Background... I am a retired ATC and worked LAX TRACON (the radar facility in question) for 24 years. The controller's mistake was a left turn when a right turn is the correct direction (to eventually head out over the ocean). She keeps trying to correct her mistake by turning EVA back (right) to the south (hdg 180). For some reason EVA keeps heading northerly. The controller error would be entering the MVA (minimum vector altitude) below the required altitude. She also didn't allow for his speed (he asked for and was approved for a high speed climb); airplanes don't turn so well going fast (probably in excess of 270 kts). She tried to climb him but Airbus' (his was an A330) don't climb well even under the best of conditions. Does she need some training? ABSOLUTELY! One thing I tried to beat into my trainee's heads is they MUST know aircraft performance! How can one know what they can do if they don't know what the airplane can do? And... It's not the mistake; everyone makes them. It's how the mistake is corrected without making the situation worse or causing another conflict.
Good analysis, Michael, from someone in the know. I have visited SoCal Approach in San Diego. Massive facility manned with exceptional people. I would add a couple observations. One is that LAX was in East traffic for departures. This is unusual for departures. Due to noise abatement, after midnight, LAX normally runs departures westbound off the 24's and 25's and arrivals to the 6's and 7's, obviously alternating batches of arrivals and departures. (I assume they still do this.) This earned LAX its infamous "black star" rating from airline pilots years ago. This airplane took off at 01:19 PST and normally this would have been a west departure but they took off eastbound, so I am guessing they had winds that dictated that direction. The other note is that the LA basin just got a whole big batch of new SID's and STAR's that have been in the process of being deployed over the last couple months and are still being deployed. There is a massive airspace and procedures change going on here. Google "NextGen - Metroplex." One or both of these factors may have influenced this event. The controller may have been dealing with a double-whammy of new procedures and the unusual departure direction. I will say that using "southbound" was less than ideal. "Fly heading 180" would have been better. But clearly the crew was confused before that point.
Gordon Feingold..... LAX was indeed east traffic due to wind. Normal operations between 0000 & 0630 is what is called "over-ocean"; depart 25L and land on 06R. There are rules that allow that type of operation, even IFR. The Gabre (ASA's SID) & the VTU ( EVA'S SID) are decades old SID'S. The only real confusion is east traffic. We would get a refresher class in east traffic every September as we rarely went east. I went 2 years without working actual east traffic. As with all deals there were quite a few factors.
"turn south NOW" is not working, so let's keep doing that instead of a specific instruction to turn to 180. I can't be the only one thinking there was a language issue. Pilot understood 180.
oktal3700 true, and good point, but clearly pilot had problems with English. best protocol finally prevailed using numbers. I don't completely blame the ATC. it certainly is NOT a job for the timid!
I hope the CVR gets pulled for this... I'd like to hear what the flight deck sounded like... if they were getting close to terrain and traffic, her instructions could have gotten lost amid the din of TCAS squawking and GPWS yelling at them.
It actually is that simple! You can dial in a new heading with the autopilot system and the plane will literally turn itself. He was given repeated instructions to turn SOUTHBOUND. At one point the ATC said: "WHAT ARE YOU DOING? I SEE YOU'RE STILL GOING NORTHBOUND. I TOLD YOU TO TURN SOUTHBOUND." That pilot should be fired. Pilots are supposed to know where "terrain features" are in their area. That means he should have known where the mountains were BEFORE he took off and he should have known their HEIGHT. He should have known that something was wrong IMMEDIATELY because he KNEW he was flying toward the mountains. It's kind of hard to miss a mountain (day or night). When you look out your cockpit window and you don't see any f'n stars in the "sky" right in front of you, maybe that's a PROBLEM! The planes are so "intelligent" these days that they warn pilots of mountains. He would have been listening to endless messages like: "TERRAIN AHEAD" "PULL UP" "PULL UP" Yet he continued along blissfully unaware.
Consider this: If ATC hadn't TOLD HIM to climb at the last minute, the pilot would have flown the plane into the mountain. ATC was like: "F__k it! He's not listening to my instructions to turn SOUTH, so let's just climb him so he goes OVER the mountains." Her last minute instructions to climb saved everyone on that plane. It wasn't the pilot. That dumbf__k would have kept going at 5000 feet directly into the mountain.
Youre right... but the idiot pilot probably still wouldnt have done it till he was ready. She was telling him to expedite southbound turn several times before he finally did it.
@@cameron300462 listen again. He asked for a high speed climb which she approved. Once in this high speed climb he is unable to change course until leveled out which he couldn't do because of the terrain. She then gave him the instruction to maintain 7000' keeping him in danger of the mountains.
At 3:05 he even emphasizes he wants to hear the heading, the only correct reaction would have been "E.V.A. zero one five heavy, turn right heading one eight zero", perhaps followed by either "expedite", "immediately", or "now". She loses her phraseology because she panics and desperately wants to communicate the turn. The emergency had a really conterproductive effect; using the agreed-upon code for exchanging information is key with pilots that are not native english speakers.
Here are ATC's heading assignments given to EVA015 in order; 090, ?, right 180, left 270, southbound, southbound, South, South, confirm right turn heading 180. The lady needs a vacation.
Between being told to turn left and right, EVA015 pretty much stayed on a northbound slightly S-shaped track, until the ATC felt so overwhelmed by the growing danger that the only instruction she could come up with was to tell the crew to fly southbound. The dilemma that the pilots were facing at that moment was which way it was safe to start turning - left or right. They don't ask, she doesn't tell them. Edit: Although as I read the report now, I see 1 minute went by between ATC correcting herself by instructing EVA015 to turn right heading 180 and giving another turn instruction (turn left heading 270). Wouldn't the plane have been able to make some visible progress in its right turn towards 180 heading in one-minute time? Their seeming unresponsiveness to her instruction has added fuel to fire and made her panic beyond recovery. After that point, she got totally confused and was firing instructions. IMHO, the language should be changed. Expedite and halt should be used only for climb/descent - so as to just say expedite 7000' or expedite climb/descent or halt climb/descent. Accelerate/decelerate and maintain should be used for speed - accelerate 250, decelerate 180, maintain speed. Faster/slower and stop should be reserved for turns - make faster turn, make slower turn, stop turn. Once you permanently associate each instructional word with a specific positional parameter in 3D airspace, you won't say things like "expedite climb, correction expedite turn, stop climb" Even though some of these don't sound all too natural in English, let's face it - English doesn't come all too natural to most ATC around the globe as it's not their first language anyway, so they learn by heart whatever the instructions they are presented with. I say the verbiage should be reworked in the interest of safety and unambiguous and unequivocal clarity.
A fascinating incident and thankfully a safe outcome. Listening to only the ATC audio, it would be easy to get a very one-sided view of the incident. I'm a Training Captain on the 777 and for incidents like this, I try to put myself in the cockpit to better understand what might be happening. Some acute humans factors at play from both the controller and in the cockpit. A brief summary as I see it: following the controller's initial erroneous left turn after airborne, the pilots may well have been looking at the terrain on their displays, discussing it and experiencing a level of confusion/distraction and undoubted task complication. Remember they are an "English as Second Language" (ESL) crew. The controller's further left turn with the reversal to the right complicates things further at which point the EGPSW terrain Cautions start followed by the "PULL UP" Warning. There is a lot happening in the cockpit at this time and a missed radio call is not surprisingly. On the NTSB final report (link at the end of the comment) in figure 4, you can make a good guess where they started the manually flown EGPWS escape maneuvere i.e. at 0924:55. They gain approx 900FT in 16 secs, a Rate of Climb (ROC) of around 3500 FT/MIN. Being heavy, this would have used most of the spare speed energy before having to nose over to possibly stop from stalling, or probably when the Warning stops. This then significantly reduces in the ROC. It is easy to "Monday Morning Quarterback" this incident, but the nuances make it far more complicated than it first appears. app.ntsb.gov/pdfgenerator/ReportGeneratorFile.ashx?EventID=20170104X45517&AKey=1&RType=HTML&IType=IA
A controller who cannot be bothered to use specific phraseology such as "turn right heading 180" instead of a hectic "southbound, southbound now" has no place in the business. As far as I saw, the pilot not flying was confused because he had a heading of approx 010 and did not know if she needs him to do a right turn to go south, or left turn to go south, and she never clarified -- he actually asks a few times if right or left, because when you're heading almost north, there's two ways to go south. She could have resolved this very easily had she realized that the pilots are non-native English speakers and need simpler instructions, for example "turn right heading 090 expedite" followed by "turn right heading 180 expedite". Instead she went fancy lingo on them with "southbound" and panicking while asking them "what are you doing?" which probably made them panic even more. She really panicked and cracked under her own pressure. Nothing personal against her, but glad to hear she's no longer doing that job, as with people like that, it's only a matter of time.
The ATC kept telling him to turn "southbound" but didn't specify whether it's a left or right turn toward south. Turning left would have put Eva in danger of collision with another plane. So the pilot hesitated to make the unspecified turn until the terrain forced him to. You could hear the strain in his voice at 4:30 as he is likely getting terrain warnings.
Obiously the pilot failed to execute instructions as given by the ATC, given they were poor, but a cockpit view of a few mountain sides straight ahead would finally promptly expedite some knobs to get turned and buttons to be pressed.
100% controller's fault. No left/right turn direction. No course numbers. Incorrect phraseology. She saw the mistake and then she lost her shit. You can hear her voice go up an octave once she realizes her mistake, and then just piles on more bad mistakes until she damn near kills a few hundred people. Here's my play-by-play: 1:15 -The moment EVA read back that left turn she should have been on the mic screaming at them to stop. The read back is 100% clear. That means she either TOLD them to turn left or she ignored an incorrect read back. That was the start of the incident, which could have been completely avoided had the controller done her job correctly. 1:43 - Then she gives CORRECT instructions to EVA to stop climb and make a RIGHT turn to 180 after stuttering momentarily. At this point, EVA was clear of traffic and could have continued climbing to the right all the way to 180 on a heading to leave the airspace. 2:28 - After telling EVA to stop climb, she then tells them to turn LEFT to 270. This is another major fuck up. This would have turned EVA back north into the mountains and directed them toward ACA788 to their left. 2:47 - starts yelling at EVA to turn southbound - does NOT give a turn direction. Last turn direction EVA was instructed to follow was LEFT which would put them arcing over the mountains and on an intercept path with ACA788. 2:58 EVA gives a confused read back, not sure if they should turn left or right. Instead of correcting EVA and telling them to turn right, she ignores the confused read back and tells ACA to maintain 12,000. 3:13 - again tells EVA to turn southbound without giving a turn direction. 3:40-4:00 repeated calls to turn southbound without providing turn direction. Barely gives EVA clearance to climb in time to avoid terrain. 4:14 - EVA asks the controller yet again for clarification on turn direction. The controller ignores this and instead repeats her demand to turn southbound without providing turn direction. 4:30 - EVA finally says fuck it and makes a command decision on turn direction, thankfully choosing the right path on their own. During this fiasco, the pilot of EVA showed outstanding situational awareness of the airspace. All of EVA's confusion was caused 100% by the retarded controller giving them irrational turn directions and poor phraseology, while ignoring EVA's confused read backs. Part of EVA's confusion was due to their situational awareness. Instead of blindly following the instructions from control, which were obviously wrong, the pilots stopped what they were doing and repeatedly asked the controller for clarification, which the controller promptly ignored.
I agree with that statement. The errors are common. The controller narrowly averted disaster by taking corrective action. That doesn't change one thing about what I just said. It sounds like you have a reading comprehension problem.
suedeslounge huh???????? What are you smokin? The Eva guys showed 0 situational awareness starting when they turned left to go south! If I was them I would have asked um lady? You want me to turn NORTH to head south???!
You said it was 100% her fault. And the pilots showed great situational awareness. Theyre both false. Turn left instead of right atc mistakes happen every day. She caught it but the pilots did not comply. Do you get it?
The pilots were in the process of complying when she changed directions. Apparently you're the one who doesn't get it. 777s don't change course on a dime and it takes time to adjust the autopilot.
Grew up hiking/driving all over that mountain hundreds of times. Judging from 5:43, EVA Air B777 went directly into Eaton Canyon toward the giant KZLA-FM tower easily visible from most of LA. The base (terrain) is 5600', so any staff (and passengers) looking out the window would have certainly needed a change of underwear. Then they flew right over Mount Wilson, JUST missing terrain (and even closer to all the radio tower antennae)
Mike P. There was an eyewitness at the towers who heard the plane climbing up the canyon and saw the lights as they turned towards him. He says he saw faces in the windows of the plane.
Going south bound requires turning left or right. Turning left would have put it in danger of colliding with another plane. The ATC was being ambiguous.
I was on that flight. I kept thinking there's something wrong - why aren't we climbing? Then there's a sharp turn over the observatory and I thought we're in a heap of trouble. My seat happens to look down over the front of the wings and it's a terrifying sight to see how close we were to the observatory!!! Never told my wife about this incident either. She's already scared of flying.
@THAT Can you please describe what you saw? There was one eyewitness on the ground who was at the towers on top of Mt. Wilson. He states the plane flew over the easternmost tower which puts the plane north of the GPS path that is illustrated on JACDEC. Did you see the observatory or light of the towers from the left or right side of the plane?
VASAviation - the controller messed up a couple HOWEVER, the planes captain should have turned southbound the FIRST time she said to and did 180 as well. Bad job on the pilot though. He should have read the SID correctly and known not to be in the way of mountains
The situation is simple: Controller told them to make a turn at least 4 times, and they kept on flying straight ahead. Pilot not following ATC instructions (however confusing they might be) is STILL pilot error. But the controller is also at fault, as per the standard she should only call out headings, and not general directions... That being said, she DID call out 180 degrees at first, and the pilots red it back. So at the end if there is an accident is is pilot error: "failing to adhere to ATC instructions"...
I'm a pilot. Neither ATC nor Pilot were very efficient in the exchange, but I think the pilot is slightly more responsible. For ATC, she should have pressed more. I think she let the plane go too far before really stepping in. Her instructions were messed up when she started getting flustered. For the pilot, it was clear he was confused. He should have confirmed his instructions with the ATC. Also, on the written tests, there are several uses of the phrases southbound, eastbound and so on. There should be no confusion here. The pilot should have known to immediately turn south. Contrast to what some comments are saying, southbound IS common phrasology. I hear _____bound several times a flight. ATC gave the pilot several directions and he failed to follow them.
Plenty of blame to go around here. ATC didn't correct the pilot when he readback 'left to 180'. Then, pilot didn't start his left turn to 180. ATC got pretty flustered and used incorrect phraseology. Issued conflicting instructions several times on heading and altitude. Got AA2452 call sign wrong, and eventually left a heavy plane go into the mtns at the wrong altitude. What should have been done when she saw EVA 015 headed north. ATC: "EVA015, you are heading north, and were given 1-8-0 as a heading. EVA 015, immediate RIGHT turn to 180, no delay. EVA 015 climb and maintain 7000 for terrain. Break. Air Canada 788, turn left to 330, expedite climb to 12,000 for separation no delay'.
This is a great video. Seeing many comments regarding ATC performance, I see that nobody is talking about the complacency shown in the first 30 seconds of the video. They are not talking about TAWS or TCAS interference, or the priority of a terrain alert vs a traffic alert.
I live right at the foothill near the Rose Bowl in Pasadena and remember hearing the EVA jet fly overhead. It was a cloudy day and I remember thinking it was odd to hear a big airliner throttle up right above our heads because they typically never fly over us. My gf and I were outside doing something and we both looked up and could hear the jet engines roaring. It sounded like it was 100 feet above our heads but we couldn't see anything because of the low clouds. I had no idea what had happened until at least a couple months later whenI read about this incident in the news.
@@ScottOSaurus People do things outside after midnight sometimes. I do, even if it's sitting on my patio smoking a cigarette. Some of us are just night owls.
Also another thing to note for non-pilots, if you're given radar vectors, ATC assumes terrain and traffic avoidance. Clearly, a left turn would take you over the mountains, north of the airport.
+VASAviation, thank you for posting this. FAA spokesman Ian Gregor has stated to numerous news outlets that the ATC controller erred in telling EVA015 to turn left when she actually meant right. The fact that EVA015 requests a high speed climb would indicate he is well aware of the impending terrain conflict and sought to maintain what he believed was a true and correct order to avoid collision with other traffic. That said, it is very difficult to arm-chair quarter back this near mishap. At the end of the day let's all be happy no one is dead or injured. My personal impression is that those two flights - ACA788 and EVA015 should not have been permitted to depart in that manner with such proximity in time and space.
Kelley Ryberg ...Ian Gregor is not an ATC and is nothing more than the FAA's spokes mouth. Even though wrong in this case, for many reasons, there are times when an ATC turns the long way. I've done it many, many times. You're right about the arm-chair. Ever worked air-traffic? We launch aircraft side-by-side ALL THE TIME and it is perfectly safe. ACA came off on a 055° heading and EVA on a 070° heading. The Book (7110.65) says this is the required separation in this situation. She flustered herself with the left turn and couldn't really recover as EVA wasn't doing what she EXPECTED him to do (which was turn right as I'm positive she either thought she said or actually said; the recording is missing). Again, the deal wasn't with ACA it was with the mountains... And high speed climbs are to get the airplane "cleaned-up" so they can (eventually) climb better and cause less stress on parts.
+Michael Hall - Your comment seems to be borne in an attitude of contempt for FAA management. Moreover, you don't appear to have any concern about how confusing instructions given to pilots by ATC can kill hundreds of people in a matter of seconds. If you really are an active FAA controller I feel frightened for any passengers who unknowingly place their safety in your hands.
But the questions still remain: 1) Who put her in that chair (unsupervised, too), and 2) Why did anyone think she was qualified for SoCal ATC (, let alone any ATC)? #IsmellMOREquotas!
That must of been insane to see a plane flying below the peaks. I've haven't been to Mt. Wilson specifically, but I live west of the planes route, and those mountains get steep fast. I can't imagine watching that happen. Must've been really scary for anyone near by.
There was en eye witness at the transmission towers on Mount Wilson who saw the planes landing lights as it ascended up a canyon in the broken clouds and banked up and over him. He said he saw the people looking out of the windows.
2:27 EVA 015 Heavy , turn left heading of 270, EVA 015 turns left as instructed , 2:43 EVA 015 , what are you doing? This air traffic controller was the whole problem, she couldn't stop mistaking left from right and north from south,
No audio of the initial turn direction to 180? If she did say "left to 180" it was likely out of habit due to Lax normally being in West traffic...obviously a mistake, but then she gives multiple changes of direction, altitude, and heading to the crew...Right to 180, left to 290, then 270, then just Southbound. Climb, then told to stop the climb...A crew that is IMC, traveling faster than 250 kts, and speaking a second language. It is absolutely the pic's responsibility to know where he is in proximity to terrain, but ATC's performance was dismal at best and clearly sub-standard
SoCal: Turn left, heading 270 EVA: *acknowledges, starts to turn left* SoCal: What are you DOING?? Turn southbound NOW! Maybe next time you give an instruction and the pilot proceeds to do exactly what you just told him to, give him better instructions instead of asking him what he's doing. If someone is heading northbound and you tell them to turn southbound, but don't tell them which WAY to turn to point southbound...
I have watched many of your videos in the last few years and is always a pleasure. They are very well made and perfectly executed. One big like and a sub from me :)
Not a big fan of "turn southward". Even within the field of meteorology people screw this one up all the time. E.g. a south wind means from the south but a southward wind means from the north. Just say turn left/right to 180.
when I fly I get instructions to turn south or north all the time and it makes perfect sense to me. I'm surprised that a crew of a Triple 7 can't understand that
The issue was he didn't start turning period. When the controller said turn southbound now, Eva didn't pick up the tone of urgency. It's for either a traffic or terrain conflict, so the lesson for myself and all other pilots is start the turn as soon as the controller says (within safety margins) and worry about a precise heading later
I think in that cockpit pilots started to hear "terrain" and in that case they decided to turn "southbound" cause they didn't understand what she said.
The ATC's instruction to turn "southbound didn't specific whether it was a left or right turn toward the south. The pilot hesitated because turning the wrong way would have put the plane at risk of colliding with another plane.
When I was a kid I wanted to be ATC. Seemed like such a cool job. Now I know myself well enough to know that I'd be horrible at it (and this video confirmed it for me). When my brain starts to get overloaded I will say "left" when I mean "right" and vice-versa. So y'all can thank me for choosing a different career. 😆
It a highly congested airspace with Hawthorne Airport, Santa Monica, and Torrance Airport all within minutes of each other. Plus all of the VFR traffic along the coast.
Holy Smoke! Mt. Wilson is at 5713 ft and the forest of masts and towers sticks up another 150 ft; there's one mast which may be a lot higher. The mountain stretches quite a bit, it isn't a simple peak. So what the HELL was EVA15 doing there at 5500 ft? I can't believe that the controller did not give precise instructions about turning left or right, since AC788 was on the left.
The radar controller's instructions is too.........simple!? She only said turn south and maintain the height. What do you mean turn south? Seriously? It's not a car on the road. She should told the pilot the heading. She told other pilots to turn left or right and the heading, but not EVA's pilot. Why? May be that's why EVA spent more time to "follow" the instruction. He just had to find the heading by himself!!
only one, "heading" is a standard navigational term used in aviation and elsewhere. Heading is the angle between the direction in which the object's nose is pointing and a reference direction. In aviation the reference direction is true north. So instead of her constant "southbound" she should have said turn right heading 180, expedite. Both the non-English speaking pilot and the ATC were at fault on this one.
If a pilot is struggling to, or unable to maintain a heading ATC will either issue a Cardinal direction (turn south) or simply tell them to enter a turn (Turn right; and then the controller will issue “stop your turn” later)
This plane almost crashed into Mt Wilson directly north of my house and it’s a mountain I’m very familiar with as I’ve hiked it for decades. Just thinking about a plane anywhere close to there is terrifying..It’s a miracle they didn’t hit that rising terrain up there.
Heading 270 is dead-west, if EVA015 was to follow directions, she was turning him directly into ACA 788! WTF? No wonder that guy was shitting his pants!
The lady is in over her head, she's going to engineer a mid-air collision if she is allowed to stay in her position. SoCal is not the place for a trainee or a new controller, maybe ABQ?
It's a cluster to say the least, TCAS would give a resolution advisory to avoid the conflict between both aircraft, the controller realised they were close and complicated things when she messed up. In the event of close calls pilots have to trust TCAS instead of controllers as the system is more effective however the crew may not have had a TCAS alert
Local news out of LA stated that she (the ATC) gave a wrong instruction to the EVA flight and spoke of her "snippy" tone with the flight she nearly caused to collide with another plane.
The instructions are WRONG. Is NEVER "turn south" (WHATEVER THAT IS) It is turn right (or left) at 180 heading. Turn south is not an standard instruction, it creates confusion. That kind of verbiage gets pilots killed...
Especially since if the plane is facing roughly north or south, then the pilot cannot know whether they're meant to turn left, or right, and thus cannot comply with the request.
As a pilot i agree with you that is a big misunderstanding between ATC and the pilot induced by an instruction error cased by ATC. But, honestly.. If I’m in duty , I’m heading northbound and the controller instructs me to heading southbound with that worry I immediately turn to heading 180 whatever the reason. Here the ATC instructed the pilot to turn southbound several times and it’s honestly embarrassing the laps of time useful for the pilot to understand he had to put this damn nose of the aircraft towards hdg 180.
@@francesconotarnicola6954 I hope you aren't really a pilot...if you are on duty and do a 180 i hope FAA revoke your license. What if ATC wanted to you to do hdg 180 to the RIGHT because of obstruction to the left & your stupid brain tells you turn 180 no matter what & you start a left turn right into the obstruction.......In this case, a left turn to 180 would result in even worse FAA mandatet separation between the 2 aircrafts.......How can so many in the comments here get this simple thing wrong, how can any of you think that turning to 180 from 360 is obvious, direction matters ALOT, it all depends on terrain, traffic & other obstructions & airspace class etc etc in which direction an airplane should turn to 180.... Also, its not even obvious to do a right turn to 180 even of a current heading of 120, there are cases that turning right from 120 to 180 could end in tragic & a left turn to 180 from 120 is the correct pattern entry or airspace entry (like some entries to Innsbruck). "Turn south" or southbound means absolutely nothing without turn direction
If that ATC was seeing (at least) what we were seeing represented on that screen, it was so obvious what was going wrong. And the constant "southbound" calls, instead of a specific heading, should in all honesty be enough for this person to no longer work in ATC. Just dreadful. We see so many skilled ATC on this channel .... and this was like an untrained high school kid 'having a go' at ATC.
*Yes, and in a PANIC you resort to the SIMPLEST form of direction (north, south, east, west)* . A heading is NOT at all intuitive. The four main directions on a compass ARE however. Any pilot worth his salt would know what SOUTH means. If you're a pilot and you don't understand what SOUTH means, you don't deserve a licence.
*Furthermore, EVERY pilot should know where terrain "features" are prior to takeoff and before landing* . A terrain "feature" is something noteworthy that poses a hazard to pilots. When you fly into Toronto, you're aware of where the CN Tower is. It's tall enough to be something pilots need to be aware of. When you fly into or out of Calgary, you would know where the Rocky mountains are and how HIGH you need to be to clear them safely. Any pilot worth having a licence KNOWS about these things before they reach them. It's part of the FLIGHT PLANNING stage. If you're flying from Calgary to Seattle, you know that you're flying over the rockies. You don't blindly go west of Calgary at 5000 feet unless you have a death wish.
Southbound means fly South. It that not standard terminology for an ATC/pilot communications? I am really asking. Does ATC always have to give specific headings or something?
That was unclear ATC. Really confusing. Not using HDG but general directions + it could be done much more efficiently. She could left the eva to go east for another 1-2 minutes and then she could call the left turn = this mean Air canada would be already enough space from them in terms of distance and altitude difference too and they did not have to stop their climb.
She gave a heading twice! Right HDG 180 and left HDG 270. If a experienced crew that gets to fly a 777 doesn't understand that, then they shouldn't be in a cockpit.
By the time she issued a stop climb they were both at 5000-6000 if I remember correctly and this could be avoided and everything what followed could be avoided too. Simple.
I think (this is my guess) the ATC meant for EVA to turn right from 090 to 180 initially, but said "left" by mistake and didn't catch it when the pilot (correctly) read it back as a left turn. So then she shifts her attention to another plane or two under her control (routine), and when she looks back to EVA, she sees the plane heading north (partway through the big left turn she'd ordered, but she may not see that they're turning), the exact opposite of what she thought she'd told them to do. So then she instructs "right to 180", which she thinks is a repeat of her previous instruction, but to the pilots is a reversal of what they'd previously been told. The pilots start to reverse their turn, but that takes time, and so when the controller looks again, she sees the plane which she's told to turn south (in her mind, twice) still heading roughly north. That's when she tells EVA to stop their climb (and I think EVA had requested the faster climb in the knowledge that there was terrain to their north), and gets hung up for a minute or so on the potential conflict with the Air Canada flight. Obviously two planes on converging courses at the same altitude is a serious danger, and she is entirely correct to address that, but in doing so she briefly loses track of the CFIT danger. By now, her mental picture of her instructions and the EVA flight's responses simply doesn't correspond to what's actually happening or what the pilots are seeing, which keeps adding to the confusion. The controller sees a plane that isn't following the instructions she's giving, unaware that she actually gave different (and more conflicting) instructions than she thinks. At that point the EVA crew has been told to turn first left, then right, then left again, each new instruction coming before they can complete the previous one. They know that they're flying generally northward when the controller wants them to go south, but every time they start turning to get to that heading, they get told to turn back the other way. The last precise turn they've been given (left to 270) is toward another plane that they know is nearby, and is inconsistent with the following (non-standard) instruction to turn south. They know that their generally northward course is taking them toward terrain, but every time they want to climb and get clear of the terrain, they're told to stop because of conflict with the same plane they're simultaneously being directed to turn toward. From their perspective, they're following each ATC instruction correctly, but those instructions don't make sense and are moving the plane towards danger, and everything they attempt to address the danger is immediately countermanded. The errors that led into this situation were natural human mistakes, but they were definitely on the part of the ATC, not the flight crew.
0:22 ATC “[...] turn heading 0090 “ And so begin the litany of faults... The ATC seems shockingly bad at her job. This was the first of so many mistakes, seemingly under little pressure she couldn’t get the heading correct - 4 digits , really ? The pilot then asks to confirm heading bearing, and comms worsened from there on. She was unhelpful and unprofessional and hopefully was removed from scope ASAP. Not sure further training can correct a disinterested , imprecise mindset, especially when lives are at stake but hey ho.
This video should of being titled " 90 seconds of pure terror" Caution Terrain Caution Terrain! Pull Up Pull Up Pull up. For the part of the pilot he was put in a very difficult position and he was being directed into a mountain by an obstinent ATC
Yeah they’re taking off in to the wind which in this case is blowing offshore which is very rare for LAX. She probably got confused right off the bat with the left and right turn because normally they takeoff straight out to the ocean instead of taking off inland
Any plans on uploading a vid on the Colombian 727 crash that happened today? Not sure if there'd be ATC recordings, but seeing as they were able to get in the air it would be interesting to hear what they said to ATC before crashing. Great video!
1. I'm not a pilot yet, 2. have flown extensively in single-engine planes (both my mom and dad were GA pilots, Cessna 172, Mooney (2), and a Teal for splashing fun), 3. I'm a bit obsessed lately with flying finally as I'm now officially old and have my eyes on a local school here, and, 4. I did NOT stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night... lol. Ok, given that disclaimer so I don't get reamed out too badly by all of you.... and I'm a big fan of VASAviation (I'll be one step ahead of the game when I do start taking lessons just from watching (listening?) to these videos.. thanks VASAviation!), and not even attempting to counter any of the pilots' and controllers' comments here already pointing out the problems that were obvious with the ATC (and trying very hard not to respond to the few racist and sexist trolls that are not usually commenting on flying videos of any type, especially here on this channel... I have some choice words for you but I'll just leave it at that), I'd still like to give my inexperienced amateur armchair-pilot opinions (because hell, it's Sunday morning, my wife isn't here for a few hours, and I can just chill and watch flying videos without being yelled at to get off my ass and go work on the car or something... ha) One, for those who are bringing up a language barrier, pointing at the EVA pilot, this seems highly unlikely as Taiwan is not mainland China, and English is though not a second language there, it's pretty common at least in the populated cities like the capitol... so that's a non-issue. Having a non-English/non-American accent does not imply a language barrier. My parents are Italian, and their accents are quite thick even though they've been in the US since the early 1950's, so assuming there's a language barrier just because of an accent is just straight up ignorant... just stick to the approved flying vernacular and you're good to go. Also, I think everyone is forgetting about the performance of the plane ('Heavy' being one obvious identifying term, the other being, hey it's a freakin' 777!), and might be a little too fixated on the connection between the audio responses of both the ATC and the PIC in relation to the graphic displayed. I would guess (I could be wrong) that the graphic isn't that accurate, and only a general approximation of the flight patterns. We may see the plane going straight, not responding at all but I'm gonna guess the PIC was all over the sky attempting to follow some confusing ATC commands, albeit in a slow way cause, well, it's a freakin' Heavy. It seems easy to put some blame on the pilot, as he does seem to not respond to the ATC's initial commands, but we're really not privy to his actual control movements, or what he actually hears (static, some other plane stepping' on his transmission, etc.). But what I'm confused about, which does put some of the blame on the pilot, is he knew the terrain around the airport, knows his altitude and direction in relation to that terrain, and given that this is a modern plane I'm sure has all kinds of warning horns and lights flashing about obstacles in his flight path (I'm sure you pilots can educate me on those avionics), which even with the ATC's obviously confusing commands, he's still, no matter what, the 'Pilot In Command', and the plane and his passengers are his responsibility... He needs to take whatever corrective action is necessary to ensure everyone's safety, and if he has to (mostly) ignore the ATC, so be it. It reminds me of the Cirrus crash with 3 fatalities of all aboard, at the Hobby Airport in Houston back in 2016, where the ATC (there being two of them, which was a problem in itself), basically patterned the pilot back and forth until the stress became too much for the very accommodating (too accommodating) pilot and made a fatal control mistake (RIP). There was a point where the PIC should've said, enough is enough, you guys are gonna get me killed, I'm outta here.... I think that's what the EVA pilot should've done as well. Luckily, with a heavy dose of luck, the 777 didn't put a big hole in the mountains there. Phew! That was indeed close.
First, pilot reads back left 180 but never does it, she's says to turn right 180 and expedite, pilot reads back, but does not do it. She was trying to maintain separation and at the same time keep the ANA from hitting terrain as he was not turning. EVA was confused and slow to react or not at all. The planes had 5000' vert. separation as ANA approached mountains. 3 separate commands from ATC to turn ANA 015 but pilot does not execute, very bad on pilot.
Eva was confused on which way was Right which way was left because she clearly told them to turn right 180 twice and he repeated it and continued his left turn
I think TCAS had a heavly contribution for this rising confusion on pilot's side, it's a dilema because TCAS has the primary autority, then ATC possible unaware of tcas instructing pilots to deviate from her orders, things start to get very confusing in the cockpit, we already have a DHL that colided with a russian airlines after one airplane decide to follow ATC orders to climb, and the other aircraft was clibing when tcas ordered. Almost a dejavu in this clip.
... now try flying in and out of stall buffet, on a moonless night, 200' AGL over the sea, conducting an anti-submarine warfare mission. #ThankAveteran!
@@wrayday7149 It sounded like the cockpit was very busy and there were likely loud alarms going on such as TCAS, so they likely missed a few calls. Giving word directions is never a good idea as it isn't very clear, especially for non-native speakers.
Wray Day you’re not wrong, the Eva pilot screwed up, my personal guess would be they were either relatively low-time, or poorly trained, or were not proficient operating in US airspace, had their hands full trying to decipher their charts, etc, and became task-overloaded, combined with a language barrier, also possible that they were dealing with something unusual we don’t know about but didn’t know how to communicate the issue in English, who knows...either way, it’s no excuse, the pilot in command had the responsibility to maintain aircraft control and comply with ATC instructions in that airspace. But the controller made mistakes also. It should have been obvious she was dealing with either a problem at worst, or at best a significant language barrier..instead of getting upset and potentially flustering the pilots more than they already were, she should have firmly, but CALMY, continued providing vectors/headings instead of flip flopping from headings to “southbound” which she continued doing as the situation escalated likely adding to the confusion in the cockpit. Multiple times he asks for a heading trying to figure out the issue, and multiple times she doesn’t provide the pilot with what he asked for, that’s a problem. The key to effective comms is calm, consistent, standardized terminology and instructions, she didn’t maintain that, which in my opinion likely exacerbated the problem. Ive never asked for a heading or vector and gotten a reply of southbound/northbound etc...if I ask for a heading or a vector I expect a numerical heading and if I don’t get one I’m going to continue to maintain aircraft control and continue to ask for a heading until I get it. As my first instructor, an old ex Navy test pilot, used to say about controllers years ago, “you’re down there because I’m up here, give me what I need”
@@eyalgreen8285 Just remember the aircraft has a heading indicator in degrees, it also has a compass.... and even if both of those were out, ATC just told him to turn left. If I were to SWAG this incident I would guess the pilots were trying to set their flight in the computer and they weren't paying attention to where they were actually going.... If I had to issue corrective actions on the ATC's part... telling a plane that is flying towards a mountain to stop climb was bad. ATC should of deviated the other aircraft that was responding out of danger. ATC should of told the pilot they were about to fly into a mountain, turn away now or declare emergency.
ATC managed the situation pretty badly but it really wasn't helped by the EVA crew who just seemed to be doing their own thing. ATC should use standard phraseology with foreign crews (e.g. turn right heading 180), but 'southbound' shouldn't be that hard to understand...
Just counting heading instructions: 1) The mistaken instruction to turn left to 180, which the crew failed to challenge and read back. They began executing this. 2) 1st instruction to turn right heading 180, which the crew reads back but fails to execute. 3) 1st instruction to turn left heading 270, which the crew reads back and begins to execute (but slowly). They are probably already getting confused by the different instructions. Then she starts up with the southbound nonsense, and fails to answer the crew asking to confirm whether she wants a left or right turn. When asked to confirm the heading she just says southbound. She then just keeps repeating turn southbound (while confusing it with northbound herself). Then while an obviously stressed crew repeatedly sends messages, she ignores it and talks to other planes, again without giving a clear instruction using standard phraseology. So all in all, there are 3 standard heading instructions issued to the crew, the 1st of which was a straight up mistake, the 2nd was standard and correct but the crew failed to execute, the 3rd was standard but potentially confusing as it conflicted with the previous instruction. After that - i.e. when the crew were closing on terrain, they were stressed, and standard phraseology was most important - she repeatedly told them to fly 'southbound'. Again, I would have expected the crew to understand this but there's a reason standard phraseology exists, and it's due to precisely this reason. Had the controller repeatedly said 'turn right heading 180' she would have got a much better response. This still doesn't absolve the EVA crew - they acted badly and at the end of the day it's their job to avoid terrain. Their situational awareness let them down. But ATC instructions certainly have a hand in this.
Agreed. Standard phraseology is very important, especially for foreign crews. They will be expecting turn direction, then heading, then altitude. When trying to understand and work out what ATC wants when English is a second language and over a radio with background noise it can be very stressful for foreign crews. The ATC became stressed when pilots didn't execute instructions as expected and made the situation worse than it needed to be.
Instead of saying southbound maybe saying a heading would be more suitable because the EVA air pilots Cleary didn’t understand. Not saying the controller is at fault. I think both are at fault.
I don't know much about standard phraseology, but the pilot's transmission at 2:54 could have been interpreted as a confirmation of the ATC instruction, but from context (3:08) looks like they meant it as a question. All that time the maintain 5000' was still in effect...
EVA 15 Heavy was initially asked for a LEFT turn to 180. Crew complied. Later on, the controller, instead of giving a clear heading and turn direction, demands the flight "turn southbound", "turn southbound now", without stating in which direction or giving a specific heading. Whatever clearance was filed, this vectoring was not specific enough to join the departure filed.That is a high traffic area with Burbank, Long Beach, Ontario, Santa Monica, Hawthorne and Comptoin traffic within a 50 mile radius. Additionally, operations at night often have traffic departing westbound with inbound landings to the east. That controller should sharpen up the instructions.
All the necessary ingredients for a disaster. All it would have taken was a faster jet or anything to pull her eyes off that flight. I am the *pilot* and if there are mountains around *I* am responsible for not hitting them regardless of what ATC says. That whole dam area is a nightmare and that comes from someone who flew into Atlanta every night.
Brian Rock pulling someones license is a big deal. these people have invested probably 2000+ hours of their lives to aviation and tens of thousands of dollars. you might want to give someone another chance-or atleast an opportunity to explane themselves before potentially ruining their lives
Scott Walters boo fucking hoo. Am I to understand that we should be sensitive to the financial well-being of someone who can't understand simple, repeated directions and put hundreds of lives at risk? NO. License revoked. Fuck your career, you're an idiot who has no business in the sky.
Derangedteddy I understand what you're saying. But you must remember that they're only human. If someone told me I could never fly again because of a mistake I made I would be heartbroken, like rape my mom and make me watch heartbroken.
Scott Walters--When an ATC gives an incorrect heading to a plane, nearly causing a crash and the possible/probable death of everyone on board along with those on the other plane and those on the ground, she can--and should--lose her license regardless of how much money or how much time she has invested in her job. The FAA is investigating this and concern should be expressed for her snippy attitude with the plane she misdirected.
Alright, messed up the left/right turn to 180, but the aircraft still continued on a northerly heading. When there was a traffic conflict, she told them to turn south... While that's not 100% standard, if you're a pilot and you're flying on a northerly heading and you're told to turn SOUTH, why would you continue going north?
Amazing video! I was just wondering if you could do a video on an El Al 767 that departed Toronto CYYZ yesterday and returned to the airport due to some sort of mechanical issues. some reported that it was an engine fire but I'm not too sure.
on that exact same night I took eva flight 11 , which is the flight that left a few minutes before flight 15. Technically I was lucky to be on flight 11
What did "southbound" mean in this situation? Kept turn left heading 90 and collided with Air Canada or right heading 90. Northbound, southbound, eastbound/westbound wasn't an inappropriate instruction to the pilot.
How bout: EVA015 terrain alert immediately turn right heading 180, climb and maintain 12000. She gave them an altitude that was surely below the MVA in that area. Crazy. She was lucky that airplane was lucky and missed the mountains that day. Of course it’s the pilot’s responsibility to not run into things. This pilot should have been more assertive. He should have known there was terrain close by to the north. He would have been getting terrain warnings in the cockpit. He should have told ATC what he was going to do to avoid the terrain. He didn’t. He was obviously very confused. She should have been lots more attentive to an air craft on a collision course with terrain.
The enhanced ground proximity warning system and the traffic collision avoidance system were probably going off like gangbusters. Those take precedence...as the EVA crew is trying to avoid the San Gabriel Mountains and the TV and radio transmitters on it.
If they did go around at 5500 feet, they were 150-200 feet BELOW every mountain peak in the area. That quota-hire ATC almost flew them right into a mountain.
Controller Induced Oscillation. New term, I think I just coined it. The controller reacted with opposite direction vectors, each time she didn’t see the progression of what she expected/hoped to see. Not accounting for the lag in turning from left to right, then left, and the this aircraft was now high speed (285kias), leveling climb (5000’). The time it takes to roll out, and into the next turn is significant, and eats up forward distance until the track of the turn starts to show on radar. Not seeing the progress the controller was hoping for, and the obvious stress to get the aircraft back into a position away from high terrain, she issued opposing vectors, which just compounded the severity of this incident. Hence, understanding PIO from the pilots perspective, it is logical to conclude the same lagging controller inputs via vectors, creating an unsafe condition, could be referred to as………Controller Induced Oscillation. PS. I saw the google earth replay in the QC office, which showed the right wingtip missed the ridge line by 33’ feet.
The ATC is at fault. She put them on the wrong heading at the start of it all and then tried shifting the blame to the flight deck. If she has simply given them a heading correction instead of trying to argue all of this would have been avoided.
So it's night and the pilots probably don't fly to LAX more than a couple of times a month. They are getting bombarded with confusing atc communications every few seconds... it's quite simple use correct phraseology and this whole video would have been 30 seconds long. She assigned the incorrect heading and then tried to correct it by arguing with the flight crew. She's wrong end of story. But I forget the great ol USA must be always right and the Asian airlines are at fault for not being Americans.
This is beyond horrendous for both parties. Pilots reading back instructions but not following them? ATC gives some confusing instructions but turn south is very clear.
They read instructions back wrong and ATC did not even correct them. Had the ATC stick to standard ICAO phraseology (especially with foreign crews) this would not have happened. Also turn south which direction? Left they would have flown near Air Canada (they probably had him on TCAS) and that also added confusion to the pilots.
Correct. The ATC initially stated the WRONG direction (north). ATC was slow to correct the error. The ATC needed to demand an immediate RIGHT turn to south. ATC never described the direction of the turn that she wanted. ATC also should have demanded a climb to 7000' much earlier as the plane was heading to the 5700' mountains. The pilot was bad. The ATC was horribly bad.
TheMaroon - me too. Both were bad but the pilot's only responsibility on the climb-out is not to hit other aircraft and not to hit mountains. Altitude is life. You should be seeking altitude as soon as possible, NOT FLYING AROUND AT 5,000 FT in North America.
ATC gave a heading multiple times, and it was ignored. She repeatedly instructed heading 180 and yet the pilot continued north. Only then did she instruct "turn south".
@@noxious89123 She also several times instructed left turn to 270, right into the airspace of the AC-788, left, right, left right, right, southbound, shitty controller, can't blame the pilots when her instructions is all over the place & they are busy with the terrain collision warnings.....
@@Jeppelelle Seriously. And there's the biggest error of all: "stop climbing." "Maintain 5,000." "Maintain 5,000." "Stop your climb." To a plane you just pointed north. Into the fucking mountains. To the people blaming the pilots for this debacle: (1) the NTSB found the exact opposite; and (2) are you shitting me? She said turn south? Well, which way? Because it's very clear that there's another aircraft right nearby them, which is why the ATC just gave them a string of twelve rushed, contradictory instructions. They can go right or left, and behind one of those doors is another airplane. And it's one in the morning. And they're off-course (because she told them to turn left). And they've been told NOT to climb, yet their TCAS is screaming that there's hard stuff in front of them. Who wouldn't be utterly baffled here?
@@mszak8869 Stop being daft. That's not the point. You know there is another aircraft nearby, close enough that the controller's been throwing a fit, and flying parallel to you. You do not know if it's to your left or right. It's dark. You can't see anything. You're told: turn around. Which way do you turn? Left or right? Are you really going to just flip that coin? And if your answer is yes, you have no business being in a high-risk profession. People don't usually die when someone makes one mistake. They die when that first mistake impairs the participants' judgment or rushes a decision, and then someone makes another, worse mistake in response. Turning left may have been that worse mistake. Which, as it turns out, is exactly why the NTSB squarely blamed the controller for failing to RECOVER the situation.
Wow, several things went wrong on that flight. First off the controller was behind the power curve the entire time Give a feaking heading woman stop saying turn southbound that doesn't tell you where to go say "EVA 015 Turn Right heading 180 climb and maintain 7000" That makes life simple You have now defined where you want the aircraft in 3 dimensional space. She also had air Canada turn to early so it turned inside the flight track of EVA. It looked like they had planned to get EVA out of the TRACON area via a north Ventura departure which is surprising that they didn't have them do a left turn cross over Long Beach and exit the area over Catalina. But with Air Canada's early turn and parallel climb that put them into conflict and that's why she kept EVA low. The Pilot needs a check ride and some time with an instructor. If he would have turned the first time he was ordered no problem would have presented itself. My guess is that he and the Pilot Flying got behind the departure procedure He should have made a few proactive radio calls and been aware of where he was he could have avoided the situation
Yes, ATC was removed from controlling and given some sort of desk duty, don't know what happened to pilot but they're normally fired in these types of situations.
I suspect that the ATC made the mistakes of mixing up the commands to EVA015 and ACA788 twice. ACA788 took off and contacted SoCal Departure 35 seconds later after EVA015. 40 seconds later the ATC gave EVA015 the "left heading 180" command. It might have been a slip of tongue since ACA788 (LAX to YYZ) was due to get a left turn to go north. The ATC was thinking about changing ACA788's course -- it had not changed the course after taking-off -- and said "left" instead of "right" in the command to EVA015. 38 seconds later, the ATC realized the mistake. She asked EVA015 to turn right heading 180. The pilots were complying that and read back "pass heading 010." 19 seconds later, the ATC instructed ACA788 "left heading 360". 21 seconds later, the ATC instructed EVA015 "left heading 270". Here she sent the two aircraft in a conflicting course again. She probably wanted ACA788 "left heading 270" to have more separation between the two aircraft. Instead, due to some unknown reasons, she gave the wrong command to the wrong aircraft. 14 seconds later, the ATC screamed "EVA015 heavy, what are you doing?, turn southbound now ! ....."
Control tower Fu*ked up big time ! This was a disaster waiting to happen, the captain was smart and alert enough to avoid disaster. EVA Air very, very lucky to avoid disaster. Remarkably EVA Air maintains disaster-free record. The woman in control tower should be FIRED !
I am a senior Bank executive and apart from being a frequent flyer....know nuts about planes but am deeply interested in this highly complex transport. As a layman then.... I heard ATC and EVA go on and on about maintaining 7000 ft...but turns out as per the tracker that they were flying happily at 5500 !!! In which language does 7000 translate as 5500 ? I mean there is no mention of 5500 in the entire communication sequence. Pardon my ignorant doubt.....or were they midway into their climb to 7000....whoosh! Damned lucky !!!!!
Can't tell if she gave him the left turn to heading 180 from heading 090 but he read it back and she didn't correct him so this is what got the ball rolling into all the confusion. She expecting a right turn EVA 15 turns left, time for a little positive control of the EVA 15. Saw too many missed read backs get controllers into situations.
![[REAL ATC] American B757 has COMPLETE RADIO FAILURE out of Kennedy!](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Wcq6KipBOro/mqdefault.jpg)
![[REAL ATC] American B757 has COMPLETE RADIO FAILURE out of Kennedy!](/img/tr.png)
Background... I am a retired ATC and worked LAX TRACON (the radar facility in question) for 24 years. The controller's mistake was a left turn when a right turn is the correct direction (to eventually head out over the ocean). She keeps trying to correct her mistake by turning EVA back (right) to the south (hdg 180). For some reason EVA keeps heading northerly. The controller error would be entering the MVA (minimum vector altitude) below the required altitude. She also didn't allow for his speed (he asked for and was approved for a high speed climb); airplanes don't turn so well going fast (probably in excess of 270 kts). She tried to climb him but Airbus' (his was an A330) don't climb well even under the best of conditions. Does she need some training? ABSOLUTELY! One thing I tried to beat into my trainee's heads is they MUST know aircraft performance! How can one know what they can do if they don't know what the airplane can do? And... It's not the mistake; everyone makes them. It's how the mistake is corrected without making the situation worse or causing another conflict.
well said, and FYI it's a 777 rather than 330
THANKS! I could have sworn the data block said A330....
Good analysis, Michael, from someone in the know. I have visited SoCal Approach in San Diego. Massive facility manned with exceptional people. I would add a couple observations.
One is that LAX was in East traffic for departures. This is unusual for departures. Due to noise abatement, after midnight, LAX normally runs departures westbound off the 24's and 25's and arrivals to the 6's and 7's, obviously alternating batches of arrivals and departures. (I assume they still do this.) This earned LAX its infamous "black star" rating from airline pilots years ago. This airplane took off at 01:19 PST and normally this would have been a west departure but they took off eastbound, so I am guessing they had winds that dictated that direction.
The other note is that the LA basin just got a whole big batch of new SID's and STAR's that have been in the process of being deployed over the last couple months and are still being deployed. There is a massive airspace and procedures change going on here. Google "NextGen - Metroplex."
One or both of these factors may have influenced this event. The controller may have been dealing with a double-whammy of new procedures and the unusual departure direction.
I will say that using "southbound" was less than ideal. "Fly heading 180" would have been better. But clearly the crew was confused before that point.
Gordon Feingold..... LAX was indeed east traffic due to wind. Normal operations between 0000 & 0630 is what is called "over-ocean"; depart 25L and land on 06R. There are rules that allow that type of operation, even IFR. The Gabre (ASA's SID) & the VTU ( EVA'S SID) are decades old SID'S. The only real confusion is east traffic. We would get a refresher class in east traffic every September as we rarely went east. I went 2 years without working actual east traffic. As with all deals there were quite a few factors.
Michael Hall Exactly. I worked the boards for 38 years and retired 2 years ago from Seattle Tracon. Things have changed in the training requirements.
"turn south NOW" is not working, so let's keep doing that instead of a specific instruction to turn to 180. I can't be the only one thinking there was a language issue. Pilot understood 180.
In this case turn right 180 would be better because 180 left would have put them on AC's path
redalert2fan agreed
Pilot failed to comply with 180 two or three times before the controller started using cardinal directions.
oktal3700 true, and good point, but clearly pilot had problems with English. best protocol finally prevailed using numbers. I don't completely blame the ATC. it certainly is NOT a job for the timid!
I hope the CVR gets pulled for this... I'd like to hear what the flight deck sounded like... if they were getting close to terrain and traffic, her instructions could have gotten lost amid the din of TCAS squawking and GPWS yelling at them.
She was suspended asigned to other duties was on the new's. The EVA plane cleared a mountain by jst 790 feet.
Loco Patojo would you happen to have a link of the news clip?
Loco Patojo WOW ! That was crazy .
She told him to turn SOUTH several times. What part of SOUTH doesn't the pilot understand? Has he seen a compass before?
It actually is that simple! You can dial in a new heading with the autopilot system and the plane will literally turn itself.
He was given repeated instructions to turn SOUTHBOUND. At one point the ATC said: "WHAT ARE YOU DOING? I SEE YOU'RE STILL GOING NORTHBOUND. I TOLD YOU TO TURN SOUTHBOUND." That pilot should be fired.
Pilots are supposed to know where "terrain features" are in their area. That means he should have known where the mountains were BEFORE he took off and he should have known their HEIGHT. He should have known that something was wrong IMMEDIATELY because he KNEW he was flying toward the mountains. It's kind of hard to miss a mountain (day or night). When you look out your cockpit window and you don't see any f'n stars in the "sky" right in front of you, maybe that's a PROBLEM!
The planes are so "intelligent" these days that they warn pilots of mountains. He would have been listening to endless messages like:
"TERRAIN AHEAD"
"PULL UP"
"PULL UP"
Yet he continued along blissfully unaware.
Consider this: If ATC hadn't TOLD HIM to climb at the last minute, the pilot would have flown the plane into the mountain.
ATC was like: "F__k it! He's not listening to my instructions to turn SOUTH, so let's just climb him so he goes OVER the mountains." Her last minute instructions to climb saved everyone on that plane. It wasn't the pilot. That dumbf__k would have kept going at 5000 feet directly into the mountain.
EVA just had it enough and just calls out heading 180 himself lol
She just wanted to offer the passengers the deluxe scenic departure. Must've been quite the view only 500-800ft away from the mountains.
EVA 015 Heavy, turn right heading 180 climb '7000 and there would have been no problem...
Agreed...but that is how she should have done it!
Youre right... but the idiot pilot probably still wouldnt have done it till he was ready. She was telling him to expedite southbound turn several times before he finally did it.
@@cameron300462 listen again. He asked for a high speed climb which she approved. Once in this high speed climb he is unable to change course until leveled out which he couldn't do because of the terrain. She then gave him the instruction to maintain 7000' keeping him in danger of the mountains.
and if he didn't get that instruction - perhaps she could have mentioned high terrain ahead?
@@whataboutredlorry The plane would have done that as well, if not already but the pilot just didnt gave a rats ass anything.
At 3:05 he even emphasizes he wants to hear the heading, the only correct reaction would have been "E.V.A. zero one five heavy, turn right heading one eight zero", perhaps followed by either "expedite", "immediately", or "now".
She loses her phraseology because she panics and desperately wants to communicate the turn. The emergency had a really conterproductive effect; using the agreed-upon code for exchanging information is key with pilots that are not native english speakers.
Here are ATC's heading assignments given to EVA015 in order; 090, ?, right 180, left 270, southbound, southbound, South, South, confirm right turn heading 180.
The lady needs a vacation.
this comment makes me laugh...
It seems she got a permanent vacation: abcnews.go.com/US/air-traffic-controller-accidentally-sends-plane-close-mountains/story?id=44301266
A permanent vacation at that
You can tell from her accent that she is incompetent. lol
Permanent vacation
Between being told to turn left and right, EVA015 pretty much stayed on a northbound slightly S-shaped track, until the ATC felt so overwhelmed by the growing danger that the only instruction she could come up with was to tell the crew to fly southbound.
The dilemma that the pilots were facing at that moment was which way it was safe to start turning - left or right. They don't ask, she doesn't tell them.
Edit: Although as I read the report now, I see 1 minute went by between ATC correcting herself by instructing EVA015 to turn right heading 180 and giving another turn instruction (turn left heading 270). Wouldn't the plane have been able to make some visible progress in its right turn towards 180 heading in one-minute time? Their seeming unresponsiveness to her instruction has added fuel to fire and made her panic beyond recovery.
After that point, she got totally confused and was firing instructions.
IMHO, the language should be changed.
Expedite and halt should be used only for climb/descent - so as to just say expedite 7000' or expedite climb/descent or halt climb/descent.
Accelerate/decelerate and maintain should be used for speed - accelerate 250, decelerate 180, maintain speed.
Faster/slower and stop should be reserved for turns - make faster turn, make slower turn, stop turn.
Once you permanently associate each instructional word with a specific positional parameter in 3D airspace, you won't say things like "expedite climb, correction expedite turn, stop climb"
Even though some of these don't sound all too natural in English, let's face it - English doesn't come all too natural to most ATC around the globe as it's not their first language anyway, so they learn by heart whatever the instructions they are presented with.
I say the verbiage should be reworked in the interest of safety and unambiguous and unequivocal clarity.
The pilot did ask for clarification several on whether it's a left or right turn toward south, but she kept telling him to go "southbound"
Controller got fired
A fascinating incident and thankfully a safe outcome. Listening to only the ATC audio, it would be easy to get a very one-sided view of the incident. I'm a Training Captain on the 777 and for incidents like this, I try to put myself in the cockpit to better understand what might be happening. Some acute humans factors at play from both the controller and in the cockpit. A brief summary as I see it: following the controller's initial erroneous left turn after airborne, the pilots may well have been looking at the terrain on their displays, discussing it and experiencing a level of confusion/distraction and undoubted task complication. Remember they are an "English as Second Language" (ESL) crew. The controller's further left turn with the reversal to the right complicates things further at which point the EGPSW terrain Cautions start followed by the "PULL UP" Warning. There is a lot happening in the cockpit at this time and a missed radio call is not surprisingly. On the NTSB final report (link at the end of the comment) in figure 4, you can make a good guess where they started the manually flown EGPWS escape maneuvere i.e. at 0924:55. They gain approx 900FT in 16 secs, a Rate of Climb (ROC) of around 3500 FT/MIN. Being heavy, this would have used most of the spare speed energy before having to nose over to possibly stop from stalling, or probably when the Warning stops. This then significantly reduces in the ROC. It is easy to "Monday Morning Quarterback" this incident, but the nuances make it far more complicated than it first appears. app.ntsb.gov/pdfgenerator/ReportGeneratorFile.ashx?EventID=20170104X45517&AKey=1&RType=HTML&IType=IA
A controller who cannot be bothered to use specific phraseology such as "turn right heading 180" instead of a hectic "southbound, southbound now" has no place in the business. As far as I saw, the pilot not flying was confused because he had a heading of approx 010 and did not know if she needs him to do a right turn to go south, or left turn to go south, and she never clarified -- he actually asks a few times if right or left, because when you're heading almost north, there's two ways to go south. She could have resolved this very easily had she realized that the pilots are non-native English speakers and need simpler instructions, for example "turn right heading 090 expedite" followed by "turn right heading 180 expedite". Instead she went fancy lingo on them with "southbound" and panicking while asking them "what are you doing?" which probably made them panic even more. She really panicked and cracked under her own pressure. Nothing personal against her, but glad to hear she's no longer doing that job, as with people like that, it's only a matter of time.
The ATC kept telling him to turn "southbound" but didn't specify whether it's a left or right turn toward south. Turning left would have put Eva in danger of collision with another plane. So the pilot hesitated to make the unspecified turn until the terrain forced him to. You could hear the strain in his voice at 4:30 as he is likely getting terrain warnings.
4:30 to 4:42 you can hear the stress in EVA's voice, he was shitting his pants right then, either getting a terrain warning or looking up at a tree.
Obiously the pilot failed to execute instructions as given by the ATC, given they were poor, but a cockpit view of a few mountain sides straight ahead would finally promptly expedite some knobs to get turned and buttons to be pressed.
add to this a cloudy day, this may end seriously bad
Dude, even I can understand, "Turn SOUTH, now!"
I think she forgot to say, "Simon Says?"
‘Simon Shouts?’
That would be “Simone shouts”.
100% controller's fault. No left/right turn direction. No course numbers. Incorrect phraseology. She saw the mistake and then she lost her shit. You can hear her voice go up an octave once she realizes her mistake, and then just piles on more bad mistakes until she damn near kills a few hundred people. Here's my play-by-play:
1:15 -The moment EVA read back that left turn she should have been on the mic screaming at them to stop. The read back is 100% clear. That means she either TOLD them to turn left or she ignored an incorrect read back. That was the start of the incident, which could have been completely avoided had the controller done her job correctly.
1:43 - Then she gives CORRECT instructions to EVA to stop climb and make a RIGHT turn to 180 after stuttering momentarily. At this point, EVA was clear of traffic and could have continued climbing to the right all the way to 180 on a heading to leave the airspace.
2:28 - After telling EVA to stop climb, she then tells them to turn LEFT to 270. This is another major fuck up. This would have turned EVA back north into the mountains and directed them toward ACA788 to their left.
2:47 - starts yelling at EVA to turn southbound - does NOT give a turn direction. Last turn direction EVA was instructed to follow was LEFT which would put them arcing over the mountains and on an intercept path with ACA788.
2:58 EVA gives a confused read back, not sure if they should turn left or right. Instead of correcting EVA and telling them to turn right, she ignores the confused read back and tells ACA to maintain 12,000.
3:13 - again tells EVA to turn southbound without giving a turn direction.
3:40-4:00 repeated calls to turn southbound without providing turn direction. Barely gives EVA clearance to climb in time to avoid terrain.
4:14 - EVA asks the controller yet again for clarification on turn direction. The controller ignores this and instead repeats her demand to turn southbound without providing turn direction.
4:30 - EVA finally says fuck it and makes a command decision on turn direction, thankfully choosing the right path on their own.
During this fiasco, the pilot of EVA showed outstanding situational awareness of the airspace. All of EVA's confusion was caused 100% by the retarded controller giving them irrational turn directions and poor phraseology, while ignoring EVA's confused read backs. Part of EVA's confusion was due to their situational awareness. Instead of blindly following the instructions from control, which were obviously wrong, the pilots stopped what they were doing and repeatedly asked the controller for clarification, which the controller promptly ignored.
I agree with that statement. The errors are common. The controller narrowly averted disaster by taking corrective action. That doesn't change one thing about what I just said. It sounds like you have a reading comprehension problem.
suedeslounge huh???????? What are you smokin? The Eva guys showed 0 situational awareness starting when they turned left to go south! If I was them I would have asked um lady? You want me to turn NORTH to head south???!
They were doing what they were told to do by a retarded controller. Chuck Yeager would have been confused by the instructions.
You said it was 100% her fault. And the pilots showed great situational awareness. Theyre both false. Turn left instead of right atc mistakes happen every day. She caught it but the pilots did not comply. Do you get it?
The pilots were in the process of complying when she changed directions. Apparently you're the one who doesn't get it. 777s don't change course on a dime and it takes time to adjust the autopilot.
Grew up hiking/driving all over that mountain hundreds of times. Judging from 5:43, EVA Air B777 went directly into Eaton Canyon toward the giant KZLA-FM tower easily visible from most of LA. The base (terrain) is 5600', so any staff (and passengers) looking out the window would have certainly needed a change of underwear. Then they flew right over Mount Wilson, JUST missing terrain (and even closer to all the radio tower antennae)
Low clouds, low visibility, and rain. Nobody saw anything.
... thought this was cargo.
It was a heavy raining night.
Mike P. There was an eyewitness at the towers who heard the plane climbing up the canyon and saw the lights as they turned towards him. He says he saw faces in the windows of the plane.
You're on a 360 heading. ATC tells you to turn "south".
Left?
Right?
No; it's Immelmann time, baby.
Southbound and southward mean exact opposite directions and are easy to mix up.
@@MikaelLevoniemi they do not?
@@MikaelLevoniemi nope
Time to pull up and go inverted.
Going south bound requires turning left or right. Turning left would have put it in danger of colliding with another plane. The ATC was being ambiguous.
I was on that flight. I kept thinking there's something wrong - why aren't we climbing? Then there's a sharp turn over the observatory and I thought we're in a heap of trouble. My seat happens to look down over the front of the wings and it's a terrifying sight to see how close we were to the observatory!!! Never told my wife about this incident either. She's already scared of flying.
Wowwzzaa. I'm glad you were OK. As a pilot listening to this, watching the radar track, it's chilling.
@THAT Can you please describe what you saw? There was one eyewitness on the ground who was at the towers on top of Mt. Wilson. He states the plane flew over the easternmost tower which puts the plane north of the GPS path that is illustrated on JACDEC. Did you see the observatory or light of the towers from the left or right side of the plane?
Wow...
sure....
I bet the person looking through the telescope thought they had seen the ET mother ship coming to land on their head.
What do you guys think about this occurrence? Many confusing instructions? Wrong or late execution of those instructions?
Let me know!
VASAviation - I think she should be fired immediately and should run a convenience store instead.
VASAviation - the controller messed up a couple HOWEVER, the planes captain should have turned southbound the FIRST time she said to and did 180 as well. Bad job on the pilot though. He should have read the SID correctly and known not to be in the way of mountains
The situation is simple: Controller told them to make a turn at least 4 times, and they kept on flying straight ahead. Pilot not following ATC instructions (however confusing they might be) is STILL pilot error. But the controller is also at fault, as per the standard she should only call out headings, and not general directions...
That being said, she DID call out 180 degrees at first, and the pilots red it back. So at the end if there is an accident is is pilot error: "failing to adhere to ATC instructions"...
I'm a pilot. Neither ATC nor Pilot were very efficient in the exchange, but I think the pilot is slightly more responsible.
For ATC, she should have pressed more. I think she let the plane go too far before really stepping in. Her instructions were messed up when she started getting flustered.
For the pilot, it was clear he was confused. He should have confirmed his instructions with the ATC. Also, on the written tests, there are several uses of the phrases southbound, eastbound and so on. There should be no confusion here. The pilot should have known to immediately turn south. Contrast to what some comments are saying, southbound IS common phrasology. I hear _____bound several times a flight. ATC gave the pilot several directions and he failed to follow them.
Plenty of blame to go around here. ATC didn't correct the pilot when he readback 'left to 180'. Then, pilot didn't start his left turn to 180. ATC got pretty flustered and used incorrect phraseology. Issued conflicting instructions several times on heading and altitude. Got AA2452 call sign wrong, and eventually left a heavy plane go into the mtns at the wrong altitude.
What should have been done when she saw EVA 015 headed north. ATC: "EVA015, you are heading north, and were given 1-8-0 as a heading. EVA 015, immediate RIGHT turn to 180, no delay. EVA 015 climb and maintain 7000 for terrain. Break. Air Canada 788, turn left to 330, expedite climb to 12,000 for separation no delay'.
This is a great video. Seeing many comments regarding ATC performance, I see that nobody is talking about the complacency shown in the first 30 seconds of the video. They are not talking about TAWS or TCAS interference, or the priority of a terrain alert vs a traffic alert.
I live right at the foothill near the Rose Bowl in Pasadena and remember hearing the EVA jet fly overhead. It was a cloudy day and I remember thinking it was odd to hear a big airliner throttle up right above our heads because they typically never fly over us. My gf and I were outside doing something and we both looked up and could hear the jet engines roaring. It sounded like it was 100 feet above our heads but we couldn't see anything because of the low clouds. I had no idea what had happened until at least a couple months later whenI read about this incident in the news.
Really? Because the NTSB report say's this happened at 125am PDT, so I really have doubts about the story you provided.
@@ScottOSaurus People do things outside after midnight sometimes. I do, even if it's sitting on my patio smoking a cigarette. Some of us are just night owls.
Also another thing to note for non-pilots, if you're given radar vectors, ATC assumes terrain and traffic avoidance. Clearly, a left turn would take you over the mountains, north of the airport.
+VASAviation, thank you for posting this. FAA spokesman Ian Gregor has stated to numerous news outlets that the ATC controller erred in telling EVA015 to turn left when she actually meant right. The fact that EVA015 requests a high speed climb would indicate he is well aware of the impending terrain conflict and sought to maintain what he believed was a true and correct order to avoid collision with other traffic.
That said, it is very difficult to arm-chair quarter back this near mishap. At the end of the day let's all be happy no one is dead or injured. My personal impression is that those two flights - ACA788 and EVA015 should not have been permitted to depart in that manner with such proximity in time and space.
Kelley Ryberg ...Ian Gregor is not an ATC and is nothing more than the FAA's spokes mouth. Even though wrong in this case, for many reasons, there are times when an ATC turns the long way. I've done it many, many times.
You're right about the arm-chair. Ever worked air-traffic? We launch aircraft side-by-side ALL THE TIME and it is perfectly safe. ACA came off on a 055° heading and EVA on a 070° heading. The Book (7110.65) says this is the required separation in this situation. She flustered herself with the left turn and couldn't really recover as EVA wasn't doing what she EXPECTED him to do (which was turn right as I'm positive she either thought she said or actually said; the recording is missing). Again, the deal wasn't with ACA it was with the mountains...
And high speed climbs are to get the airplane "cleaned-up" so they can (eventually) climb better and cause less stress on parts.
+Michael Hall - Your comment seems to be borne in an attitude of contempt for FAA management. Moreover, you don't appear to have any concern about how confusing instructions given to pilots by ATC can kill hundreds of people in a matter of seconds. If you really are an active FAA controller I feel frightened for any passengers who unknowingly place their safety in your hands.
But the questions still remain: 1) Who put her in that chair (unsupervised, too), and 2) Why did anyone think she was qualified for SoCal ATC (, let alone any ATC)? #IsmellMOREquotas!
BULLSHIT.
Ever work SoCal?
He's not an ATC; he was claiming to be commercial aircrew before.
#FuckingPunk!
That must of been insane to see a plane flying below the peaks. I've haven't been to Mt. Wilson specifically, but I live west of the planes route, and those mountains get steep fast. I can't imagine watching that happen. Must've been really scary for anyone near by.
must have been scary for the passengers and the crew. You can hear the stress in the pilot's voice as he realizes the gravity of the situation.
There was en eye witness at the transmission towers on Mount Wilson who saw the planes landing lights as it ascended up a canyon in the broken clouds and banked up and over him. He said he saw the people looking out of the windows.
2:27 EVA 015 Heavy , turn left heading of 270,
EVA 015 turns left as instructed ,
2:43 EVA 015 , what are you doing?
This air traffic controller was the whole problem, she couldn't stop mistaking left from right and north from south,
yes, this controller seems less than qualified, at least during this incident.
No audio of the initial turn direction to 180? If she did say "left to 180" it was likely out of habit due to Lax normally being in West traffic...obviously a mistake, but then she gives multiple changes of direction, altitude, and heading to the crew...Right to 180, left to 290, then 270, then just Southbound. Climb, then told to stop the climb...A crew that is IMC, traveling faster than 250 kts, and speaking a second language. It is absolutely the pic's responsibility to know where he is in proximity to terrain, but ATC's performance was dismal at best and clearly sub-standard
Left to 180 is valid. That would result in about 270 degrees of turn, but avoid colliding with something to the right.
BULLSHIT. FUCK OFF (rookie).
@@jamesunger6892 shut up
At least everyone was ok.
SoCal: Turn left, heading 270
EVA: *acknowledges, starts to turn left*
SoCal: What are you DOING?? Turn southbound NOW!
Maybe next time you give an instruction and the pilot proceeds to do exactly what you just told him to, give him better instructions instead of asking him what he's doing. If someone is heading northbound and you tell them to turn southbound, but don't tell them which WAY to turn to point southbound...
I have watched many of your videos in the last few years and is always a pleasure. They are very well made and perfectly executed. One big like and a sub from me :)
Thanks, my friend! :)
Not a big fan of "turn southward". Even within the field of meteorology people screw this one up all the time. E.g. a south wind means from the south but a southward wind means from the north. Just say turn left/right to 180.
it was southbound, but okay.
when I fly I get instructions to turn south or north all the time and it makes perfect sense to me. I'm surprised that a crew of a Triple 7 can't understand that
carlos mendonca And do you turn left or right to turn "southbound"?
The issue was he didn't start turning period. When the controller said turn southbound now, Eva didn't pick up the tone of urgency. It's for either a traffic or terrain conflict, so the lesson for myself and all other pilots is start the turn as soon as the controller says (within safety margins) and worry about a precise heading later
I think in that cockpit pilots started to hear "terrain" and in that case they decided to turn "southbound" cause they didn't understand what she said.
The ATC's instruction to turn "southbound didn't specific whether it was a left or right turn toward the south. The pilot hesitated because turning the wrong way would have put the plane at risk of colliding with another plane.
When I was a kid I wanted to be ATC. Seemed like such a cool job. Now I know myself well enough to know that I'd be horrible at it (and this video confirmed it for me). When my brain starts to get overloaded I will say "left" when I mean "right" and vice-versa. So y'all can thank me for choosing a different career. 😆
LAX has the most occurances of any airport in the world every year. But it seems that the FAA doesn't care but they mention it yearly.
It a highly congested airspace with Hawthorne Airport, Santa Monica, and Torrance Airport all within minutes of each other. Plus all of the VFR traffic along the coast.
***** They don't have the authority to close airports.
Sir, you are no gentleman!
Even so, this dumbass bitch shouldn't have been allowed to handle SoCal! ATC quotas (now too)?
Go fuck off on Twitter, shithead.
Holy Smoke! Mt. Wilson is at 5713 ft and the forest of masts and towers sticks up another 150 ft; there's one mast which may be a lot higher. The mountain stretches quite a bit, it isn't a simple peak. So what the HELL was EVA15 doing there at 5500 ft? I can't believe that the controller did not give precise instructions about turning left or right, since AC788 was on the left.
She doesn't know the difference between left and right
The radar controller's instructions is too.........simple!? She only said turn south and maintain the height. What do you mean turn south? Seriously? It's not a car on the road. She should told the pilot the heading. She told other pilots to turn left or right and the heading, but not EVA's pilot. Why? May be that's why EVA spent more time to "follow" the instruction. He just had to find the heading by himself!!
Evonne Liao She is definitely not a very good air traffic controller
lots of complaints about ATC here but what the fuk's up with that pilot? There is NO excuse for that kind of flying.
Evonne Liao Had to find the heading? It's 180, it's not hard. If he was unsure he should have confirmed - awful all round
why did she not give a heading instruction.
She didn't use standard phraseology.
mart f what is heading is this an aviation word?
only one, "heading" is a standard navigational term used in aviation and elsewhere. Heading is the angle between the direction in which the object's nose is pointing and a reference direction. In aviation the reference direction is true north. So instead of her constant "southbound" she should have said turn right heading 180, expedite. Both the non-English speaking pilot and the ATC were at fault on this one.
Panic. Simply.
If a pilot is struggling to, or unable to maintain a heading ATC will either issue a Cardinal direction (turn south) or simply tell them to enter a turn (Turn right; and then the controller will issue “stop your turn” later)
This plane almost crashed into Mt Wilson directly north of my house and it’s a mountain I’m very familiar with as I’ve hiked it for decades. Just thinking about a plane anywhere close to there is terrifying..It’s a miracle they didn’t hit that rising terrain up there.
I didn't know Clown was working traffic that day.
Heading 270 is dead-west, if EVA015 was to follow directions, she was turning him directly into ACA 788! WTF? No wonder that guy was shitting his pants!
I fly this route LAX TPE a lot and this was unbelievable to hear. Glad ultimately nothing happened but damn.
Everybody rattled until the VOZ8 chimes in....its always the aussie.
The lady is in over her head, she's going to engineer a mid-air collision if she is allowed to stay in her position. SoCal is not the place for a trainee or a new controller, maybe ABQ?
It's a cluster to say the least, TCAS would give a resolution advisory to avoid the conflict between both aircraft, the controller realised they were close and complicated things when she messed up. In the event of close calls pilots have to trust TCAS instead of controllers as the system is more effective however the crew may not have had a TCAS alert
Jonathan Lee ... There was no conflict with ACA once she chopped-off EVA. The conflict was EVA with the mountains (pointed at them at 5000').
As posted, you got a plug from the LA Times with a link to your channel. Well deserved!
Local news out of LA stated that she (the ATC) gave a wrong instruction to the EVA flight and spoke of her "snippy" tone with the flight she nearly caused to collide with another plane.
alrightythen888
Regardless of her "reason", it's not professional and reflects ill on her job performance.
You're fucked up.
The instructions are WRONG. Is NEVER "turn south" (WHATEVER THAT IS)
It is turn right (or left) at 180 heading. Turn south is not an standard instruction, it creates confusion.
That kind of verbiage gets pilots killed...
Agree 110% Especially in an urgent situation. Especially with non-English crew.
Especially since if the plane is facing roughly north or south, then the pilot cannot know whether they're meant to turn left, or right, and thus cannot comply with the request.
As a pilot i agree with you that is a big misunderstanding between ATC and the pilot induced by an instruction error cased by ATC. But, honestly.. If I’m in duty , I’m heading northbound and the controller instructs me to heading southbound with that worry I immediately turn to heading 180 whatever the reason. Here the ATC instructed the pilot to turn southbound several times and it’s honestly embarrassing the laps of time useful for the pilot to understand he had to put this damn nose of the aircraft towards hdg 180.
@@francesconotarnicola6954 I hope you aren't really a pilot...if you are on duty and do a 180 i hope FAA revoke your license. What if ATC wanted to you to do hdg 180 to the RIGHT because of obstruction to the left & your stupid brain tells you turn 180 no matter what & you start a left turn right into the obstruction.......In this case, a left turn to 180 would result in even worse FAA mandatet separation between the 2 aircrafts.......How can so many in the comments here get this simple thing wrong, how can any of you think that turning to 180 from 360 is obvious, direction matters ALOT, it all depends on terrain, traffic & other obstructions & airspace class etc etc in which direction an airplane should turn to 180....
Also, its not even obvious to do a right turn to 180 even of a current heading of 120, there are cases that turning right from 120 to 180 could end in tragic & a left turn to 180 from 120 is the correct pattern entry or airspace entry (like some entries to Innsbruck). "Turn south" or southbound means absolutely nothing without turn direction
News coverage is pointing at poor ATC instructions and now I am getting the reason why.
Give the men a damn heading!!!
If that ATC was seeing (at least) what we were seeing represented on that screen, it was so obvious what was going wrong. And the constant "southbound" calls, instead of a specific heading, should in all honesty be enough for this person to no longer work in ATC. Just dreadful. We see so many skilled ATC on this channel .... and this was like an untrained high school kid 'having a go' at ATC.
In all honesty if a person doesn't understand south,north,east,west he has no business operating a pickup truck let alone a passenger plane.
But we've got to have more diversity in the towers.
What a bad controller. Turn south means nothing. You give a heading and you give a direction. You learn that on the first day of training right?
*Yes, and in a PANIC you resort to the SIMPLEST form of direction (north, south, east, west)* . A heading is NOT at all intuitive. The four main directions on a compass ARE however.
Any pilot worth his salt would know what SOUTH means. If you're a pilot and you don't understand what SOUTH means, you don't deserve a licence.
*Furthermore, EVERY pilot should know where terrain "features" are prior to takeoff and before landing* . A terrain "feature" is something noteworthy that poses a hazard to pilots. When you fly into Toronto, you're aware of where the CN Tower is. It's tall enough to be something pilots need to be aware of. When you fly into or out of Calgary, you would know where the Rocky mountains are and how HIGH you need to be to clear them safely.
Any pilot worth having a licence KNOWS about these things before they reach them. It's part of the FLIGHT PLANNING stage. If you're flying from Calgary to Seattle, you know that you're flying over the rockies. You don't blindly go west of Calgary at 5000 feet unless you have a death wish.
@@taekwondotime you're an idiot.
@@8literbeater agreed. Buddy thinks he's a pilot and an atc
Intuitive Observations what's the difference between heading and direction?
2:52 even the EVA pilot wanted to confirm the heading on the readback but realised she’s just said southbound. What the hell is southbound
Southbound means fly South. It that not standard terminology for an ATC/pilot communications? I am really asking. Does ATC always have to give specific headings or something?
That was unclear ATC. Really confusing. Not using HDG but general directions + it could be done much more efficiently. She could left the eva to go east for another 1-2 minutes and then she could call the left turn = this mean Air canada would be already enough space from them in terms of distance and altitude difference too and they did not have to stop their climb.
if the Eva was efficient on following directions Air Canada wouldn't have to go through those measures.
She gave a heading twice! Right HDG 180 and left HDG 270. If a experienced crew that gets to fly a 777 doesn't understand that, then they shouldn't be in a cockpit.
Overlord the Eva is 6000 feet below the Air Canada - this is a CFIT issue.
By the time she issued a stop climb they were both at 5000-6000 if I remember correctly and this could be avoided and everything what followed could be avoided too. Simple.
I think (this is my guess) the ATC meant for EVA to turn right from 090 to 180 initially, but said "left" by mistake and didn't catch it when the pilot (correctly) read it back as a left turn. So then she shifts her attention to another plane or two under her control (routine), and when she looks back to EVA, she sees the plane heading north (partway through the big left turn she'd ordered, but she may not see that they're turning), the exact opposite of what she thought she'd told them to do. So then she instructs "right to 180", which she thinks is a repeat of her previous instruction, but to the pilots is a reversal of what they'd previously been told. The pilots start to reverse their turn, but that takes time, and so when the controller looks again, she sees the plane which she's told to turn south (in her mind, twice) still heading roughly north. That's when she tells EVA to stop their climb (and I think EVA had requested the faster climb in the knowledge that there was terrain to their north), and gets hung up for a minute or so on the potential conflict with the Air Canada flight. Obviously two planes on converging courses at the same altitude is a serious danger, and she is entirely correct to address that, but in doing so she briefly loses track of the CFIT danger.
By now, her mental picture of her instructions and the EVA flight's responses simply doesn't correspond to what's actually happening or what the pilots are seeing, which keeps adding to the confusion. The controller sees a plane that isn't following the instructions she's giving, unaware that she actually gave different (and more conflicting) instructions than she thinks. At that point the EVA crew has been told to turn first left, then right, then left again, each new instruction coming before they can complete the previous one. They know that they're flying generally northward when the controller wants them to go south, but every time they start turning to get to that heading, they get told to turn back the other way. The last precise turn they've been given (left to 270) is toward another plane that they know is nearby, and is inconsistent with the following (non-standard) instruction to turn south. They know that their generally northward course is taking them toward terrain, but every time they want to climb and get clear of the terrain, they're told to stop because of conflict with the same plane they're simultaneously being directed to turn toward. From their perspective, they're following each ATC instruction correctly, but those instructions don't make sense and are moving the plane towards danger, and everything they attempt to address the danger is immediately countermanded.
The errors that led into this situation were natural human mistakes, but they were definitely on the part of the ATC, not the flight crew.
Someone is going to get a teddy bear in their pool
First day on the job for ATC?
0:22 ATC “[...] turn heading 0090 “
And so begin the litany of faults...
The ATC seems shockingly bad at her job. This was the first of so many mistakes, seemingly under little pressure she couldn’t get the heading correct - 4 digits , really ? The pilot then asks to confirm heading bearing, and comms worsened from there on.
She was unhelpful and unprofessional and hopefully was removed from scope ASAP. Not sure further training can correct a disinterested , imprecise mindset, especially when lives are at stake but hey ho.
This video should of being titled " 90 seconds of pure terror" Caution Terrain Caution Terrain! Pull Up Pull Up Pull up. For the part of the pilot he was put in a very difficult position and he was being directed into a mountain by an obstinent ATC
Yeah they’re taking off in to the wind which in this case is blowing offshore which is very rare for LAX. She probably got confused right off the bat with the left and right turn because normally they takeoff straight out to the ocean instead of taking off inland
Maybe ATC shouldn't say southbound but an exact heading of 180
That's correct.
Yes, especially with pilots whose native language isn't English, numbers are understood more than words.
thisaccountisfake they didn't comprehend 180 the first 14 times, why would they understand it the next 14 times?
jfsa380 they understood but were waiting for her to give them a turn direction and they kept asking but she didn't give them one
Michael Benson Yes, it is due to poor communication skill for that ATC, she should confirm and response
Turn right heading 180 climb and maintain 7 thousand. Easy. Controller needs trainin' .
... needs to be shown the door (FUCKING PERIOD)!
She isn't a controller anymore.
Any plans on uploading a vid on the Colombian 727 crash that happened today? Not sure if there'd be ATC recordings, but seeing as they were able to get in the air it would be interesting to hear what they said to ATC before crashing. Great video!
1. I'm not a pilot yet, 2. have flown extensively in single-engine planes (both my mom and dad were GA pilots, Cessna 172, Mooney (2), and a Teal for splashing fun), 3. I'm a bit obsessed lately with flying finally as I'm now officially old and have my eyes on a local school here, and, 4. I did NOT stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night... lol.
Ok, given that disclaimer so I don't get reamed out too badly by all of you.... and I'm a big fan of VASAviation (I'll be one step ahead of the game when I do start taking lessons just from watching (listening?) to these videos.. thanks VASAviation!), and not even attempting to counter any of the pilots' and controllers' comments here already pointing out the problems that were obvious with the ATC (and trying very hard not to respond to the few racist and sexist trolls that are not usually commenting on flying videos of any type, especially here on this channel... I have some choice words for you but I'll just leave it at that), I'd still like to give my inexperienced amateur armchair-pilot opinions (because hell, it's Sunday morning, my wife isn't here for a few hours, and I can just chill and watch flying videos without being yelled at to get off my ass and go work on the car or something... ha)
One, for those who are bringing up a language barrier, pointing at the EVA pilot, this seems highly unlikely as Taiwan is not mainland China, and English is though not a second language there, it's pretty common at least in the populated cities like the capitol... so that's a non-issue. Having a non-English/non-American accent does not imply a language barrier. My parents are Italian, and their accents are quite thick even though they've been in the US since the early 1950's, so assuming there's a language barrier just because of an accent is just straight up ignorant... just stick to the approved flying vernacular and you're good to go.
Also, I think everyone is forgetting about the performance of the plane ('Heavy' being one obvious identifying term, the other being, hey it's a freakin' 777!), and might be a little too fixated on the connection between the audio responses of both the ATC and the PIC in relation to the graphic displayed. I would guess (I could be wrong) that the graphic isn't that accurate, and only a general approximation of the flight patterns. We may see the plane going straight, not responding at all but I'm gonna guess the PIC was all over the sky attempting to follow some confusing ATC commands, albeit in a slow way cause, well, it's a freakin' Heavy. It seems easy to put some blame on the pilot, as he does seem to not respond to the ATC's initial commands, but we're really not privy to his actual control movements, or what he actually hears (static, some other plane stepping' on his transmission, etc.). But what I'm confused about, which does put some of the blame on the pilot, is he knew the terrain around the airport, knows his altitude and direction in relation to that terrain, and given that this is a modern plane I'm sure has all kinds of warning horns and lights flashing about obstacles in his flight path (I'm sure you pilots can educate me on those avionics), which even with the ATC's obviously confusing commands, he's still, no matter what, the 'Pilot In Command', and the plane and his passengers are his responsibility... He needs to take whatever corrective action is necessary to ensure everyone's safety, and if he has to (mostly) ignore the ATC, so be it. It reminds me of the Cirrus crash with 3 fatalities of all aboard, at the Hobby Airport in Houston back in 2016, where the ATC (there being two of them, which was a problem in itself), basically patterned the pilot back and forth until the stress became too much for the very accommodating (too accommodating) pilot and made a fatal control mistake (RIP). There was a point where the PIC should've said, enough is enough, you guys are gonna get me killed, I'm outta here.... I think that's what the EVA pilot should've done as well.
Luckily, with a heavy dose of luck, the 777 didn't put a big hole in the mountains there. Phew! That was indeed close.
First, pilot reads back left 180 but never does it, she's says to turn right 180 and expedite, pilot reads back, but does not do it. She was trying to maintain separation and at the same time keep the ANA from hitting terrain as he was not turning. EVA was confused and slow to react or not at all. The planes had 5000' vert. separation as ANA approached mountains. 3 separate commands from ATC to turn ANA 015 but pilot does not execute, very bad on pilot.
Eva was confused on which way was Right which way was left because she clearly told them to turn right 180 twice and he repeated it and continued his left turn
Air Canada was in no danger, they were separated by 2000 feet of altitude.
I think TCAS had a heavly contribution for this rising confusion on pilot's side, it's a dilema because TCAS has the primary autority, then ATC possible unaware of tcas instructing pilots to deviate from her orders, things start to get very confusing in the cockpit, we already have a DHL that colided with a russian airlines after one airplane decide to follow ATC orders to climb, and the other aircraft was clibing when tcas ordered.
Almost a dejavu in this clip.
Samuel Sann TCAS was not involved.
You seem confused. It's was not ANA. It was an EVA 777!!!! Your english seems just as bad as the english of the EVA crew.
Mt Wilson is 6634 feet his altitude was 7000 that means he had 366 feet of clearance if he continued on his present heading . Thats cutting it close
Knob Job Not including the towers and other structures on top of the mountains!
... now try flying in and out of stall buffet, on a moonless night, 200' AGL over the sea, conducting an anti-submarine warfare mission. #ThankAveteran!
Wow I fly there in Santa Fe airspace, usually around 5000'. Good thing I wasn't there Friday :/
In his defense, he’s asking for a heading and she keeps saying southbound
No, she gave him multiple headings and then directions... dude kept flying in a straight line after he told her he was turning.
@@wrayday7149 It sounded like the cockpit was very busy and there were likely loud alarms going on such as TCAS, so they likely missed a few calls. Giving word directions is never a good idea as it isn't very clear, especially for non-native speakers.
Wray Day you’re not wrong, the Eva pilot screwed up, my personal guess would be they were either relatively low-time, or poorly trained, or were not proficient operating in US airspace, had their hands full trying to decipher their charts, etc, and became task-overloaded, combined with a language barrier, also possible that they were dealing with something unusual we don’t know about but didn’t know how to communicate the issue in English, who knows...either way, it’s no excuse, the pilot in command had the responsibility to maintain aircraft control and comply with ATC instructions in that airspace. But the controller made mistakes also. It should have been obvious she was dealing with either a problem at worst, or at best a significant language barrier..instead of getting upset and potentially flustering the pilots more than they already were, she should have firmly, but CALMY, continued providing vectors/headings instead of flip flopping from headings to “southbound” which she continued doing as the situation escalated likely adding to the confusion in the cockpit. Multiple times he asks for a heading trying to figure out the issue, and multiple times she doesn’t provide the pilot with what he asked for, that’s a problem. The key to effective comms is calm, consistent, standardized terminology and instructions, she didn’t maintain that, which in my opinion likely exacerbated the problem. Ive never asked for a heading or vector and gotten a reply of southbound/northbound etc...if I ask for a heading or a vector I expect a numerical heading and if I don’t get one I’m going to continue to maintain aircraft control and continue to ask for a heading until I get it. As my first instructor, an old ex Navy test pilot, used to say about controllers years ago, “you’re down there because I’m up here, give me what I need”
@@eyalgreen8285 Just remember the aircraft has a heading indicator in degrees, it also has a compass.... and even if both of those were out, ATC just told him to turn left.
If I were to SWAG this incident I would guess the pilots were trying to set their flight in the computer and they weren't paying attention to where they were actually going....
If I had to issue corrective actions on the ATC's part... telling a plane that is flying towards a mountain to stop climb was bad. ATC should of deviated the other aircraft that was responding out of danger. ATC should of told the pilot they were about to fly into a mountain, turn away now or declare emergency.
ATC managed the situation pretty badly but it really wasn't helped by the EVA crew who just seemed to be doing their own thing. ATC should use standard phraseology with foreign crews (e.g. turn right heading 180), but 'southbound' shouldn't be that hard to understand...
I counted at least 4 instructions by the ATC that were in standard phraseology, none of them brought the right action by the EVA crew.
Just counting heading instructions:
1) The mistaken instruction to turn left to 180, which the crew failed to challenge and read back. They began executing this.
2) 1st instruction to turn right heading 180, which the crew reads back but fails to execute.
3) 1st instruction to turn left heading 270, which the crew reads back and begins to execute (but slowly). They are probably already getting confused by the different instructions.
Then she starts up with the southbound nonsense, and fails to answer the crew asking to confirm whether she wants a left or right turn. When asked to confirm the heading she just says southbound. She then just keeps repeating turn southbound (while confusing it with northbound herself). Then while an obviously stressed crew repeatedly sends messages, she ignores it and talks to other planes, again without giving a clear instruction using standard phraseology.
So all in all, there are 3 standard heading instructions issued to the crew, the 1st of which was a straight up mistake, the 2nd was standard and correct but the crew failed to execute, the 3rd was standard but potentially confusing as it conflicted with the previous instruction. After that - i.e. when the crew were closing on terrain, they were stressed, and standard phraseology was most important - she repeatedly told them to fly 'southbound'.
Again, I would have expected the crew to understand this but there's a reason standard phraseology exists, and it's due to precisely this reason. Had the controller repeatedly said 'turn right heading 180' she would have got a much better response.
This still doesn't absolve the EVA crew - they acted badly and at the end of the day it's their job to avoid terrain. Their situational awareness let them down. But ATC instructions certainly have a hand in this.
Ben Kolbeck Yeah, I pretty much agree with you on that one.
Agreed. Standard phraseology is very important, especially for foreign crews. They will be expecting turn direction, then heading, then altitude. When trying to understand and work out what ATC wants when English is a second language and over a radio with background noise it can be very stressful for foreign crews. The ATC became stressed when pilots didn't execute instructions as expected and made the situation worse than it needed to be.
Ben the best summary yet. 100% agree
1:24s "Left heading 180".Acknowledged.
Instead of saying southbound maybe saying a heading would be more suitable because the EVA air pilots Cleary didn’t understand. Not saying the controller is at fault. I think both are at fault.
Aren't planes not really supposed to "high speed climb" and "turn 180" at the same time?
Yes, but they are also not really supposed to crash into mountains. XD
Turn southbound? Lol reminds me of when my dad says turn the other way on the freeway
Lol
Ikr
After recently reading about Obama affirmative action quotas for the FAA this all makes sense now.
I don't know much about standard phraseology, but the pilot's transmission at 2:54 could have been interpreted as a confirmation of the ATC instruction, but from context (3:08) looks like they meant it as a question. All that time the maintain 5000' was still in effect...
EVA 15 Heavy was initially asked for a LEFT turn to 180. Crew complied. Later on, the controller, instead of giving a clear heading and turn direction, demands the flight "turn southbound", "turn southbound now", without stating in which direction or giving a specific heading. Whatever clearance was filed, this vectoring was not specific enough to join the departure filed.That is a high traffic area with Burbank, Long Beach, Ontario, Santa Monica, Hawthorne and Comptoin traffic within a 50 mile radius. Additionally, operations at night often have traffic departing westbound with inbound landings to the east. That controller should sharpen up the instructions.
The controller gave clear instructions many times, they pilots simply ignored all the instructions.
All the necessary ingredients for a disaster. All it would have taken was a faster jet or anything to pull her eyes off that flight. I am the *pilot* and if there are mountains around *I* am responsible for not hitting them regardless of what ATC says. That whole dam area is a nightmare and that comes from someone who flew into Atlanta every night.
ATL is a breeze compared to LAX and the SoCal/SoCal MOAs.
I hope both licenses were pulled for this.
Brian Rock pulling someones license is a big deal. these people have invested probably 2000+ hours of their lives to aviation and tens of thousands of dollars. you might want to give someone another chance-or atleast an opportunity to explane themselves before potentially ruining their lives
Scott Walters boo fucking hoo. Am I to understand that we should be sensitive to the financial well-being of someone who can't understand simple, repeated directions and put hundreds of lives at risk? NO. License revoked. Fuck your career, you're an idiot who has no business in the sky.
Not when they almost killed an entire plane full of people. I work in a specialty trained profession, one fuckup and im out. It comes with the job.
Derangedteddy I understand what you're saying. But you must remember that they're only human. If someone told me I could never fly again because of a mistake I made I would be heartbroken, like rape my mom and make me watch heartbroken.
Scott Walters--When an ATC gives an incorrect heading to a plane, nearly causing a crash and the possible/probable death of everyone on board along with those on the other plane and those on the ground, she can--and should--lose her license regardless of how much money or how much time she has invested in her job. The FAA is investigating this and concern should be expressed for her snippy attitude with the plane she misdirected.
YOU. ARE. FIRED !!!
Do not show your face at the ATC facility again.
Alright, messed up the left/right turn to 180, but the aircraft still continued on a northerly heading. When there was a traffic conflict, she told them to turn south... While that's not 100% standard, if you're a pilot and you're flying on a northerly heading and you're told to turn SOUTH, why would you continue going north?
Amazing video! I was just wondering if you could do a video on an El Al 767 that departed Toronto CYYZ yesterday and returned to the airport due to some sort of mechanical issues. some reported that it was an engine fire but I'm not too sure.
Hi Thomas, this video will be published on Sunday. It was an einge failure.
To 180 with a direction of turn is crucial. How hard is right to 180 FFS!
on that exact same night I took eva flight 11 , which is the flight that left a few minutes before flight 15. Technically I was lucky to be on flight 11
What did "southbound" mean in this situation? Kept turn left heading 90 and collided with Air Canada or right heading 90. Northbound, southbound, eastbound/westbound wasn't an inappropriate instruction to the pilot.
Good thing I did not hear breaking news plane crash in la, their was confusion on both parts and thank god everything turned out ok
same.
How bout: EVA015 terrain alert immediately turn right heading 180, climb and maintain 12000.
She gave them an altitude that was surely below the MVA in that area. Crazy. She was lucky that airplane was lucky and missed the mountains that day.
Of course it’s the pilot’s responsibility to not run into things. This pilot should have been more assertive.
He should have known there was terrain close by to the north. He would have been getting terrain warnings in the cockpit. He should have told ATC what he was going to do to avoid the terrain. He didn’t. He was obviously very confused. She should have been lots more attentive to an air craft on a collision course with terrain.
The enhanced ground proximity warning system and the traffic collision avoidance system were probably going off like gangbusters. Those take precedence...as the EVA crew is trying to avoid the San Gabriel Mountains and the TV and radio transmitters on it.
¡Gracias!
Observatory Staff: "Funny...I don't normally look down to see the planes around here."
If they did go around at 5500 feet, they were 150-200 feet BELOW every mountain peak in the area. That quota-hire ATC almost flew them right into a mountain.
I swear she used to dispatch for the Union Pacific.
Perfect example of affirmative action
Passive racism, how cute.
Controller Induced Oscillation.
New term, I think I just coined it.
The controller reacted with opposite direction vectors, each time she didn’t see the progression of what she expected/hoped to see. Not accounting for the lag in turning from left to right, then left, and the this aircraft was now high speed (285kias), leveling climb (5000’). The time it takes to roll out, and into the next turn is significant, and eats up forward distance until the track of the turn starts to show on radar. Not seeing the progress the controller was hoping for, and the obvious stress to get the aircraft back into a position away from high terrain, she issued opposing vectors, which just compounded the severity of this incident.
Hence, understanding PIO from the pilots perspective, it is logical to conclude the same lagging controller inputs via vectors, creating an unsafe condition, could be referred to as………Controller Induced Oscillation.
PS. I saw the google earth replay in the QC office, which showed the right wingtip missed the ridge line by 33’ feet.
The ATC is at fault. She put them on the wrong heading at the start of it all and then tried shifting the blame to the flight deck. If she has simply given them a heading correction instead of trying to argue all of this would have been avoided.
So it's night and the pilots probably don't fly to LAX more than a couple of times a month. They are getting bombarded with confusing atc communications every few seconds... it's quite simple use correct phraseology and this whole video would have been 30 seconds long.
She assigned the incorrect heading and then tried to correct it by arguing with the flight crew. She's wrong end of story. But I forget the great ol USA must be always right and the Asian airlines are at fault for not being Americans.
Riiiiiight.
Have any evidence? This sounds like a false claim without evidence.
BestHomes2 Well in this case she was fired.
I hope so before she kills a lot of people.
This is beyond horrendous for both parties. Pilots reading back instructions but not following them? ATC gives some confusing instructions but turn south is very clear.
They read instructions back wrong and ATC did not even correct them. Had the ATC stick to standard ICAO phraseology (especially with foreign crews) this would not have happened. Also turn south which direction? Left they would have flown near Air Canada (they probably had him on TCAS) and that also added confusion to the pilots.
Correct. The ATC initially stated the WRONG direction (north). ATC was slow to correct the error. The ATC needed to demand an immediate RIGHT turn to south. ATC never described the direction of the turn that she wanted. ATC also should have demanded a climb to 7000' much earlier as the plane was heading to the 5700' mountains. The pilot was bad. The ATC was horribly bad.
bartholomew9999 Blaming the pilot more than the ATC
TheMaroon - me too. Both were bad but the pilot's only responsibility on the climb-out is not to hit other aircraft and not to hit mountains. Altitude is life. You should be seeking altitude as soon as possible, NOT FLYING AROUND AT 5,000 FT in North America.
So turn south, in SoCal ... what heading (as it's SoCal)???
"Turn southbound." What a stupid command.
ATC gave a heading multiple times, and it was ignored. She repeatedly instructed heading 180 and yet the pilot continued north. Only then did she instruct "turn south".
@@noxious89123 She also several times instructed left turn to 270, right into the airspace of the AC-788, left, right, left right, right, southbound, shitty controller, can't blame the pilots when her instructions is all over the place & they are busy with the terrain collision warnings.....
@@Jeppelelle Seriously. And there's the biggest error of all: "stop climbing." "Maintain 5,000." "Maintain 5,000." "Stop your climb." To a plane you just pointed north. Into the fucking mountains. To the people blaming the pilots for this debacle: (1) the NTSB found the exact opposite; and (2) are you shitting me?
She said turn south? Well, which way? Because it's very clear that there's another aircraft right nearby them, which is why the ATC just gave them a string of twelve rushed, contradictory instructions. They can go right or left, and behind one of those doors is another airplane. And it's one in the morning. And they're off-course (because she told them to turn left). And they've been told NOT to climb, yet their TCAS is screaming that there's hard stuff in front of them. Who wouldn't be utterly baffled here?
You can't tell me you don't know that 180=south
@@mszak8869
Stop being daft. That's not the point. You know there is another aircraft nearby, close enough that the controller's been throwing a fit, and flying parallel to you. You do not know if it's to your left or right. It's dark. You can't see anything. You're told: turn around. Which way do you turn? Left or right? Are you really going to just flip that coin?
And if your answer is yes, you have no business being in a high-risk profession. People don't usually die when someone makes one mistake. They die when that first mistake impairs the participants' judgment or rushes a decision, and then someone makes another, worse mistake in response. Turning left may have been that worse mistake. Which, as it turns out, is exactly why the NTSB squarely blamed the controller for failing to RECOVER the situation.
He wanted to take the scenic route towards the mountains.
Wow, several things went wrong on that flight. First off the controller was behind the power curve the entire time
Give a feaking heading woman stop saying turn southbound that doesn't tell you where to go say "EVA 015 Turn Right heading 180 climb and maintain 7000" That makes life simple You have now defined where you want the aircraft in 3 dimensional space.
She also had air Canada turn to early so it turned inside the flight track of EVA. It looked like they had planned to get EVA out of the TRACON area via a north Ventura departure which is surprising that they didn't have them do a left turn cross over Long Beach and exit the area over Catalina. But with Air Canada's early turn and parallel climb that put them into conflict and that's why she kept EVA low.
The Pilot needs a check ride and some time with an instructor. If he would have turned the first time he was ordered no problem would have presented itself. My guess is that he and the Pilot Flying got behind the departure procedure He should have made a few proactive radio calls and been aware of where he was he could have avoided the situation
Her problem was turning AC early...creating a TCAS issue. Subsequent instructions then created a EGPWS issue.
@@AEMoreira81 I said that
Oh, wow. I guess everybody involved aged a few years on that day.
is there an investigation going on in this case?
Yes.
Yes, ATC was removed from controlling and given some sort of desk duty, don't know what happened to pilot but they're normally fired in these types of situations.
why is she still employed? (I smell) quotas!
James Unger clearly
James Unger Really? 👀
I suspect that the ATC made the mistakes of mixing up the commands to EVA015 and ACA788 twice. ACA788 took off and contacted SoCal Departure 35 seconds later after EVA015.
40 seconds later the ATC gave EVA015 the "left heading 180" command. It might have been a slip of tongue since ACA788 (LAX to YYZ) was due to get a left turn to go north. The ATC was thinking about changing ACA788's course -- it had not changed the course after taking-off -- and said "left" instead of "right" in the command to EVA015.
38 seconds later, the ATC realized the mistake. She asked EVA015 to turn right heading 180. The pilots were complying that and read back "pass heading 010."
19 seconds later, the ATC instructed ACA788 "left heading 360".
21 seconds later, the ATC instructed EVA015 "left heading 270".
Here she sent the two aircraft in a conflicting course again. She probably wanted ACA788 "left heading 270" to have more separation between the two aircraft. Instead, due to some unknown reasons, she gave the wrong command to the wrong aircraft.
14 seconds later, the ATC screamed "EVA015 heavy, what are you doing?, turn southbound now ! ....."
Was it not possible to have ACA788 turn left to clear the altitude for a safe climb instead of trying to vector the plance away from the mountains?
This intensely scares me.
Control tower Fu*ked up big time ! This was a disaster waiting to happen, the captain was smart and alert enough to avoid disaster. EVA Air very, very lucky to avoid disaster. Remarkably EVA Air maintains disaster-free record. The woman in control tower should be FIRED !
I am a senior Bank executive and apart from being a frequent flyer....know nuts about planes but am deeply interested in this highly complex transport.
As a layman then.... I heard ATC and EVA go on and on about maintaining 7000 ft...but turns out as per the tracker that they were flying happily at 5500 !!! In which language does 7000 translate as 5500 ? I mean there is no mention of 5500 in the entire communication sequence.
Pardon my ignorant doubt.....or were they midway into their climb to 7000....whoosh! Damned lucky !!!!!
Can't tell if she gave him the left turn to heading 180 from heading 090 but he read it back and she didn't correct him so this is what got the ball rolling into all the confusion. She expecting a right turn EVA 15 turns left, time for a little positive control of the EVA 15. Saw too many missed read backs get controllers into
situations.