save a few seconds of work from the old mechanical machines and people typing on them. Similar to how court reporters use their machines - the input if you look at the raw key presses looks similarly truncated and missing parts for speed.
In a modern system run by computers, having it in plain language is a no-brainier here. "NOTICE ( this word in RED or all caps if printed out on some ancient dot matrix printer or similar ) (rest of message in plain English)
As a relatively new FO I was flying into a field that had a closed control tower. The captain told me he’d not flown into an uncontrolled field in 20 years!! I had to show him how to make calls, how to turn lights on and off, and cancel IFR. I patiently showed him, and then next day later when we were back in I was flying and he did great
Good CRM, but did you know beforehand that the tower would be closed when you arrived, and if so, did you brief it?
That's awesome! People want to blame young FOs for all the problems, but a lot of us have training and experience with un-controlled fields that the older guys haven't had in years. We're all here to help each other.
I bet your an expert on space shuttle operations too
That's nuts. Once upon a time I was able to click on the runway lights at an adjacent airport for a civilian NORDO. Tyndall AFB, circa 1989. Fun times!!
@@michaelrussek154sounds like a good checkFO.
As a corporate pilot, we always xmitted on CTAF before takeoff. You just never know who's out there even in the dead of night.
Crazy to think you're safe to go when you don't have a mental picture of what's happening locally ...
If he'd been on 36 he would've still been out on a prayer....
2 Big mistakes.
Bad mindset
Bad Airmanship
Juan, you have to know that your 456k subscribers are some of the most interested and interesting people on youtube. You make the best analytical videos and they may not be wholly appealing to the masses. They are appreciated by your subscribers.
United must be sooooo happy that it's Southwest's turn in the barrel.
Yes. And Boeing, too.
American airlines in some cross hairs. Delta probably sweating and adding bonus to pilots to not appear on the news.
Ironically, Brickyard ( Republic Airways ) flies for multiple major airlines, United being one of them as United Express. Be funny if that was the case here.
Nahhh….united still can’t do anything without the FAA watching them all the time.
So many mistakes, so many problems, so much to learn
I remember a visiting F-4 blasting around the field waiting for the tower to open on a Sunday morning. We got a free airshow for 10 mins. Laughlin AFB, circa 1985.😁
2 reasons to get spanked.
Taking off on closed runway and taking off without reporting your intentions on the local frequency or even listening for other traffic in the pattern.
Yeah the notams explanation is an issue that needs to be looked at but it’s a cop out. Had they been talking on the CTAF as well the whole situation could have been avoided entirely. It would have gone something like this
“hey SWA taking off”
Airport ops truck: uhhh 👁️👄👁️ you know this runway is closed for 3 more minutes right?
SWA: oh
And they sit there 3 minutes and wait for the guy to finish his FOD sweep
Are these jokers running around like 80 year old men in Nordo Piper Cubs lmao? Cmon southwest, this is day one situational awareness
When I was an airport duty manager, we had a lot of pilots not saying anything on the radio til they were holding short, so I made up a bunch of 11x17 posters with a friendly safety reminder to make a radio call before leaving the apron, or, "before passing the double amber lights". The manager of the FBO wouldn't put them up in his building on the grounds it would be insulting to professional pilots.
Well buddy... If I had never seen your professional pilots pull out onto the taxiway without making a radio call, I wouldn't have brought you any posters!
FAA recommends self-announcing on freq but does not mandate it. Company policy probably does mandate it.
@@pjcanfield8 Your comparison is quite odious, wait till your 80, if you make it by then your comprehension skills may have improved.
Sadly I had this happen many times. A lot of time it is company policy. UNITED Express was notorious for only being on Salt Lake Center freq in our area and never announcing their intention for departure on the local unicom freq before the tower would open. The contract company for Delta always announced on CTAF as well as communications with Salt Lake.
Having served on my local airport commission for more than 20 years, our operations procedures would not allow the runway to be occupied that close to the end of the NOTAM'd closure. You have to leave your self margins for error.
There are a lot of mistakes here. It may not have been the worst one, but it was another hole.
Firmly agree!
There should have been a 10 minute sterile period starting at 0535.
And is someone really going to tell us that at 0543, there was no one in the tower prepping for the day’s operations?!?
In the end, though, Southwest gets to be tagged “it” for awhile until United frees them.
For a final FOD inspection? Airport operator here, you are incorrect.
@@briansweeney9670 Hey, that's fine if you run yours that way, all I can speak to is ours - it's correct on our field.
The SOP is to be complete, clean, and clear ~15m before the time expired. The reasoning being that if there is an issue they want time to deal with it; contact ATC, amend a NOTAM, etc. Our operations people take great pride in being closed as little as possible but prioritizing safety, and that's how they want to do it. (Iw a commissioner not Dir of Ops)
While the ops truck was not at fault, this video shows that doing a FOD inspection at 2m to go was cutting it too close. In the right, but not safe enough.
Surprised I had to scroll this far to find this comment. They are giving themselves basically 0 seconds of margin. Or maybe they gave themselves margin and they where rushing and using that "buffer time" to solve some issues?
This is very interesting. All airport vehicles have light bars to make them very visible when they are on a runway when it is open or closed. Surprised SWA didn’t se them. As a retired airport electrician of 20 years I spent many graveyard shifts doing maintenance work with the same exact situation. We had a tower that closed at midnight and opened at 6am. One thing you could never take for granted was pilots not messing up and landing on a closed runway regardless if the closure markers were out. All of our ground movements were broadcast over the CTAF frequency to alert aircraft and for us to be not caught off guard by landing aircraft. We didn’t have any takeoff while we were out there, but a couple did land passing over the closure markers.
Thank you for saying CTAF, vice unicom. The unicom at PWM is 122.95. 120.9 is the CTAF.
its not clear if southwest saw them or not. it was mentioned they were indeed clear of the runway before the southwest started his takeoff roll. Not monitoring unicom was the biggest mistake here.
“I thought it opened at 45”… right, you departed at 43
Indeed.
Exactly
The FAA statement quote in paragraph 5 seems to indicate 0545 local…
Blame his Breitling.
SWA should have either talked to the tower on local frequency, or announced that he was taking off and the runway on the local frequency. He did neither.
Portland KPWM is my home airport, Juan. I live 2 miles from the airport and I was listening to this on my ICOM and I was freaking out that we were going to hear about a collision with construction vehicles. Thank God, the sun is up this time of morning this time of year so this didn't happen in the dark.The airport crews are getting the "X" signs off the ends of 11/29 and getting the heavy equipment cleared from the runway and I think they start doing that around 0530. SW pilot was in communication with Boston Center 128.2. The runway 11/29 went thru it's 25 year rehab 2 summers ago. The runway is closed because all of the taxiway that parrallels the runway including the taxiways exiting 11/29 are being ripped up and rebuilt. They leave taxiway Charlie open for access to 36 and the terminal when arriving 18. Here in PWM, we RON I think 12 commercial flights and the first one leaves at 0515LCL. SW4805 is scheduled to leave at 0550LCL and he was off the gate at 0537LCL. Yup, using the CTAF 120.9 woulda prevented this as Bangor Radio is monitoring ground movements here from 0001LCL to 0544LCL and they coulda alerted SW.......this is contingent they haven't changed anything regarding BGR Radio monitoring that frequency. I don't think they have.
Interesting the SWA flight didnt make a take off call on the CTAF, or did they ?
Sounds like the crew was in a hurry to get done and took down the signs before all the equipment was off. Pilot was also in a hurry to get going and just assumed since there was no sign, it must be open.
@@petewilson5094 Nope, used the Boston Center frequency only. Never even heard him on CTAF. Brickyard WAS on CTAF.
@@petewilson5094 Nope, they were on 128.2 Boston Center the whole time unless they had the wrong CTAF put in on their second radio and were talking to an empty frequency.
The last thing to remove should be the x-signs?
I used to work that airspace in Boston Center on the overnight shift. I believe the really short clearance void time given, (3 minutes), was to coincide with PWM tower opening. When we released that airspace back to the tower, we tried to hand over a clean situation with no pending departures
I remember landing at Portland, Maine as a passenger in the late 1970’s on a foggy morning in July and was surprised to see dairy cows grazing just off the side of the runway.
That was some of the local women picking blueberries. Sorry.
@@thereissomecoolstuff Tomato, tomato.
Many, many years ago, when I was a green FO, new to 121, I was paired up with a super competent, knowledgeable, and capable Captain on a pairing that included a PWM overnight. Weather delays had us playing catch-up all day and we were far enough behind schedule as to be arriving after the tower closed. As we approached PWM, there was another aircraft on center being vectored for the ILS 11. I advised the CA I was going off frequency to check the local weather. ATC had left a prerecorded message attached to the end of the automated weather broadcast that the airport was left lighted and configured for the ILS to 11. Coming back on frequency, I advised the captain of the weather, which was CAVU with calm winds, and the message about the airport being configured for 11. The captain said, “OK, we’re going to set up for the Harbor Visual to 29.” For a few seconds, I thought she was joking. Once I realized that she was serious about the Harbor Visual, I asked, “So you want to do the Harbor Visual to 29, in the dark, with the airport configured for 11, and we’re following traffic being vectored for 11? Also, there’s a big note here on the approach plate for the Harbor Visual that says ‘Nighttime Prohibited’.” She looked me dead in the eyes with as much venom and vitriol as I had ever seen and said, “Fine! We’ll do it your way!”
Edit: The “super competent, knowledgeable, and capable” part was meant to be facetious.
Wow😦
Yep, my wife looked at me that way too when I pointed out that her idea was FUBAR. BTW, when they say FINE! That means Frustrated Insecure Neurotic Emotional. 🤪
Been on that stick too.. sometimes the experienced competent ones are the most dangerous...
Little Miss Tennessee Can't Be Wrong .............. just ducky now I have Black Crows stuck in my head............
So much for "super competent."
The FAA is on the ball, changing acronyms, but not fixing problems. I feel very confident….
I feel like no one (female airline pilots especially) asked the FAA to change the acronym either. They just thought they were doing something 😂
That was a Pete Buttigeg priority making NOTAM gender neutral. I hope a new administration reverses it.
Imagine thinning the FAA doesn't fix problems. Take your culture war nonsense elsewhere
Gendered NOTAMS and non-inclusive, culturally appropriating METAR reports cause many problems. I agree they need to tackle that first.
It involves Portland, therefore that's the likely problem right there
I dunno, if I thought the runway opened and closed concurrently with the tower (“I thought it opened at 45” would seem to imply he thought this) then I would consider it off limits until the tower was open and I had a tower clearance to take off on it.
If the tower opens at 45 and you assume that also means the runway opens at 45, and you take off on it without a clearance from the tower, you’ve either taken off on a closed runway or you’ve taken off on an open runway without a clearance from the (now open) tower.
Indeed, good point!👍
Maintenance was on time, tower was running late perhaps? It was quiet on the radio (less quiet if they had bothered to use it)
This is a problem with the NOTEM system, IMO. It should be in clear language and it should say "until the tower has opened the runway for operations" rather than a time. Imagine if there was a reason they needed 2 or 3 extra minutes instead of thankfully being done a few minutes early and just getting off the runway by a few seconds.
@@josephoberlander yes, the notam system sucks, I’m merely suggesting a way he might have avoided the whole issue. Another would have been to have used the runway that wasn’t closed at all. 🙂
If you call for a briefing, the weather briefer will also go over the relevant NOTAMs. Before one trip, I was asked, "A NOTAM shows that the xxx airport does not have fuel at this time, would you like to stop at the yyy airport instead?" That was wonderfully helpful, because the whole point of stopping at xxx was to refuel.
I am not a pilot yet but hope to be someday and I appreciate all these lessons to keep myself and others safe. You’ll never live long enough to make every mistake so learn while you can. Thank you very much Juan
👍
I thought I heard this actual audio on VAS.. and at the end he said "I thought it was open at 45" and the controller said "you took off at 42"
@@truckerhershey7042 Aviation Rule: no matter how many thousands the pilot paid for that fancy wristwatch, it only tells times in 5 minute increments. Pull a bunch of old flight logs where block and off times were manually entered instead of pulled off of ACARS and prove me wrong.
Great analysis Juan! Center doesn't control airports. If you speak to them when you get your clearance (as opposed to a FSS or other facility) they'll often say, "enter controlled airspace heading 280, climb and maintain 4,000' ". When the tower is closed the class C airspace is down. You're right about the NOTAM crap. You'll read a dozen NOTAMs about a 50' tower 3/4 from the runway with a flag missing. The only time that matters is seconds before you crash. They need to overhaul the NOTAM system and get it a better name. Happy landings!
An item related to closure of a parallel runway at SFO was buried in NOTAMS and played a role in that Air Canada plane that almost landed on top of four aircraft lining up on a parallel taxiway.
Nah, it’s not just NOTAMS, it’s the Swiss cheese model. You’ve got to ignore and/or line up for the incorrect runway, miss it during approach checks, miss it on your instruments, miss it on ATIS, and have the PNF miss all of that as well.
In this case there were far fewer holes that needed to line up - uncontrolled, no visual runway closure markings, a buried NOTAM, and on another freq (he didn’t technically HAVE to broadcast after he did I don’t think, it’s just good form.)
NOTAMs are so filled with garbage. What's that about? There is so much garbage related to exactly that - nonessential items relative to a runway closure.
Swiss cheese phenomenon. Multiple people at fault.
1 pilots were not on Unicom.
2 Center controller not paying attention to SWA informing a rwy 29 departure. Controllers know the runway is closed.
3 Airport ops removing the X on the runway before completing a runway inspection.
4 Airport management for having a runway and tower open at the same strange time, 5:45.
Good job Jaun. Thanks.
Indeed, exactly.
Perhaps 5) crew not having properly sync'ed timekeeping. The pilot's wording seemed to imply he thought it was past 5:45 and so the runway was open
@@kevinmartin7760that is most likely bs, we do everything based on the aircraft clock which is gps synced.
Another interesting thing, if the crew was under the impression runway and Tower both open at X:45 and its past X:45 they should also be requiring a clearance from the tower
Either both apply or none do cuz its the same time
@kevinmartin7760 Even in the steam railroad days, the crew had to (by regulation) synchronize their watches. Or as George "Kingfish" Stevens said to Andrew H. Brown, "Come on, Brother Andy, let's Simonize our watches".
Or as my late Dad used to say, " Let's circumsize our watches".
Hi Juan. I just posted a video on this incident including all related ATC Audio and ATIS if you want to take a peek and use it for a second version of your analysis.
Hey Juan, at 5:25 you mention something that a lot of pilots don’t fully understand and that is the difference between CTAF and UNICOM.
Unfortunately a lot of CFIs don’t teach the subtle difference between CTAF/UNICOM because it doesn’t usually get covered in initial training or they themselves don’t understand it.
CTAF of course is always the freq used to broadcast intentions to other aircraft at a field with no tower or a closed tower.
UNICOM is a single frequency used for (non official) airport advisories or to coordinate ancillary needs with an FBO.
At non towered airfields, UNICOM and CTAF are often the same frequency.
Example: At a non-towered field with no ASOS or AWOS but the small FBO has a line guy with a wind indicator on the computer screen, a pilot can call on the one (UNI) freq that is both CTAF and UNICOM and ask for advisories. The guy at the desk can advise what the winds are showing and perhaps tell the pilot that a NORDO Aeronca Champ is in the pattern for Rwy XX.
The pilot can also request that he will quick turn and needs XX Gallons of fuel from the truck upon his arrival.
Of course, since the information on UNICOM is not coming from an official source, it needs to be treated as such.
Calls for advisory information should be “XX UNICOM, Cessna 123AB requesting advisories” while calls to CTAF would be “XX traffic…..”
However, at a towered field, the UNICOM frequency is usually 122.95 in the states while the CTAF remains the tower frequency.
In this case, CTAF is NOT UNICOM.
In the case of PWM, with two FBOs, NorthEast air got 122.95 (UNICOM) and MAC Air Group selected 130.92. Again, in the states, at towered controlled fields, at least one FBO will get 122.95 as the UNICOM freq.
This has been the best explanation to understand the difference. When they share the same frequency and I want assistance with fuel among the ctaf position reports would I specifically say “UNICOM N1234..” to get the attention of the fbo? It seems like at my airport guys will just randomly ask for gas and get a response, but I never understood how the crew on the ground knows when to jump in to respond. I would just like to know the appropriate protocols for the transmissions when the frequencies are the same.
@@kmc25225
Correct. “Airportname UNICOM, N123AB, 10 miles out, confirm the courtesy car is still available?” For example.
Then, your next transmission could be “Airportname TRAFFIC, C-172 is 9 north, will enter the left downwind for 09, Airportname”
If the pilot thought that he was past :45, then his situational awareness did not include a scan for the clock. He knew about the NOTAM. What time did he get his three minute warning? Maybe there was pressure to get out of Dodge. How much extra time would it have taken for him to taxi to the correct runway? Yikes! He should be nervous about getting reamed by the Chief Pilot.
you ought to read Sidney Dekker.
99% likely, like most pilots working for major airlines, he has a fancy mechanical watch (Rolex or similar). These are unfortunately only accurate to a few minutes a month, so have to be set every few days if accurate time is important. His "check" was almost certainly to look at his watch out of habit, see it hit 45 minutes, and go.
@@josephoberlander The ACARS on the airplane has an internal clock which is accurate and usually drives the clocks on the instrument panel. We always did a time check as part of the preflight flow pattern. No excuse here.
@@josephoberlander if he'd thought it's already 5:45 he would've needed to listen to tower frequency which they obviously didn't. They knew the RWY was to open in a few minutes and saw that ground ops had just cleared it. Off they went, otherwise might have had to deal with tower and lost their IFR slot.
Flew into PWM many times over the years with my NY based airline. Our scheduled departure time was always right at or near 0545, the time when the tower was scheduled to open. If we pushed a few minutes early i liked to take my time so as to be ready no earlier than 0545 to prevent any possible confusion with tower and BOS center over the cleared altitude on departure. If tower was open it was 3,000’ but if clearance was obtained from BOS they would normally clear you to 10,000’. As a crew we always made calls on tower frequency 120.9 which was CTAF when the tower was closed. Once near the departure runway the FO would contact BOS center for our clearance into controlled airspace if the tower was still closed. Once received, we resumed making the “taking the active” call on 120.9, the tower frequency. As an aside, this is a very busy time at PWM as all the airlines are making a mad dash to see who can depart first, and of course, on time.
"this is a very busy time at PWM as all the airlines are making a mad dash to see who can depart first, and of course, on time."
I guess this is the reason why over here in EASA countries (as far as I know) we have to have a tower open for commercial departures and arrival. For example there is an airport nearby that is normaly uncontrolled, but 30 minuts before the commercial departure/arrival it changes over to controlled airspace. Or at least trafic advisory, don't remember from the top of my head.
A scandal in Poland recently when the President's plane took off from a regional airport after the tower had closed.
Let's compare the number of airports in the US to those in easa countries....
Jolly lucky those working on the runway had their wits about them. They were probably the difference between a near miss and a serious incident in this case.
I was thinking that too, they seemed to have good SA.
On the other hand, the runway technically opened in a minute or two, so they were likely well aware of that and the taxiing aircraft around them.
Then again, regardless of size, if they saw the SWA jet, they should have been seen as well (ops trucks usually have strobes and such also.)
Good show all round, eh there chaps?
The crews had already left, ground ops had done their final runway check and drove away. As it was already daylight and good weather, the pilots obviously saw that and started their takeoff roll. Dangerous? If the ground ops vehicle had returned, yes. That's probably the reason why ground ops complained.
@@skayt35 I agree - in the general flow of things, this was a normal morning minus maybe 1-2minutes discrepancy between the runway open time, ops, and their IFR clearance cancellation time.
I really do think this was just crap luck. People don’t realize how fine-tunes commercial aviation ops are; everything is down to the second.
I used to work airport ops over night at a particularly busy single runway airport in the Phoenix area and I can’t tell you the amount of times pilots that would call on frequency to land or taxi out when we had NOTAM’d the runway shut, and had it NOTAM’d that it would be closed a whole week prior.
When I worked KCPR the tower closed at 2100L. Our scheduled departure during the week was 2104L. We usually beat this so as to have the tower still open on departure. When this didn't happen the crews did their call to Denver Center for the clearance you described Juan. They also HAD to announce their departure on the tower frequency to let the local world know they were departing on the specific runway.
There should be some padding on time. So if open from NOTAM at 05:45 local, then the RW should be clear at 05:30 local.
Padding time goes both ways. The pilots should wait till 548
CTAF and UNICOM serve different purposes, but they can sometimes share the same frequency.
Pilots use a CTAF to communicate with each other and coordinate their movements.
UNICOM, on the other hand, is more like a customer service desk at the airport. It’s a radio frequency that pilots use to talk to airport staff, usually at small airports. By using UNICOM, pilots can ask for information about the weather, request fuel or services, and get updates on airport conditions.
Making the common frequency when the tower is closed a CTAF, no?
@@thomasmennella5501 correct.
@@thomasmennella5501 Tower freq becomes CTAF when tower is closed. There's a separate unicom at PWM.
@@ryanthomas2472 Exactly, Juan using unicom/ctaf interchangeably can be confusing. PWM unicom-122.95, PWM ctaf-120.9
@@blancolirio Not necessarily. Tower controlled airports have separate unicom and CTAF. They are not interchangeable when closed.
Juan, you are spot on with your Notam comments. Even with Foreflight (a truly remarkable piece of software), important Notams and pages of garbage can all be intermingled. There is no way to easily separate them. Departure and arrivals are easy but enroute Notams can be pages long. A non functioning ILS gets the same weight in the long list as a broken airport beacon. To a pilot flying in IFR, these don't carry the same weight and Notams need to reflect this. Keep up the great work on your channel.
I worked the ramp/customer service at PWM between 2007-14 for DAL. It was extremely rare for an airliner to use the crosswind rwy (18/36) unless there was a considerable East or West wind. There is usually a flight or 2 (United typically) that depart before 6 and the rest are at 6 or after. Knowing that the shorter runway likely won’t work for a heavy 737, you’d think they’d adjust the time to 5:45 rather than 6 to avoid any unnecessary risk. I’m not saying the SW crew wasn’t at fault here but the airport is essentially saying that these scheduled departures need to wait 15m each day.
Yup, you called. Retired now but had many Portland flights. I took off on 36 only once and tower said “thanks for the airshow “.
I always heard the saying, "Checking TFRs will save your license, but checking NOTAMS will save your life." And with untowered operations, don't rely on the radio for traffic because there's no radio required. Self announce and see and avoid.
Just a quick reminder when the tower is closed the frequency reverts back to a CTAF or “common traffic advisory frequency “ which is technically not the same as the Unicom frequency. Although at some small airports they are the same frequency, a CTAF is for air traffic advise other aircraft in the area of their position and intentions whereas a Unicom is is for an aircraft to request services from an FBO.
I had no idea that commercial airlines flew out of major airports when there was nobody in the tower. I would have thought the hours a tower is open correlated with the flight schedule of that airport.
Yeah, I was surprised to learn about this, as well.
Smaller regional airports like PWM aren’t open 24/7. TSA and ground workers and airport OPS are there when passengers are. But the tower isn’t part of the airport it’s TSA and has different times. Also sometimes you get so delayed you land after a tower closes it happens all the time.
Also something I did not know. Doesn't seem right. Or safe.
Unfortunately the entire ATC system needs far more funding. Towers have a hard time finding people to do the work as the pay is typically government wages and not that high/competitive. A lot of this is tight budgets combined with decade-old pay tables which hinder the hiring process.
Part 121 carriers fly in/out of many airports with no tower whatsoever. Think of Alaska, both the state and the airline. Wenatchee Washington, no tower, where I fly often, has sometimes twice daily Alaska/Horizon E175 service and mixes well with GA and gliders and helicopters. They make their calls as much as 10 minutes out (talking to us and center) and we get the heck out of their way for a straight in. Communication is key.
Southwest should have been transmitting and listening on the CTAF. No airliner should ever operate at an uncontrolled field without doing that.
Southwest landed on a closed runway (26L) at ELP a couple of years ago...they had a near miss with construction equipment on the runway 😮
KELP is a challenge especially if you have wind, dust, sun angles, as runways can be confused due to the really close proximity of other runways to include KBIF and MMCS.
@@jimallen8186 it's pretty hard to confuse 26L with 22... there's 40 degrees of heading separation and 22 has a localizer (as part of its ILS). I'm from there and I've flown all sorts of GA planes into and out of ELP 😉
Seems like monitoring unicom at a non towered airport would be pretty basic. After all, it’s one of the best ways to maintain situational awareness. There could be an airplane on final that you can’t see.
If he thought the runway was open at 545, and it was past 545, he should have called tower first asking for clearance since they opened at 545 too…. They skipped right past them and departed. Between this and zero announcements on CTAF/Unicom, they got some explaining to do. And the airport ops probably removed the closure signs/markings just before this time In anticipation of opening the runway on time.
It’s just how easy it is to become complacent once you start flying from a living. These are basic procedures on the GA side
Interesting to me that Bangor International has a 24 hour tower, and continuous service.
Bangor is a smaller metro area, but its airport offers more comprehensive services and a longer runway.
Yes, I think Bangor is a key diversion airport for international flights coming from Europe, so they have full-time support.
AND Bangor Radio oversees Portland's 120.9 from 0001 to 0545.
I think Bangor is an ex air force base that stands ready for trans atlantic planes in trouble.
@@ericfielding2540 Correct
@@BoomVang Correct
The comment from Center that the clearance is void if departure is not made within 3 minutes has to be a factor here.. time pressure is responsible for many accidents and incidents, in the worst accident on record, Tenerife, time pressure was also a major factor. Your comments re NOTAMS were spot on.. when trying to get the operation underway and the clock is ticking, being faced with a toilet role of reports, 99% being of no interest at all ... we really don't care that a portion of a taxi-way is closed at an airport we've never heard of 600 miles away in the wrong direction... Hugely frustrating.. needs to be overhauled.
I found your channel with the Oroville dam fiasco and I've been hooked ever since. You break it down so well and no bias, just facts. Thank you for another great video.
Same here.
Towers not operating 24 hours a day is a problem. I was flying for a coal Co. operating out of Huntington West Virginia (HTS) flying a Duke (BE 60). The tower did not open until 08:00 each day. Until it opened, Huntington Radio, local weather station, handled the IFR traffic. I got my IFR clearance and started my taxi just before 8AM. The taxiway leading to the runway (12) wasn’t open to the end of the runway. This required me to back taxi on the runway for about 1200 feet. I announced my position and said I was back taxing to the holding area at runway 12. It seemed that the weather station had forgotten that a Baron was on the ILS approach somewhere out there in the fog. The tower came on and stated they were open for business; it was not 8AM yet. The Baron and I were on that frequency and I stated I was back taxing to the holding area. The pilot of the Baron, I knew him very well, stated he was on a short final less than a mile out. I told him I would move to the right of the runway and he stated he would us the right side of the runway. The Baron stayed a little high and passed about 20 feet above me on the right side of the runway and landed. The tower operator stated it was not 8AM yet and he was not there and saw nothing but was glad we worked things out. I taxied to the end of the runway, turned around and took off; the Baron was on the taxiway by then. When flying airplanes you have to pay attention because, sometimes, there is no one watching out for you.
That's a great story!
The last sentence very deep.😢
I’ve looked over random NOTAMS and they are either very important first level stuff like a closed runway all the way down to 3rd level stuff like “birds in vicinity”…that is always a NOTAM.
I understand the printout model but we need to discern levels of immediacy to operations now.
Thank you Juan for clarifying so much‼️ Certainly ALL of the facts hopefully mitigates, even a little bit, the repercussions for those pilots🙏
Thank you sir, for addressing the human factors hazard that 1. NOTAMS already are and 2. what a human factors hazard NOTAMs are in your airline release paperwork/ electronic paperwork. -Signed captain at a legacy airline.
Could put ‘human factors’ in quotes as Sidney Dekker did. Highlight that these are not reason to blame humans. Rather they are susceptibilities that all humans will fall victim to.
That sounded like the SkyWest trying to get him too. He was not monitoring the local Unicom. Could have been a disaster.
Republic. Brickyard
Couple of observations: I use to work at PWM and ZBW (Boston Center) as a controller. As reported, the airport is uncontrolled at the time of the incident. Therefore SWA should be on unicom (120.9) when taxiing and taking off. Before moving about the airport SWA is on 128.2 (ZBW) to get his clearance to BWI. ZBW simply clears SWA via a route to BWI but cannot control the route the act takes nor the runway the act departs from. HOWEVER: (1) ZBW should have heard SWA say they intended to depart rwy 29. The controller at ZBW should have reminded the pilot that rwy was closed. (2) ZBW should never offer a clearance void time of only 3 minutes solely because the airport is due to be open in 3 minutes (5:45 am). The clearance void was NOT due to other traffic as report here. It was simply to get SWA airborne before the controllers at PWM opened and took over the airspace at 5:45. When is is mere minutes to opening, ZBW should tell SWA to hold for release, tower will be open in 3 minutes.SWA screwed up certainly but ZBW could have "broken the chain" and at the end of the day, all participants must work together to keep the system safe.
Tower opened at 5:45. If it was after 5:45, they should have been talking to tower. If it was before 5:45, they were on the wrong runway. Either way, big time screwup.
Not really, no. NOTAMS often have expiration times well after when needed. The lack of signage readily leads one to think the NOTAM’s cause had already cleared.
Worst airport is KHDN Yampa Valley in Hayden, CO. No Tower. In a valley. lots of GA and airline ops.
Juan the void time was so short because the tower was opening in a few minutes and take-off ckearance would have up to the tower
CTAF Is a more.correct term for advisory when tower is closed. COMMON traffic advisory frequency. Unicom may ba a frequency that a local FBO has assigned to it.
If NOTAMS are buried in the "fine print" by the airline's flight data dissemination system (or whatever it's called), then that's on the airline not the FAA. And the airport can be faulted for not having the runway properly marked as closed (with temporary "Xs") if the "X's" were not in place during the designated time.
Well, seems like you have an issue. Either the markings are fully off by the required time, or they are taken off AT the required time. Either way, you’re either delaying the opening by a couple minutes or leaving it unmarked for a couple minutes-it takes time to clear them and then get clear. I don’t think this is a realistic complaint
@@bruhdabonesnit pick why not ! Nothing else to do -
@@bobwilson758 hardly a nitpick. You’re saying “the airport can be faulted” for improper markings, yet the markings were completely sufficient. Your complaint requires magic to make sense 😂
@@bruhdabonesIf the markings were already removed, they certainly weren’t sufficient when they needed to be.
" If NOTAMS are buried in the "fine print" by the airline's flight data dissemination system (or whatever it's called), then that's on the airline not the FAA"
I have no personal expertise, but my impression from this channel's videos, and the mention that the NTSB has noted the inadequacies of the system, that the Notam issue goes beyond how airlines disseminate the info.
My favorite channel that I always look at first. While I can restore cars, warbirds, an aircraft carrier, and take care of patients, I have never had a desire to be a pilot. I guess I prefer to make things right. However, even if I will never fly a plane (well maybe a TBM) I very much appreciate the knowledge I absorb from Juan. All knowledge, any knowledge, is good in my book.
Two (presumed) ATP's up front and neither one thought it would be a good idea to say anything on CTAF? Brickyard's up. Maintenance guys are up. SWA? Nope. I'm pissed. Their explanation of no markings on the closed runway and the time of re-opening is all tangential to the fact that if they weren't talking to tower they should have been talking on CTAF. Everyone makes mistakes, but not saying anything on advisory sounds like a systemic problem.
Given some advice from a major airline captain when I rode his Jumpseat on an ‘oh-dark-thirty’ departure: “Everytime I’m unsure of anything, I hold short & double check, because every time I take a short delay, I make money.”
I wonder if they just had the wrong frequency for the tower/ctaf keyed in? They could have been making calls and not realized they were on the wrong frequency.
easy to do...
I definitely did this once as a PPL. Embarrassing for myself.
The thing is surely that if the pilots thought it was before 9:45 then they surely knew 29 was closed, and yet if they thought it was after 9:45 they should have been talking to the onsite tower. Even if they'd also need Centre comms/approval to fly out.
My inference is there were no markings/barriers at the departure end of the runway as the vehicle on the runway was both collecting the "hurdles" and presumably checking the runway was clean to reopen. They had good attention to see the aircraft lining up.
I would hope the SWA crew would be called on the carpet (the one in the chief pilot’s office) for the equivalent of taking of without clearance because they were not up on the CTAF. That’s the more egregious error to me.
What if they were on a wrong freq and thought they were on CTAF? Would you really call it an egregious error for this? Are there no other possible causes here? Read Sidney Dekker. Read Todd Conklin. Read Bob Edwards. & remember trees don’t merely have one root. Or, you can try Medium with F-35C crash into the South China Sea.
My airline does a pretty good job of categorizing notams. Pretty lazy for them not to make any CTAF/unicom calls.
Agreed.
@johndanger79 Lazy may not have been the problem, but lack of knowledge certainly could have been. I could see a scenario where neither pilot has been in this situation.
You’re presuming they didn’t without knowing if they were on a wrong freq.
As an airline pilot I use aero weather app with notams. It organizes and marks them red if current.
At an untowered or currently unoccupied tower maybe a runway closure should have a 5 minute buffer between workers on the runway and planes starting to use it? Or, perhaps the ATC facility should staff a little earlier when they know commercial traffic is going to be using an airport with a closed and not properly marked runway. Not properly marked might be unfair, knowing that all the entrances to the runway will have signage indicating the closure.
This lack of overlap is going to case a major incident someday. One would think that they would be there 30 minutes early, getting their coffee, making sure everything is good, monitoring al the things just to be sure.. My guess is that they WERE there but simply didn't go on the clock, typical of government jobs, until the start of their official shift.
Nice analysis of the situation. I wish you would emphasize the use of CTAF frequencies. While in some places a Unicom freq is assigned as the CTAF, using the term “Unicom frequency” makes it sound like an option. Calling it by its proper name conveys its real (and as we saw in this case) critical function.
"What's your clearance, Clarence?"
"What's your vector, Victor?"
Southwest 4805 stop! We cant stop we have to slow down first
“That’s Clarence Oveur. Over.”
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.
I'm on Otto Pilot.
Roger, Roger.
Blanco, you ought to get a job as the aviation expert for the networks. You know ten times as much as their experts. Great job as always.
As a non pilot, I, of course, do not really understand any of the details of this incident, but as always with Juan, that makes no difference. No matter the intricacies of any incident, watching Blancolirio is without exception fascinating and great fun. Cannot thank you enough, Captain Juan.
PHX and DFW frequently dozens of NOTAMS. Some of them were years old. It was a challenge to read through them over and over and catch a new one.
Why didn't the OPs people put out a big sign saying "runway closed" until they were totally done. Seems like common sense to me.
Much too simple and easy ! 😅
Yes, removing marking before the opening time is a problem.
This is a very good question!
They only 'have' to list it as closed in the NOTAM. The American Airlines pilots taking off after SWA had no trouble recognizing this. SWA wasn't talking to anyone at PWN though, or someone would have told them.
Imagine if you normally needed to call someone to leave your driveway but they arnt awake yet. The protocol is to call blind in case anyone else is leaving their driveway at the same time. So you don't run into each other in the street.
Instead SWA called Boston Center Which is physically in a different state.
A good way to trap these possible obscure NOTAM is to check your Jepp FD pro, for example on a 10-9 page, click NOTAM and it will display relevant infos in regard to the selected runway. Of course, it’s just one way to do it but it has worked well for me on the line, while also backing this up with the electronic release obviously. The key is to apply yourself whether it’s a morning or late night departure/ arrival every single time. Complacency is the enemy! Fly safe!
Wow, remember a Singapore Airliner took off from a closed runway 😢
There were no markings showing the aircrew the runway was closed in that case, either. There was heavy machinery parked on the runway and a section of runway hardtop had been dug up and removed.
Both Taipei airport and Singapore airlines were sanctioned in that accident, the airport for:
- absent markings; and
- lack of warning lights on or close to the machinery
- No ground monitoring radar
The airline for:
- Failing to bring the status of the runway to the attention of the crew; and
- The aircrew forgetting to *_positively_* identify and vocalise the runway they were lining up on (should have been 05L, but they lined up on 05R instead - eg. no “05L on the grass and on the glass” call)
In this case, the aircraft was a 747 and the accident occurred:
- late at night
- with the tower open
- in poor weather with limited visibility
Or tried to...
At my airline NOTAMs are published in an organized manner. Runway closures, for instance, would be isolated and published under the "AERODROME/RWY/FICON NOTAMS" header.
Gosh, so actually the truck had moved and cleared the runway. The SW pilot basically was lucky or he might have hit the truck. (I doubt, everyone would have one eye on the rearview) and he would've bolted. Glad no one was hurt.
These soft closures are quite typical at airports that have more than one runway due to noise abatement (or other reasons.) SNA John Wayne Orange County does the same thing with its small runway when the tower is closed. The closure is usually not due to actual construction or else they would have full closure mitigation, such as lighted Xs, barriers, etc.
However, performing a runway inspection 2 minutes (on their watch) before resuming operations might not be a great idea.
The clearance void time should end before the tower opening time, which at that time, the release would have been issued by Center directly to the tower (local controller.)
Unicom is the frequency for non-towered airports. Common Traffic Advisory Frequency (CTAF) is the common term for the Frequency used when the tower is closed.
Not really. Non towered airports have a CTAF, maybe both..sometimes they are separate. If so, the ctaf is for traffic, the unicom for other things, maybe requesting fuel, talking to an fbo about things unrelated to flight safety, etc. You don't want to clog up a CTAF with bs about how much fuel in what tank, PRIST or not, is my rich passengers limo allowed on the ramp, etc. If you do that crap on the CTAF, all the student pilots in the pattern may get lost or meet by accident.
As Juan points out, GA pilots as a class are generally familiar and comfortable with uncontrolled airports & the protocols attached to them, but you would think that even an air-carrier only pilot would have absorbed the lesson that there is always a frequency you should at least be monitoring when actively conducting an operation there. Even the proverbial dirt strip in the middle of nowhere has one.
The aircraft with the Brickyard callsign could have saved SWA the likely deviation by transmitting on Guard frequency that RWY 29 was closed and a vehicle was on the runway. Poor flight deck procedures by SWA for not using the CTAF to coordinate their movements around the airfield, which would have alerted them to the vehicle on the runway.
He could have said something on the Center frequency as well. He knew they were going to be on that freq when they went looking for their departure clearance.
Who monitors guard frequency on taxi? Where is that in the AIM or your company's FOM???
@@leftseat30 An FDC NOTAM requires all aircraft operating in U.S. airspace to tune in the guard frequency, if able, which SWA 737's are capable of doing on a second radio. Prior to takeoff, they should have been monitoring guard on one radio and communicating their position/intentions on the CTAF on the other radio. This crew did neither.
@BooBooTiger53 I'm a captain a legacy airline ....many line checks and Sims in left and right seat here left and right seat the regional I was at. I have NEVER read this in our FOM nor been debriefed by a Sim instructor nor check airman. Who do you fly for? What type ratings?
I'm sending your statement to our Compliance and Quality Assurance/ Flight Stans people. I have never heard of this
@@leftseat30 All of my flying has been with the USAF. Our military jets have the advantage of having guard receivers built into our radios so we can listen to guard all of the time. Most of my flight time was in F-15Cs and T-38s until I retired. I'm now a sim instructor and also teach the Instrument Refresher Course to our USAF pilots/aircrew. I have several ATP contacts (current and/or retired) and am checking with them on current procedures for the different operators. At least one said they were supposed to tune in guard before takeoff, but some newer Gen-Z pilots garbage up the guard frequency with cat meow calls, so they have to turn the volume down so they can't really hear much on guard.
Roger Murdock : We have clearance, Clarence.
Captain Oveur : Roger, Roger. What's our vector, Victor?
Sums it all up surely?
Don't call me Shirley.
How is it allowable to operate scheduled services from an airport which is known to have the tower closed? There must be TSA, passengers, check in staff, ground handlers etc, at the airport. Open the tower earlier or schedule the departure after the tower is open. From my scant understanding of European air traffic rules, this seems a crazy state of affairs.
My thoughts as well.
There are scheduled services from airports with no control tower. Has been that way for ages. There does have to be emergency services of some kind on the field, though. An operating control tower is not required. Never has been.
There are commercial flights to completely uncontrolled airports, e.g. KPGV
@@crewsd Very interesting! Guess I’ve never lived somewhere where that was the case or the only option. Thanks for the info.
SkyWest has been doing ops out of uncontrolled airports since forever.
This is also why you get a positive acknowledgement on CTAF to make sure you are transmitting and receiving properly.
Thank you Juan.
Excellent video. I also work for an airline and when leaving from or arriving to an airport with a closed tower, there’s always that concern in the back of my mind that there might have been a NOTAM or procedure that I didn’t read or read correctly. Good crew communication is a necessity in these situations. Well done.
SWA's never wait.
They don't get paid while on the ground, so yeah, he just wanted to punch the clock
Recently at Albuquerque, they zoom around big time, pedal to the metal on taxiways. Not exactly a busy airport, but often they zoom anyway.
@@johnnyneverletmedown53 SWA = Jerks in the sky and worse jerks on the ground.
I know when I did my IFR cross county out of JHW my instructor and I just got a clearance from the Buffalo approach RCO there. Never bothered to announce on the CTAF, as we really should of. Although on a Sunday at JHW it is not very busy this situation illustrates how if you have 2 radios, take advantage of them.
How hard would it be to just put a lighted X on the runway until it is actually open?
Right, not like they don’t have them mounted on trailers
But,But,But I put it on my instagram, everyone saw it I have like 25 followers. Probably a boomer pilot that doesn't constantly check my feeds instead of actually doing safety procedures.
Excellent report Juan. Maybe for these kind of ops a note on the release would have prevented this. These guys are still gonna have lots of "Splaining" to do. As a retired military aviator, retired airline pilot, and a current contract and G/A pilot I have managed to dodge this particular kind of bullet but there are a lot of gotcha 's out there.
I might give SW a pass on thinking the runway was open, but NO MERCY on not being on the CTAF frequency. This could have ended in a horrific runway intersection collision on simultaneous takeoffs.
Really? You know how easy it is to have a wrong frequency? Then, being early on a CTAF hence not hearing anyone else or any feedback is actually expected. Oh, and some radios may appear to take a frequency but not actually take it, may bounce back to a different freq on initial attempt to transmit, or may get skewed while trying to dial a completely different data field. Think about how easy it is to get typos these days as “Siri” ‘corrects’ your text stream. Note the delay in Siri doing so, however, makes it rather easy for you to miss the error. Or, worse, when Siri ‘fixes’ it after you hit send. I’d suggest you look into Sidney Dekker.
@@jimallen8186Your argument is that they made the call, received no response, and thought that was okay. Southwest said they thought it (the runway) opened at 45, which means they thought that it was after that time. That's the same time the tower opens, which means they were required to receive a clearance from the tower to take off. No clearance, no taking off, no excuses.
Once again, a great perspective from an experienced airliner, explaining how this can happen. However, not even listening and announcing on CTAF is not good.
Some Swiss cheese holes lined up that morning it seems.
Specifically when you don’t announce on CTAF
Useful & informative as ever on this channel. Many like me would be surprised that a fare carrying aircraft can use an airport (not airfield) with no local ATC! I note the scheduled departure was 05:40 local time but neither party (airport nor airline) saw the obvious conflict. From info provided I presume the vehicle was sweeping to ensure no tools, material or debris remained on the runway at the completion of scheduled work. However is it not rather naive to ASSUME the runway would be clear according to the time of day rather than have substantial confirmation? Surely a better practise would be to station a conspicuous vehicle at the runway theshold until the sweeping vehicle confirmed the all clear?
Juan, not giving cover to anyone, but one of the problems we have at LUV is the large number of ex-military who have no GA experience AND they get no civilian radio training other than the sim. Many of these folks have never filed a flight plan, let alone operated out of non-towered airports. Not an excuse, just an explanation.
Military pilots use NOTAMs too.
Military pilots file flight plans all the time. They also frequently forget to close them...but they get a ton of radio experience. They operate out of GA terminals all the time.
Don't blame this on military guys. There are a myriad of other operations that mil pilots do that have radio ops very similar to non-towered airports. If one of them told they'd never filed a flight plan, they are lying.
I had to file a flight plan for every single flight I flew in the military. Also had to due all the routing and fuel calculations.
It’s true that if you’re looking at NOTAMS on your paperwork that the important ones are buried. If you look at them on FD Pro (which is what many if not most airlines use) then NOTAMS are displayed based on importance depending on which page you are using. For example, if you’re on the AMM page for taxi it will show taxiway and runway info first. On the APP page it’ll show info for the approach first.
@OfficialBlancolirioxz This seems fishy.
He didn't know what time he took off? If he knew the runway opened at :45 he should've known that the tower opened at :45 and should've been talking to him. Scheduled departure time was :40. You know SWA watches that clock like a hawk. I wonder if their dispatchers planned for a 29 departure? Maybe their Caffiene Low Level Lights were on?
I work in airport operations and frequently do these early morning runway openings, before tower opens. We thankfully have the ability to communicate directly with approach controllers on frequency and always monitor it when on the airfield when tower is closed. We also know airlines will depart up to 15 minutes early so we always use a 30 minute prior to first departure as an opening time, just in case. The tricky part is you have to remove the closure X markings, and turn on the lights to inspect the runway before opening, so this can easily give the appearance that the runway is open.
Why do you “need to remove” closure markings before the closure is over? Isn’t this a big red flag? Is there some reason a runway can’t be inspected with a closure marker on it?
You can do a portion of the inspection with the closure X’s still in place, but you cannot turn the runway lights on while they are still deployed. We obviously remove the X’s one at a time, and still have one operational on the runway for a short time while we are on our way to retrieve it. These lighted X markings can take 5-10 minutes each to setup and tear down. When their generator is running it’s difficult to hear aircraft and radio traffic. Once we pack them up and pull them from the runway we turn the lights on and have to do 1 final inspection to ensure the lights, PAPI’s and lighted signs are operational. It appears to me this is the stage of inspection they were in at Portland when the aircraft took off. Cheers!
Squirrels never sleep.
They conspire like evil little gremlins.
what !! ive had pet squirrels who love to sleep.
@@jerryeinstandig7996 - They're not sleeping, bub.
They're not sleeping.
@@clintstinkeye5607 your creepin me out, sonny
I can't speak on the behalf of other airlines using the flight planning software Flight Keys, but where I work dispatching for JetBlue. The notems are categorized exceptionally well. When you look at the nodums you have everything split into runways, taxiways, communication etc. So it's really easy to spot the information that you need.
Excuse any spelling mistakes since I'm using voice to text
It is the pilots job to discern the NOTAMs. If they can't do this simple job they should never be in command of a transport category aircraft.
“I thought it opened at 45” sure tells me they read and were aware. Problems lie elsewhere.