One of the many interesting talks at EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”) 2026 was by James Schreiber, a U.S. Navy veteran-turned-IBM-patent-lawyer with a passion for seaplanes.
First, there is no reason that seaplanes can’t be part of a modern navy. The ShinMaywa US-2 is a four-engine monster with tremendous range in service with Japan (source):
Here’s the radius of search and rescue action:
Contrary to what we tell MIT students, a seaplane actually can land in real waves (up to about 10′ in this case):
(If the Canadians weren’t sending so many of their tax dollars to Hamas, they could have purchased water bombing versions of this magnificent 120,000+ lb. beast and preserved U.S. air quality.)
We learned that one of the most interesting periods of our U.S. Navy was the 1950s. The USAF had gained ascendancy in government and the doctrine was to destroy our enemies via strategic bombing from land-based airplanes, such as the then-new B-52 (considered a short-term solution at the time, a stopgap until the glorious age of supersonic bombers), and ballistic missiles. The Navy’s funding requests for new aircraft carriers were denied and, thus, the Navy tacked (so to speak) toward submarines and sea-based airplanes. The Navy had designs for jet-powered fighters, bombers, and transport seaplanes. The Convair F2Y Sea Dart is the most famous example, a supersonic fighter that first flew in 1953. For raining down destruction on our enemies (back when we actually wanted to win wars!), the Martin P6M SeaMaster first flew in 1955. For moving troops and vehicles from harbor to harbor, the Convair R3Y Tradewind, which first flew in 1954 (a little heavier than the above-mentioned Japanese seaplane and, therefore, potentially even better for our brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters trying to fight fires in Canada with whatever funding scraps they have left over from serving as the Palestinians’ logistics arm).
Part of the 1950s rationale for a fleet of sea-based aircraft was that they’d be more challenging for the enemy to find and target than runways and monster-sized aircraft carriers. Perhaps that rationale is even more, uh, rational today? Let’s consider our gradual surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran (can’t be called a “war” because we apparently don’t have any ambition of winning, in which winning would be defined as destroying the Islamic Republic’s oil and electricity industries so that they wouldn’t be able to rebuild and run weapons factories). The ships of the Iranian Navy that were larger than an aircraft were quickly destroyed by the U.S. On our side, our fixed bases, such as Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, have proved vulnerable to Iranian missiles.
Readers: What do you think about resurrecting the 1950s idea?
There has never been any significant progress in aviation without first an improvement in engines. A low-power high-efficiency turbine engine, for example, would enable the creation of all kinds of dramatically superior aircraft. But none of the kit companies or even the certified four-seat aircraft companies can readily afford to invest what is required.
Enter Turbotech, a startup in the Islamic Republic of France. They say that they have a 140 hp turboprop engine that burns fuel at approximately the same rate as a 140 hp Rotax (piston) engine
How long before this can be dropped into a certified airframe? The founders said that if everything goes perfect and nothing at all has to be changed in their current design, the engine could be EASA/FAA-certified in three years.
I hope to proved wrong about the 2028 date (three years from 2025), but it seems that the engine is more or less available in a more-or-less-certified airplane, the Carbon Cub:
It’s $690,000 as a “builder-assist” kit airplane (the owner doesn’t do anything challenging!):
A factory-built version (“light sport”) is “coming soon”. Note that this plane will be delivered with the awesome new Garmin AXIS panel.
It looks as though this is about $350,000 more expensive than the piston (Rotax) version, adjusted for comparable avionics.
There’s an $1,800 Starlink option, but that is perhaps best skipped given that SpaceX/Starlink have recently discovered how to charge Rockwell Collins- and Honeywell-style prices for subscriptions that work at aircraft speeds.
The sound and the fury:
July 23, 2026 update: the plane has already slipped a year. The web site still says 2027:
The sales guys at Oshkosh say “2028”. They brought one to the event, though:
These low-resolution (1280×768) displays were tweaked during coronapanic by adding touch sensitvity (a mixed blessing in a machine that is subject to turbulence), but essentially Garmin has been offering the same system for 17 years… until today. The web site for Garmin AXIS doesn’t offer any resolution spec in pixels, which is disturbing, and it continues to mention panning and zooming (not the best activity for a pilot trying to control aircraft attitude!). Maybe Garmin actually hasn’t caught up to 1080p, a place that HTC managed to get for its Android phones in 2012.
Why does an airplane need box after box of avionics given that a modern smartphone has an AHRS, a GPS, multiple radios, a high-res display, a massive database of charts, and nearly everything else that anyone would want in an aircraft panel? I haven’t made it all the way through the 23-minute launch video, but I don’t think resolution is mentioned:
For those of us limping along with late-1990s Garmin 430s, the beauty of this new Garmin system is that the capabilities of the insanely expensive and absurdly low-res GTN750Xi nav/com (about $25,000 installed; offers to show approach plates, but they’re unreadable) are folded into the back of the display. It looks as though the financial savings could be significant. The PFD with all of the features of the GTN750Xi is priced at roughly the same cost as the GTN750Xi. From Sarasota:
Presumably two of these “fattened displays” would be required for a Cirrus or similar “real IFR” aircraft so as to have a backup GPS, 2nd COM, etc.
This is, of course, ugly news for Brand A. Avidyne only a year ago got its retrofit reasonably-modern larger-but-low-res PFD/MFD certified. The Avidyne system needs high-cost high-bulk connector-rich separate nav/coms, which Garmin has now folded into the backs of their PFD/MFD.
Update: I found the resolution in pixels in the manual. It is 1080p, 1920×1080 pixels, a huge upgrade from the G500TXi and also much higher resolution than Avidyne’s Vantage. If 1080p has arrived in $60,000 aircraft panels 21 years after arriving in consumer living rooms and 14 years after arriving in consumers’ pockets (HTC Android phone), does that mean the dawn of 8K TVs is near? It’s tough to imagine that aviation isn’t at least two generations behind what consumers can buy for $500.
If we consider $1,000 to be the post-Bidenflation equivalent of $500, maybe it will be 2027 before 8K TVs, two generations ahead of these $20,000 Garmin displays, have come down enough to create a conventional split in price. (How much more general and video-related computing power do we think an 8K TV has compared to all of the computers in a glass panel aircraft put together?)
Happy IPO Day to SpaceX, which its investors presumably hope will be the future of space travel. Via this post, we can also look at the past of space travel.
Most air and space museums, including the Smithsonian, are primarily about showing artifacts and make little attempt to educate visitors. Seattle’s Museum of Flight is a notable exception and, thus, could easily occupy a nerdy family for a day. Here are some snapshots from an early June 2026 visit.
The SR-71, the world’s fastest airplane and one that reached the edge of space (85,000′), with the world’s slowest, Gossamer Albatross II, ironically placed just above it (in real life, the Albatross II flew mostly at 5-15′ in order to take advantage of ground effect).
How did the SR-71’s engines, designed for slower aircraft, function? A sign explains:
Maintenance might not be simple…
Notice that there is an aircraft on top of the SR-71. This is thoroughly explained (also sadly, since Roy Torick was killed in testing for the D-21B drone):
How about the camera? The museum displays the 30-inch Itek lens:
The Museum avoids American chauvinism, pointing out that modern rocketry was developed independently in three countries and that, before Goddard, there was Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in Russia.
(There is a big section on the Apollo program and the role of Boeing, and companies later acquired by Boeing, building equipment for it, but the photos aren’t too exciting.)
The World War II exhibit gives reasonable space to allied and enemy aircraft, e.g., a Yakovlev and a Nakajima:
Equal space is accorded to female pilots who ferried aircraft over friendly skies and male pilots who flew in combat. Nancy Nordhoff Dunnam served in the U.S. between February 1944 and December 1944, most of which was spent in training. She lived until 2017. Richard Bong spent about two years in combat in the Pacific, shooting down 28 heavily armed Japanese planes, and died in 1945 while helping to bring the U.S. military into the jet age.
Were there any male pilots in WWII who did the same jobs as these heroic females, i.e., ferrying airplanes? ChatGPT:
In the U.S., aircraft ferrying was run mainly through the Army Air Forces Ferrying Command, later part of the Air Transport Command (ATC). Its Ferrying Division delivered newly built aircraft from factories to training bases and ports of embarkation. That system used AAF military pilots, civilian pilots, airline pilots, and women pilots including WAFS/WASP. The Air Force history page for the Twenty-Second Air Force says the Domestic Wing/Ferrying Division moved newly produced aircraft using “AAF pilots, civilian pilots, and women pilots” from the WAFS/WASP. The male civilian pilots came from several pools: airline pilots, commercial/private pilots, bush pilots, air-taxi pilots, crop dusters, business pilots, and pleasure pilots. … 27 male pilots per female pilot.
So… the gender that did 27/28ths of the work gets no credit in the museum. Congress and President Obama awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009 to the civilian female pilots. Did the civilian male pilots who performed similar jobs get a similar honor? ChatGPT says “no”.
The Museum’s outdoor-but-covered exhibits include most of Boeing’s greatest hits, including the 747, an Air Force One 707, a 787, a B-17, and a B-29.
The 727 on display is accompanied by a D.B. Cooper sign:
There is a sobering Vietnam memorial, displaying a beautiful B-52 and also reminding us of the cost of war, nothing that we lost 10,000 aircraft in the war.
A notable omission from the plaques of names of men who were held as POWs: Robert L. Stirm. AP:
Stirm, a decorated pilot, was serving with the 333rd Tactical Fighter Squadron based in Thailand in 1967. During a bombing mission over North Vietnam that Oct. 27, his F-105 Thunderchief was hit and he was shot three times while parachuting. He was captured immediately upon landing.
He was held captive for 1,966 days in five different POW camps in Hanoi and North Vietnam, including the notorious “Hanoi Hilton,” known for torturing and starving its captives, primarily American pilots shot down during bombing raids. Its most famous prisoner was the late U.S. Sen. John McCain, who also was shot down in 1967.
As Wikipedia notes, however, the principal welcome that he received was being sued for divorce, under the nation’s then-new no-fault divorce laws, by the wife who’d been having sex with various new friends while the pilot was held prisoner. She obtained the house and car that he’d purchased, a child support revenue stream, and 43 percent of his military pension for her service on the home front (maybe her name should be on the wall as the person who made the greater sacrifice during the Vietnam War? A judge decided that fairness required that she receive the majority of the money that Robert L. Stirm was paid during his USAF career (only 43 percent of the pension, but she got 100 percent of his pay while he was a POW)).
Circling back to the interior, the museum shows a seemingly crazy rescue apparatus for pulling downed pilots out of the jungle (now “rainforest”) by helicopter:
What about compliance with the Washington State religion? Employees at the front desk are fully masked:
The museum costs $29 to enter or $3 if you’ve been wise enough to get an EBT card for SNAP or have any other evidence of being on “any form of government or public assistance”:
Anyone on what used to be called “welfare” can also get a family membership for $29 that includes an unlimited number of children and grandchildren for one year (normally $140).
As one turns away from the masked ticket agents (6+ years after coronapanic they haven’t been able to find a job that won’t expose them to tens of thousands of potentially infected humans every year?), the gift shop reminds visitors to “Celebrate Pride”:
The front desk near the outdoor section displays the sacred Rainbow Flag along with a U.S. Navy flag.
Although Seattle is an oasis of tolerance amidst a country full of haters, the Museum has had to set up a segregated “All Gender Restroom” separated from the main restrooms.
The gift shop also reminds us that aircraft are primarily designed, built, and flown by people who identify as “women”:
Let’s close by reminding ourselves just how much of the aviation industry was once controlled by Bill Boeing. The United Aircraft and Transport Corporation owned Boeing, Pratt, and United Airlines, among other companies, until it was broken up the U.S. government in 1934. It would be interesting to imagine an alternative history in which the vertically integrated company had stayed together. For one thing, founder Bill Boeing might have stayed in aviation instead of devoting his time to horses and racially restricted real estate development (Mr. Boeing agreed with future Harvard research that diversity makes a community worse, not better).
Finally, the 140 mph (supposedly!) Taylor Aerocar and the SR-71:
Americans have collectively decided, through our elected representatives, to boost U.S. population to Chinese/Indian levels, mostly via low-skill immigration:
Democrats now agree with Republicans, apparently, that cheap oil/gas is desirable and that Climate Change (TM) need no longer be fought by cutting CO2 emissions.
If the heat in the Lower 48 becomes unbearable and the seas inundate Boston, New York City, DC, Miami, and other major coastal cities, Alaska seems like a natural evacuation destination. There is plenty of high ground in mountainous Alaska and the weather is pleasantly cool all year along the coast. The all-time record high for Juneau is 90 degrees, set in July 1975, and the average daily high temp for Juneau in July is 63.
One critical problem with life in the low-density parts of SE Alaska is transportation. Today’s airplanes typically can’t fly in the 0/0 foggy conditions that often plague this part of the country. There isn’t a high enough population density to support frequent nonstop flights among the various towns, nearly all of which are cut off from any road network, e.g., due to being on islands. The fabled Alaska Marine Highway (see Chapter XII of Travels with Samantha) is expensive and infrequent, perhaps partly due to the Jones Act that requires them to use U.S.-built vessels and that prevents an Asian-run company from offering competitive service. Below, the Alaskan-built MV Hubbard (cost $60 million in pre-Biden dollars; a “dayboat” that holds 53 cars; launched 2019):
What about a machine that can fly itself the 40-80 nm. legs that are required to get around this part of the world and that can navigate safely around terrain via reference to GPS and a database? That’s the autonomous electric aircraft (vertical takeoff and landing isn’t necessary, actually, since nearly all of these places have high-quality airports/runways, but eVTOL would work). Could that encourage more Americans (and “New Americans”) to settle in this part of the U.S.? Want to see a friend or shop? That will be a 20-minute flight. Need to see a medical specialist? The regional hospital in Juneau can be reached easily and you’ll be home in time for dinner. Need to be evacuated to Seattle or Anchorage for specialized hospital care? That’s done with a 20-minute electric air ambulance ride followed by a jet flight.
We’ve already seen this trend to some extent with islands for the rich. Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket weren’t beyond peasant means until private jet ownership became common. A house near ACK had no value to a rich Texas family until the rich Texans got their Gulfstream and could fly directly to ACK rather than flying commercial to Boston and taking a piston-powered airplane or the road+ferry.
Spirit is dead. I flew Spirit a few times and especially enjoyed their “Big Front Seat”. One flight out of FLL, I think, was delayed for hours due to a delay of the incoming plane on a perfect-weather day. Why can’t we have competition among airlines as they do in Europe and a wide range of low-cost carriers? First, Spirit was low cost to consumers, but it didn’t have low costs. Labor is the largest cost for an airline and Spirit’s union labor costs were similar to what the biggest airlines pay (ChatGPT):
ChatGPT on total cost for low-cost Ryanair vs. originally-low-cost JetBlue:
ChatGPT claims, incredibly, that Europe has more secondary airports:
I don’t think that this is correct, since the U.S. has tons of general aviation airports with long runways. Maybe the answer is that U.S. airports are monopolized, e.g., Massport owns both Logan Airport and Hanscom Field, the most obvious competitor for airline service to Boston. Massport isn’t going to undercut its own fees. A single port authority in NY/NJ owns LGA, JFK, EWR (Newark), TEB (the Teterboro airport for the Gulfstream crowd), and SWF (Stewart, too far from NYC unless a high-speed rail were built). There is more competition in Greater Los Angeles and the air carrier airports are owned by different agencies (LAX, LGB, BUR, SNA, and ONT are owned by their respective cities/counties).
Grok:
[in Europe] Many airports are privatized or compete aggressively for traffic, offering incentives to new carriers. US major airports have higher fees, complex slot controls (often grandfathered to legacies), and fewer viable low-cost alternatives near population centers. This raises barriers for new entrants or ultra-low-cost models
All publicly owned U.S. airports are paid for with federal tax dollars, e.g., from taxes on airline tickets, taxes on charters, and taxes on general aviation fuel (the one time that billionaires pay tax, according to Elizabeth Warren?). The Feds can’t seem to break up the airline oligopoly using antitrust laws and, in fact, may have contributed to our high-fare immiseration by blocking a JetBlue-Spirit merger (NYT: “JetBlue Airways and Spirit Airlines announced on Monday that they would not seek to overturn a court ruling that blocked their planned $3.8 billion merger. The decision is a big win for the Biden administration, which has sough to limit corporate consolidation.”; for the record, my first thought regarding the merger was that it shouldn’t be allowed because U.S. airlines were already far too concentrated). Maybe a good starting point would be to break up airport ownership. The five above-mentioned NY/NJ airports would have to be owned by separate competing government entities. Massport couldn’t own both Logan and Hanscom. Palm Beach County couldn’t own PBI/DJT and North County (F45; approved for a runway extension in 2024, but because the U.S. is incapable of working at Chinese speeds, construction isn’t even dreamed of before 2027). Miami-Dade County couldn’t own five airports (“Why do I own five airports? Because I couldn’t afford six.”).
Maybe robot 50-seater airliners would disrupt the market and enable some new carriers to thrive between city pairs in which a secondary airport isn’t owned by the same public agency that owns the main airport. But until “Big Airport” monopolies are broken up, it seems as though incumbent carriers could block most competition merely via a cozy relationship with each of the big airport authorities.
Meanwhile, let’s see how idiotic my investing advice has been. Back in 2010 I wrote “Unions and Airlines”, in which the take-away for investors is not to buy airline stocks because the unions will harvest any additional profits rather than the benefits flowing to investors.
Grok:
Airline stocks have significantly underperformed the S&P 500 since 2010 (roughly early 2010 through early May 2026, or ~16+ years). The S&P 500 (tracked via SPY total return, including dividends) delivered approximately +536% cumulative return, or roughly 12.0% annualized CAGR. In contrast, a broad airline index like the NYSE Arca Global Airline Index (^XAL) rose only about 70% on a price basis (from ~35.7 to ~60.5), equating to roughly 3.3% annualized price-only CAGR—and even adding typical dividends, the sector lagged dramatically behind the S&P 500’s total return (which compounded to roughly 7.8x your money). … Over a more recent ~10-year window (roughly 2015–2025), most major airline stocks delivered minimal gains or outright losses, while the broader market soared.
ChatGPT:
Since 2010, airline stocks have generally underperformed the S&P 500, despite some spectacular rebounds in individual years. … A cleaner “airlines as a sector” benchmark is JETS, the U.S. Global Jets ETF, but it only started in April 2015, so it cannot measure the full 2010 period. Its sponsor reports a 10-year annualized market-value return of only about 0.25% and a since-inception annualized return of about 0.38% as of March 31, 2026. That is dramatically worse than the S&P 500 over the same broad period. … If you cherry-picked Delta or United in 2010, you did pretty well, but still roughly trailed the S&P 500. If you bought airlines broadly, or bought Southwest, American, JetBlue, or JETS, you massively underperformed.
The investment story is consistent with the industry economics: airlines can have good earnings cycles, but shareholders have repeatedly been hit by fuel spikes, recessions, labor cost resets, aircraft shortages, fare wars, bankruptcies, pandemic shocks, and the need to constantly reinvest capital. As businesses, airlines can be necessary and sometimes profitable; as long-term compounders, they have mostly been inferior to owning the broad U.S. equity market.
Note “labor cost resets”!
Let’s close with a shout-out to Spirit for apparently having no serious accidents during its decades of operation, though one pilot may have died from toxic fumes, a known vulnerability with the Airbus. According to Wokipedia:
November 11, 2024 – Spirit Airlines Flight 951, an Airbus A320neo (registered as N966NK), was hit by multiple bullets on final approach into Port-au-Prince, Haiti after a flight from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. A flight attendant was grazed by a bullet and the flight diverted to Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic.
(This reminds us that (1) Haiti is a wonderful place and that only racism can explain Donald Trump’s negative attitude toward the nation, and (2) no migrant from Haiti can be sent back to Haiti due to the extreme risk of being killed.)
If you don’t live in/near Florida, I recommend that you get a last-minute flight to Orlando or Tampa and then drive about one hour to Sun ‘n Fun in Lakeland.
I went on Tuesday, the first day. Here are a few photos.
P-51 Mustang and NASA’s Super Guppy:
Feel better about flying… the flight controls get disconnected and reconnected every time the plane is loaded or unloaded.
Placid Lassie is looking great despite her many trips to Europe for D-Day commemorations:
Today, it’s tough to imagine the sacrifices that Americans were willing to make to defeat Germany, which never had the same “Death to America” passion that Iran has maintained for 47 years. 2,501 U.S. soldiers died on D-Day and more than 3,000 French civilians were killed plus as many as 19,000 civilians killed in pre-invasion bombing.
Speaking of the Islamic Republic of Iran, here’s an unwelcome A-10 Warthog:
A lot of the most interesting planes are in the parking and camping areas. Here’s a 1947 Antonov biplane, for example:
And who doesn’t love a Grumman boat-hull seaplane?
Cirrus puts on a good display and has a couple of lounges and viewing areas for owners:
How they get people to move from the 200/210-hp SR20 to the 310-hp SR22:
I enjoyed talking to Dave Pascoe, the founder and operator of LiveATC.net. I learned that the service has a $5 app that makes using it much more convenient on mobile devices. Dave generously volunteers at Sun ‘n Fun Radio:
(Why doesn’t the FCC require that mobile phones have built-in FM radio reception at least, to keep communities together? Streaming radio over mobile data isn’t reliable. AM would be tough due to the antenna requirements, but maybe some RF genius could find a way?)
The secret Quiet Birdmen have a not-to-secret secret private club next to the radio station:
What if you’re irrational and choose to fly in? The NOTAM explains what to do. All of the waypoints seem to be in the Garmin 430 database (or maybe I entered them in during a previous trip?). I arrived mid-morning on the first day (Tuesday) and, therefore, the ATIS said to start at Fantasy of Flight rather than at Lake Parker. It’s somewhat unnerving to be 1 mile behind the plane in front and 1 mile in front of the plane in back, but it sort of works if everyone is precise about 100 knots and 1200′. It might have been smarter to file IFR and land on the big runway.
Not the best plane for flying the above procedure, but the under-wing graffiti is interesting. “N1972” makes sense for registration of this G650ER because that’s the year that Nike-brand shoes were introduced. I will give Nike credit for registering this to their own corporation instead of trying to hide it in a trust or LLC. In Stuart, Florida as I was preflighting the venerable Cirrus SR20-G2.
Let’s have a shout-out for Igor Sikorsky, the pioneer in mass-production of helicopters, in honor of the recent successful rescue of an F-15 crew (pilot + WSO/”Wizzo” (also a competent pilot)) in Iran. Sikorsky’s perspective:
If a man is in need of rescue, an airplane can come in and throw flowers on him, and that’s just about all. But a direct lift aircraft could come in and save his life.
[later] For me, the greatest source of comfort and satisfaction is the fact that our helicopters have saved up to the present time (1969) over fifty thousand lives and still continue with their rescue missions. I consider this to be the most glorious page in the history of aviation.
I guess we should also thank the Soviet revolutionaries who drove Sikorsky, already a successful aircraft designer and industrialist, out of Russia and into Connecticut in 1919.
Finally, of course, let’s celebrate the tough-to-imagine bravery of U.S. military helicopter crews. Just in time for Easter, they enabled a man to rise from being presumed dead.
Who wants to place bets on the forthcoming Netflix movie? The helicopter door gunners will be female, Black, trans, gay, or all four?
Separately, foreign haters seem to concentrating on the cost of the mission. Here’s a white flag waver (Frenchman) showing photos of aircraft costing less than one day of tax revenue from NVIDIA employees and investors and implying that the cost of the rescue was too high:
Lose all this to rescue 1 pilot and call it your greatest military success of all time. pic.twitter.com/EB36KGNxC5
— Daniel Foubert 🇵🇱🇫🇷 (@Arrogance_0024) April 5, 2026
From the Islamic Republic of Great Britain: “The MC-130J aircraft used to rescue the second US airmen cost more than $100 million (£77 million) each”
No mention of the fact that a Minnesota day care could burn through $100 million of tax money without ever having even a single child come through the front door.
Our brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters across the Atlantic seem to have some difficulty understanding the productivity of the U.S. economy. Separately, since hardly any of NATO members will let us use their airspace or bases (Germany and the UK are exceptions?) what is the value of continuing to spend U.S. tax money on NATO? We don’t have a dog in the Europe-Russia tension. If when we’re actually at war our European bases become useless due to airspace closures by purported allies, e.g., France, Spain, and Italy, what value does the U.S. get out of NATO?
Friends have been asking how the LaGuardia airplane-fire truck crash could have happened.
Before reviewing any audio, my first guess was “Might be a controller error. Clear plane to land and someone else clears fire truck across runway.” That shouldn’t happen in general. Even if there are multiple Tower frequencies, there is typically one controller who is solely responsible for a given runway. Based on news reports thus far, it looks like my first guess was partially correct, but it was the same person who cleared a plane to land and a fire truck to cross. Here’s the airport diagram:
The crash apparently occurred at the intersection of Runway 4 and taxiway Delta (D), marked with a red oval below. The plane was moving in the direction of the red arrow.
Note that a jet doesn’t try to land right at the beginning of the runway, but rather 1000′ down the runway (out of 7002′ total here). Because of inertia due to weight and the slow-ish spool-up time of a big jet engine, it’s tough to adjust approach angle/position near the ground in the event the wind changes. If the airplane is going to come up a little short, therefore, the 1000′ marker target enables the short landing to still happen on the runway surface. The airplane would have been rolling/braking for perhaps only 1500-2000′ before the crash.
Based on an air traffic control recording, the truck had requested permission and had been cleared by the air traffic controller to cross Runway 4 at taxiway Delta. Shortly after, the air traffic controller tells the vehicle to stop several times right before the collision.
“Stop, Truck 1. Stop,” the transmission says. The controller can then be heard frantically diverting an incoming aircraft from landing.
Michael McCormick is the former vice president of the FAA and was once in charge of all of the airspace in the Tri-State.
He wants to know how many people were in the control tower, because initially it sounds like one person could have been doing the work of two people.
“What we’ve heard from that control tape, is it’s the same voice that is clearing the aircraft to land and clearing the vehicles across the runway and a normal tower scenario it would be ground control working the surface traffic and tower control just working arrivals and departures,” McCormick said.
Michael McCormick sounds much more qualified than I, but I think that he is incorrect regarding what’s conventional for Tower vs. Ground responsibility. In my experience, any vehicle or aircraft that wants to cross an active runway usually deals with Tower, i.e., the same person on the same frequency. This is substantially safer than two people issuing instructions on two frequencies because it gives pilots the chance to hear that a vehicle has been cleared across the runway that they were expecting to use and also concentrates control into one brain rather than requiring coordination among multiple brains.
It’s super sad to reflect on the deaths and injuries caused by what seems to be human error, especially since there was no need for the humans in the fire truck to be on their own. An AI in the fire truck could have been monitoring both Tower and Ground frequencies and also looking around at vehicles and aircraft on the field. The AI could easily have said “Don’t move! There’s a plane landing!” to the truck driver who’d been cleared across.
Has anything like this happened to me, you might ask? Yes. I won’t rat out the airport and controller, but I was holding short of a runway at a towered general aviation airport with a fair amount of flight school traffic. Tower cleared me for takeoff. I looked left and noticed a piston-powered airplane on short final and decided not to move into the runway. At a normal taxi speed, I think that the landing aircraft might have gone past by the time I was in the middle of the runway, but it was surely a controller mistake (at the point that I was cleared for takeoff nobody could have had any idea how long it would take for the landing airplane to clear the runway).
(For what it’s worth, our AI overlord (ChatGPT) says “Runway = Tower’s jurisdiction … No one—aircraft or vehicle—may enter or cross a runway without: … Explicit clearance from Tower” and that only rarely might a Ground controller relay a Tower controller’s clearance to cross a runway.)
Don’t take this post as a criticism of LaGuardia ATC. In my experience, New York controllers in all positions are some of the best in the U.S. I’ve talked to LaGuardia Tower while flying a helicopter around the East River and while flying a CRJ into and out of LGA. One really can’t get better humans and, therefore, improved safety will come only from improved systems, such as AI assistance in ground vehicles and, maybe, an AI assistant in the Tower.
One big question: why didn’t the fire truck personnel notice the CRJ’s insanely bright landing lights or get warned by the runway status lights that are supposed to prevent runway incursions even when a human makes a mistake? Pilots are trained to look both ways when entering a taxiway or runway so presumably the airport fire truck drivers are too. According to the FAA, there should have been a “stop” indication to the fire truck that the runway was in use (another easy thing for an AI to warn out: “STOP! Look at the red lights!”):
It will certainly be worth investigating whether this failsafe system was operating correctly at the time of the accident and also what kind of training fire truck drivers receive. For pilots in a two-pilot crew, the captain (left seat) is supposed to look and say “clear left” while the first officer (right seat) is supposed to look and say “clear right” before making a turn.
[in response to how could it have happened] A large percentage of our jet losses in that region have been friendly fire. In fact I think nearly all except during the gulf war.
Tons of reasons it happens from the shooter side. From the aircraft side often the defensive systems may be off, and you are focused on getting in to land/deconflict in the terminal area. You don’t assume your own team is going to light you up.
In the recent destroyer shooting down a U.S. jet. Another jet was targeted and was in mostly disbelief assuming the missile was going after something else. So even if your RWR went off you might just assume it is aimed at something else you don’t see. Since the ships are certainly interrogating air targets with their radars and might shoot SMs, hopefully with a clear lane, while there are friendly planes up still.
[in response to a discussion of why some of the F-15 pilots were injured] Momentum mostly
First the seat fires and in a two seat model the other person will say eject 3 times then pull. You hope in that brief moment you get into the proper ejection position (lower legs back, thighs on seat, back against seat, shoulders square, head neutral and back). If not, anything out of place is going to have a large amount of acceleration very quickly which causes injuries (eg broken femur from the seat accelerating first then hitting your leg that wasn’t on the seat).
Then all of those out of place Items, arms included have major flail damage risk. If it’s a controlled ejection because of a mechanical issue you can minimize the speed and angle for ejection. In this case not so much most likely. So your arm that may have been hanging off to the side now has the momentum issue and maybe hit something on the way out, and then may be exposed to 300 knots or more wind suddenly.
People commonly get knocked out but wake up in the chute. The rest of the other injuries are mostly from the ejection, the flail injuries, or a bad parachute landing fall.
[in response to a question about how it was possible for the Kuwaits to misidentify three F-15s at fairly close range] Could happen but yea something seems off here.
May have felt panic that 3x mig-29 or whatever he thought it was, was also breathing down their neck. I assume this was also after missiles landed or maybe nearly landed so tensions were already high.
I think this falls in the category of don’t attribute to malice what can be contributed to incompetence. My guess is basic human error/training/skill.
But I also don’t know the details. I assume by now people know most of what needs to be known. Either way that pilot is riding the bench for a while.
Would be interesting to understand if they were declared hostile and if so by who[m!]. The hostile declaration and what the positive ID requirements were would be interesting to know. I assume details will come out.
Loosely related….
Israel, with 10 million people, is a more capable ally of America than the entirety of non-US NATO, with over half a billion.
