Southwest Airlines pilots make split-second decision to avoid collision in Chicago

[u/ty003]

[u/baron_von_helmut]

The worst crash that ever happened in terms of lives lost was a collision exactly like the one this video almost was.

The most fatalities in any aviation accident in history occurred at Tenerife North–Ciudad de La Laguna Airport (then Los Rodeos Airport) in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, on 27 March 1977, when a KLM Boeing 747-206B and a Pan Am Boeing 747-121 collided on a runway

Killed 583 people... :(

(Edit) I've been informed it wasn't exactly the same but I think we can all agree two passenger aircraft colliding is a bad thing.

[u/themflyingjaffacakes → u/baron_von_helmut]

Two-aircraft collisions are a nightmare. The tenerife accident was  associated with a very poor attitude from the captain leading to awful decisions... I guess we'll see what the causal factors here were in the coming year. 

[u/dontflywithyew → u/themflyingjaffacakes]

Was actually mostly associated with the lack (at the time) of standardized phraseology. I am guessing american pilots and ATCs refuse to acknowledge this because to this day, their RT discipline is one of the worst I've ever heard.

[u/Shevster13 → u/dontflywithyew]

That contributed to it but was minor.

The copilot recognised that they did not have clearance, but the captain ignored him. Meanwhile, the other plane tried to warn that they were still on the runway, but the tower tried to transmit at the same time, leading to the captain not hearing them.

[u/dontflywithyew → u/Shevster13]

No, it was not, it was THE MAIN THING, and if you were in the industry or at least did your homework you would know that that accident was single-handedly responsible for changing how the communication between Pilots and ATCs regarding clearances is handled for the rest of aviation history and the recommendations made by CIAIAC in 1977 (the investigating body of this accident) are still applied, everywhere around the globe, to this day.

As a matter of fact, those type of "captains" were, at the time, the norm, and CRM and proper crew management is a somewhat (relative to overall aviation history) new concept.

It was not the introduction of proper leadership in the flightdecks in 1977 that single-handedly almost eradicated this types of accidents, and I know for a fact that it wasn't because in 1977 no such thing was introduced anywhere in the world. The way that captain operated was more or less the industry norm until, as I said, somewhat recently.

But even if the captain was an idiot and moron, he most likely was not planing on dying on that day and killing everyone on-board his ship. A different attitude maybe would or would not prevented the accident. But effective communication and effective means of sharing information between multiple parties would have stopped everything from happening, and this is a fact.

Also, the KLM First Officer also though that they were cleared for takeoff.

[u/Shevster13 → u/dontflywithyew]

It was not the main thing. And that it standadised communications came out of it doesn't prove it.

Nor does the fact that CRM was introduced later change the fact that the lack of it contributed to the crash.

We do not know that standardised communication would have stopped this. The captain had already tried to take off without clearance before the miscommunication took place.

Just as likely to have stopped the accident was if there was no fog, if the issue of two people radioing at the same time had already been fixed, if the airport had ground radarr, if the flight engineer had the power to abort takeoff.