Oy: United Jet Flies Wrong Route Departing SFO, Causes Near Disaster

but was the UA flight properly catered?

It's been a rough couple months for UA.

Why do we have so many near accidents, or worse? Whether they're due to pilot errors, ATC errors, errors by some other ground crew, or errors by some workers at a plane assembly plant, they're all HUMAN errors. No one wants to admit it, but the reality is that the average quality of people working in various sectors of the economy has significantly deteriorated, especially after the pandemic.

Sorry, did you mean to include the link to Vasa?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOpRf0IeGAo

That happens quite a bit at SFO where two planes take off on parallel runways and they turn based what runway they're on. Wouldn't common sense dictate that if there's a plane on the left runway that plane is going to turn left?

"As you can tell, this should be a routine procedure, since the plane taking off from the left was supposed to turn left right after takeoff, while the plane taking off from the right was supposed to turn right after takeoff."

What an awkward sentence. How about stating "since the plane taking off from the left was supposed to turn left *shortly* after takeoff"?

What makes you think the controller didn’t want him to turn to runway heading?
There will be an investigation, it seems premature to speculate on the controllers intent.

Here’s a fun fact. That same SkyWest airplane used to be operated by PSA, and was involved in a (nonfatal) crash back in 2010.

https://avherald.com/h?article=42607d9d&opt=4096

Oy: Humans behind the controls.

Because of their error, the UA plane was to the left of Skywest when they should've been to the right. Having UA fly runway heading would have them on a heading of 010. With Skywest being assigned a heading of 350, this places the planes on a converging course again. Later giving UA a heading of 280 ensures the planes were on diverging courses.

I' glad I'm not the only one that noticed this. I had to reread the sentence a few times even though I knew the intent.

It's really difficult for me to understand the complete lack of situational awareness. The takeoff clearances were both on the same channel so the UA pilots should have been aware of the other plane taking off on their left side.

Yet another reason I am not even flying over U.S. airspace, let alone into it. Sort your acts out people!

just because the majority of internet aviation sites are in English and focus on US aviation doesn't mean there aren't pilot and ATC errors in other countries.

and it is also interesting that this article comes right after the article about someone's perception of cockpit communications failures.
The primary reason for this will likely be incorrect input of the navigation into the FMS probably by the FO that flew the route which he didn't understand correctly.
ATC botched the communication after the incident began to unfold but the captain did realize something was wrong and communicated it to the first officer.

and a question will be asked if UA procedures require both pilots to verify what is input into the FMS. If the first officer incorrectly input the route into the FMS and the captain should have caught it, the captain is on the hook.

Well in fairness most of the time when departing off the 01’s 1L turns right and 1R turns left, so it is not surprising that the FMC could be programmed that way.

Not even close to what the sleeping Air Canada pilot came within a few feet of causing in SFO

Wondering if the investigation will reveal the 320 was originally anticipating a 1L assignment, programmed the flight computer accordingly, then got switched to 1R and then neither 320 pilot made the necessary computer correction.

At the end of the day, in some ways, ATC in the US has never recovered from Reagan's mass firing of PATCO controllers.

Like pilots, air traffic control is a highly technical, highly specialized, and highly stressful job. Naturally, we want to have the very best people in these roles and we want them to have the tools and backup needed to do their jobs as close to perfectly as possible.

But we have also decided (as a society), that public employees, regardless of their roles, shouldn't make private sector money, so it's become incredibly difficult to recruit and retain the caliber of talent our systems really require. Sadly, I don't think this is going to change until there are multiple large accidents with mass casualties where the blame can't go anywhere but to ATC. Only then will we start to rethink our practices around ATC.

Why was a computer programmed to fly the plane after takeoff? If the pilots were flying and properly trained, and had paid attention to what runway they were taking off from, they would have turned right according to procedure.
As Mr. Scott used to say, "The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain!" Too much reliance on technology. And they have got to start training air traffic controllers, so we have enough!

To make people feel better... This was a MAJOR screw up by the UA crew. However, it was NOT a near disaster.

The Skywest jet would have to have sped up dramatically and climbed at the same time to hit the UA jet. Virtually impossible even if they wanted to.

It was a big safety issue, but in terms of an actual accident, it was not likely to happen. (And in IFR conditions they would not be doing simultaneous departures.)

Of course this needs to be investigated further. And this is an opportunity to learn and add safety measures.

Thank you. We don't want you.

That's a ludicrous statement without evidence. The Reagan firings were ~40 years ago. Most likely all those involved are long gone. Come on, have a more nuanced & intelligent hypothesis.

Oh brother

Interesting UA is proud of calling themself a premium airline without catering.

An accident is bound to happen and when it does, there will be a lot of "I told you so". Things don't change until people die. Not only that, but things don't change until a lot of people die. Sad but true.

We need better IT behind ATC/Piloting. ATC is an eminently programmable task. The data is all there, it just needs feeding into software. It's not that ATC do a poor job, but it's that computers could do it better. The _moment_ a deviation is detected around an airport you could trigger an alert instead of relying on pilots/ATC to luck out and notice it. The whole system needs modernizing and bringing up to speed with the tech which is available today.

@Malthus, the PATCO debacle was almost 45 years ago, and you're still blaming Reagan for what happened this month?! While you're at it, please feel free to blame Vice President Aaron Burr's bad example for inciting today's gun violence epidemic.

We're still having humans, the main leading cause of fatal accidents, behind the controls?

I told you so.

That's what I'm trying to say all this time.

But face it Joe, to fully eliminate "unpredictable" deviations, you have to remove the "unpredictable" from the equation, aka humans.

We thank your kind for trying to keep the skies safe. Most of you are doing great so far. But we're now at a point that is approaching human limitations. Time to pass on the responsibility to computers and never have human errors in aviation ever again.

Reagan would have wished he had all these technologies of today back then.

PATCO wouldn't be a debacle, it would've been revolutionary first step. Just like how Reagan allowed civilian access to GPS.

An accident did happen at DCA a couple of months ago. There hasn’t been enough “told you so” since then.

Well done. I actually chuckled.

It’s not uncommon for 1L departures to turn right and 1R to turn left at SFO. As counterintuitive as it seems I had always assumed it was to avoid a tight turn to avoid OAK traffic

@ Kiwi -- Presumably not while there are parallel takeoffs, though, for obvious reasons.

“ The Skywest jet would have to have sped up dramatically and climbed at the same time to hit the UA jet. Virtually impossible even if they wanted to.”

You mean like the Blackhawk did @ DCA in January that killed over 70 people?

Some aircraft are cursed. The AA CR7 that collided in mid-air with the Blackhawk @ DCA back in January (also a PSA aircraft) was involved in an accident @ CLT in 2017 when it collided with a deer on the runway causing significant damage:

https://asn.flightsafety.org/wikibase/319924

Unmentioned issues and questions:
1. On parallel departures (or arrivals) why are controllers not required to stagger them - 20 seconds more separation can cover a multitude of sins.
2. Since there was a runway switch, from 28L/R to 1L/R, and the new runway may not have been briefed (and new runway not set in Flight Directors) is the industry working on software warnings to catch errors like this?

In this day of automation and annunciation, it is hard to understand why when they were lined up on 1R with the TRUKN SID from 28R programmed into the FMC, a major alert wasn't flashed on the ECAM.

The autopilot hadn't been engaged. What the Pilot flying (F/O) did was follow the Flight Director which dutifully commanded a Left Turn according to the (incorrect) instrument departure programmed into the flight management computer

It appears more likely that their mistake was even worse in that they might have punched in the TRUKN SID from 28R into the FMC. Starting at 50' AGL, the vertical FD bar would've (correctly) commanded a left turn to follow 284 (28R Runway Mag Heading) due to the incorrect input to the FMC. Note that the TRUNK SID from 28R calls for following the Runway Heading (284) until 520' and then Direct TRUKN.

@Mallthus - Reagan was 40 years ago. He fired people for not coming to work. What about Obama, much more recent, who not only decided to lower standards, but also also choose based on DEi instead of merit? You don’t don’t think choosing things other than merit is not the problem?