ATC Error Leads To Close Call At Washington National Airport

From what I observe when a plane is ready to begin it's roll takeoff lights go on. If the JetBlue plane had it's lights on wouldn't that be warning to the Southwest pilots? As someone that flys 2-4 times a week delays seem to be getting worse and worse. I have no doubt airlines play games to make their delays look better (like changing a schedule by a few minutes and giving a new flight number) because there's no way in hell AA is having an ontime rate of 80%, or any other airline. That has to weigh on crews constantly running behind and trying to make up some of the time. Many of those pilots feel for the hardship it causes passengers. But with 40-50 minute domestic turn times, packed planes and congested airports and skies it just becomes one big cluster.

thankful that there were two alert, skilled and fast acting sets of pilots.

It seems like there is one weak link in all of these near disastrous incidents but 2 links manage to save the situation.

Why isn’t it mandatory to have indicators when a runway is active at all airports?? And sync with onboard controls?
Would prevent so many of these issues

The correct terminology should be:
"Human Error".

Removing human error from the system is long overdue.
Off the shelf technology to replace these repetitive tasks are already available widely.

Also curious as to why the Jet Blue flight parked for 15 minutes and then decided to go back to the gate. Does the sudden braking do something to the plane?

Scary. Genuine question- why did B6 suffer such a long delay after the incident? Hot brakes?

DC has the busiest runway in the US, handling >800 movements per day. And that was last year, not sure what this year's numbers look like. We're (DC-area denizens) lucky that there hasn't been a major ground incident considering how tiny the airport is for the volume of traffic it handles (flights and pax).

Yes. The E190;has a setting called RTO. Rejected takeoff. It’s aggressive. Those brakes were showing amber on the gauge or possibly red. The B6 procedure requires the meter to be green for takeoff. It’s a checklist item at B6.

Likely passengers wanted to get off. It’s traumatic for some. That’s an aggressive deceleration.

Assuming the SW jet was taking off from the South end of Runway 1 and flying Norith ( the cartoon picture shows that) and the JetBlue jet was on the West side of Runway 4 to travel East - SW would not be able to see the JetBlue Jet - terminals and other jets taxing from the terminal would block the view.

A surprising number of metres in this report.

Is Washington DC an island of metric measurements in the "imperial" USA?
Is OMAAT shifting to being more international-minded?
Or is it just that this was drafted by a non-American intern?

Probably taken from the illustrative video that's linked in the article.

Metric is the international Standard, as is English.

Incorrect. In fact the taxiing SW jet was angled in such a way they were more or less looking directly at the JetBlue aircaft with nothing in between (no buildings or other jets, DCA is a very small airport). Remember this involved the SW plane that was on the taxi and crossing runway 4, not the Southwest plane waiting for takeoff clearance on runway 1 (who also would have a clear view of Runway 4 aircraft as well)

Looking at the video my only guess is that someone thought the outbound Southwest was the one already across JetBlues path.

We’ve flow that B6 route to MCO like 6 times last year. And my wife left out of DCA on another WN flight this morning. I’ll just not mention this and go hyperventilate a little.

"Is it policy at the airport".

The "airport" doesn't dictate policy.
Ground Controllers can coordinate runway crossings at any point. In slow periods, the Local (tower) Controller might even give up control of a runway to the ground controller for blanket crossings.

Myriad of possibilities could've led to this... positions being split, controller change, etc... but most likely is that the local controller forgot they had coordinated. (Less likely is that the ground controller gave instructions to cross without coordinating)

Our job is to prevent a collision. They did the job. Ideally it wouldn't have come to what happened. But this is ultimately a nothingburger that is just going to rile up people who don't know anything about the job. These articles and the publicity are going to make things worse, not better (actually, they already have made things worse).

Overworked and underpaid.

Is metric "woke?"

LOL!!!!!!!!!!

I am genuinely disturbed by these comments and their focus and support for aviation safety.

The FCC, per their official website, is focused on diversity candidates inclusive of “people with intellectual disabilities.”

That is a far more noble and virtuous goal than your tired, old-fashioned emphasis on customer safety.

Speaking of intellectual disabilities, your mention of the FCC here suggests you might have one.

I imagine if the pilots were alert, they would've stopped before they were told to (in spite of the controller error).

I do hear at least 3 different ATC voices involved in stopping the two aircraft.

Not to place any blame on the pilots, just refuting this weird take.

Oh do sush. I’m so bored of people constantly bringing diversity into this when they have exactly zero idea of what happened. But sure, let’s use any excuse to kick minorities. The way some people go on, you’d think white men have never made any mistakes.

As Ben notes, there is plenty of reason to ask what the WN pilots saw... a plane taking off just a few thousand feet away should have drawn attention.
Let's see what the investigation shows but I suspect the FAA will find it hard to deflect blame from their own error.

Check your privilege, boomer. We are today, you are yesterday.

FCC, hahahahaha. Stopped reading right there.

Without referring to a specific incident crossing an active runway should happen on Tower/local controller frequency. I believe it will get looked into.
Also there are ground safety systems that alert ATC about such safety threats so they can immediate corrective measures. I wonder if those systems are working at Washington National.

Thanks for calling it Washington National.

So the FCC won't let me be, let me be me so let me see, they tried to shut me down on MTV but it feels so empty without me.

Just wait until all these people screaming DEI find out that White Male Veterans Over 40 are included in those DEI initiatives.

Hopefully that will work out better than the self-driving cars.

Meters is the ICAO standard for lateral measurement in aviation (runway lenghts, visibility etc) Feet for vertical (Height, altitude )

I assume the Jet Blue flight had to cool down but just curious how long that takes?