MDW Runway Incursion

[Pinecone]

Sort of like the old routine that the comedian Gallagher did.  Give every driver a suction dart with "dumb a**" darts  Someone does something stupid, you tag them with a dart.  If a cop see a vehicle with some number of darts or more, he pulls them over and gives them a ticket for being a "dumb a**" driver.

[ttflyer]

10 hours ago, Pinecone said:

Problem is, that causes the offending airplane to be stuck ON the runway.

I think that a big part of this will be the crew not realizing they had crossed one runway and either thought the second was the first or just did not realize that were crossing at all, forgetting that they were on a runway, so no lines and flashing lights.

This exactly.  Give these guys a bit of a break. Yes, they Fd'up.  But Midway is a mess on the ground.  They were given a clearance to cross a runway that barely looks like a runway while they were on a runway. They lost SA and didn't look like they should have but plenty of professional pilots could have made this mistake. In fact I have yet to meet a professional pilot that hasn't made a mistake...

Also, I'll bet SWA saw that whole thing unfolding right in front of them with plenty of time to react.  "Is that guy REALLY gonna pull out in front of us?  Yup? Oh well, around we go". Not great but I doubt the drama is warranted... 

[EricJ]

42 minutes ago, ttflyer said:

In fact I have yet to meet a professional pilot that hasn't made a mistake...

We had an additional parallel taxiway added at our airport a couple years ago, and it's taken me a bit to get used to, especially since I usually fly from the other side of the airport.   I got put in ATC taxi timeout once (told to hold short of the runway for "wake turbulence" behind a bunch of landing Archers) after I wound up on the wrong taxiway.   This is at my home airport.

I was describing this during an organizational check ride with a retired pilot who'd spent a lifetime flying the airlines, including more than a decade in 747s flying globally, and how I thought navigating taxiways was the hardest part of flying.   He thought so, too, and just said, "Don't worry about it, *everybody* gets lost."  It did make me feel better about it.

So, yeah, an understandable and relatable mistake, but still a dangerous one.   The little ones can get you the worst.   This is not a forgiving process, unfortunately.

[Hank]

1 hour ago, ttflyer said:

This exactly.  Give these guys a bit of a break. Yes, they Fd'up.  But Midway is a mess on the ground . . . plenty of professional pilots could have made this mistake. In fact I have yet to meet a professional pilot that hasn't made a mistake...

 

1 hour ago, EricJ said:

I was describing this during an organizational check ride with a retired pilot who'd spent a lifetime flying the airlines, including more than a decade in 747s flying globally, and how I thought navigating taxiways was the hardest part of flying.   He thought so, too, and just said, "Don't worry about it, *everybody* gets lost." 

The new Sec. Transportation thinks pilots who blow taxi instructions like this should lose their license . . . Kind of like revoking taxi and truck driver's licenses for making a bad lane change . . .

Sometimes the ground layout is confusing, sometimes the taxi instructions are unclear.

If a bad taxi means loss of license, what will happen if a pilot flies off of his clearance? Bust Bravo, turn right instead of left, climb through cleared altitude, fly through localized, etc.?

[bigmo]

This was a bit more than a bad taxi. Cat A's could have gone either way and that SWA crew could have easily not seen them during their approach (I mean they have a plane to land). Had they selected thrust reversers,, they'd have met that Challenger at 100 knots. 

I'm not God's gift to flying by any means. I am a pilot by trade and treat every airfield as if it's the first time I'm there no matter how familiar. Likening this to a bad lane change is a bit of a silly argument as a lane change won't result in the deaths of 200 people. These guys were confused from the start. Time to stop, clarify, and focus on the task at hand. At least look at the darn signage - all those words and numbers have meaning. 

Not sure if their ticket should be pulled - but I'd sure not fly with them. Ever. 

We (as a community) have been very lucky for far too long. Last year, the FedEx-SWA near miss was just as bad. If I recall that was controller error. I'm a big fan of a technology mitigation solution for 121. Fund it through a buck or two per pax.

[201er]

3 hours ago, ttflyer said:

This exactly.  Give these guys a bit of a break. Yes, they Fd'up.  But Midway is a mess on the ground.  They were given a clearance to cross a runway that barely looks like a runway while they were on a runway. They lost SA and didn't look like they should have but plenty of professional pilots could have made this mistake. In fact I have yet to meet a professional pilot that hasn't made a mistake...

 

[skykrawler]

Seems like  22L is used as the main runway and 22R is being used as a taxiway (like the closed runway taxiway H) or maybe only take-offs.

There should be holding lines or WIGWAG lights on 4L/22R at that crossing - like they have for 13R crossing 22L and 22R.   Do they even have runway signs at that intersection?

I can see it being very easy to miss.    It requires the discipline to follow the taxi route on a chart and verify progress.

I think the controller confused them when a switched from referring to 22R to 4L - the initial clearance was to hold short of 22R.

[Pinecone]

On 2/28/2025 at 10:14 PM, Hank said:

Sometimes the ground layout is confusing, sometimes the taxi instructions are unclear.

And sometimes the tower screws up.

Landed runway 11 at KCAE.  Was off at A5, told taxi Alpha to Echo 2 to ramp.   DL lands and turns off an Bravo and told to taxi Bravo, Alpha to terminal.  Hmm, that puts me ESE bound on Alpha and him WNW on Alpha.  Luckily tower saw and stopped him on Bravo and I was able to turn to the FBO.  I was wondering how one of us was going to back up.

 

[Hank]

1 hour ago, Pinecone said:

And sometimes the tower screws up.

Landed runway 11 at KCAE.  Was off at A5, told taxi Alpha to Echo 2 to ramp.   DL lands and turns off an Bravo and told to taxi Bravo, Alpha to terminal.  Hmm, that puts me ESE bound on Alpha and him WNW on Alpha.  Luckily tower saw and stopped him on Bravo and I was able to turn to the FBO.  I was wondering how one of us was going to back up.

Well, if you don't have beta, he has thrust reversers, which you would see as strong headwinds . . . .  

[Yetti]

On 2/26/2025 at 7:18 AM, A64Pilot said:

Our Tesla won’t at least with FSD engaged, I haven’t tried to run a light manually driving, I think it won’t, but haven’t tried. If a sign isn’t where it’s supposed to be it won’t recognize it though, for instance being a fly-in neighborhood our roads are taxiways, as such the stop signs are well off to the side and real close to the ground for wing clearance, the Tesla ignores them. Most outside drivers, Fedex and the like also don’t see them

Just very recently FSD has gotten VERY good, I still don’t trust it, but it’s light years better than it was just a year ago. Cyber cab is supposed to go live in Austin this Summer. I don’t think it’s good enough myself yet, but we will see. It’s real close though, maybe Cybercab will get special software?

I test drove a Cybertruck a couple of months ago.    The FSD tried to make a left turn out of the middle lane.   So I took over and went straight.  To be fair it was a construction zone and lanes may have shifted recently.

It did pretty well on the high way.    Not sure about letting traffic merge.    The Ford and Subaru are bad about letting in cars merge in.

It did pull out in front of a car on a side street.  Not sure if the car was blinking to turn right, but I had to take over.

It did get stuck making a left turn onto a busy street from a side street.    I had to take over and do a Right turn then a U turn.

The two biggest things were, I really did not know were I was or how to get back to the dealer, because I did not Navigate to the super charger.

There seems to be a reliance on cameras/screens for visibility.  so you end up looking at the screen, but then FSD penalizes you for taking the eyes off the road.  

Not sure how you handle these issues if you are a passenger in a self driving taxi.

Several times I found myself talking to the car telling it how that was not going to work

 

Edited Monday at 08:12 PM by Yetti

[jlunseth]

I don't know about the rest of you, but in Private Pilot lessons I was taught to always check for traffic on an intersecting runway before crossing, both approach and take-off, even if you are cleared to cross (or think you are cleared to cross).

[A64Pilot]

On 2/26/2025 at 11:54 AM, Pinecone said:

How does it handle a yellow light?  And does it take into account how long it is yellow?

It keeps changing but it sometimes stops and if you’re close to the light when it turns it accelerates and gets through. I think it bases it’s decision on how close are we when it turns yellow and our current speed.

What I don’t know is how does it know a four way stop from a two way? It always has so far but how? Does it recognize the backside of the other sign? It displays all traffic signs and lights on it’s screen so you know it sees them, it even makes a ding noise when not in self driving when the light turns green so you don’t sit there like an idiot.

By changing I mean the FSD is updated maybe once a month or two on average and sometimes you really notice the changes and sometimes not.

Last update it’s a little more aggressive than I like, but it used to be stupid cautious, for instance it would stop right parallel to a stop sign like the law requires, then it would move forward as most of the time you can’t see cross traffic back there at the sign, if traffic was spotted it would stop a second time.

Normal driver stops once a little past where the law requires where they can see.

Update before last it now stops past the sign like human drivers. It used to be that it obeyed speed limits pretty closely, but now it drives close to average traffic speed.

It’s getting more and more to drive not precisely IAW the law like a high school driving coach, but more and more like a common driver.

It doesn’t like intersections, by that I mean it seems that it accelerates pretty briskly to clear them

Compared to what it used to be like, it’s brilliant now.

Not that I live in NY city, but I figure at dusk especially that it has to be a tough drive, I only watched a few min of this Video, this is the latest revision of Tesla FSD, and remember a Tesla is completely reliant on cameras only, no other sensors just vision just like we humans are. Anyway just if your curious

 

[A64Pilot]

3 hours ago, jlunseth said:

I don't know about the rest of you, but in Private Pilot lessons I was taught to always check for traffic on an intersecting runway before crossing, both approach and take-off, even if you are cleared to cross (or think you are cleared to cross).

Of course.

I think most of these runway incursions the offending pilot doesn’t realize they are crossing a runway, think it’s just another taxiway 

[Hank]

48 minutes ago, A64Pilot said:

It keeps changing but it sometimes stops and if you’re close to the light when it turns it accelerates and gets through. I think it bases it’s decision on how close are we when it turns yellow and our current speed.

What I don’t know is how does it know a four way stop from a two way? It always has so far but how? Does it recognize the backside of the other sign? It displays all traffic signs and lights on it’s screen so you know it sees them, it even makes a ding noise when not in self driving when the light turns green so you don’t sit there like an idiot.

By changing I mean the FSD is updated maybe once a month or two on average and sometimes you really notice the changes and sometimes not.

Last update it’s a little more aggressive than I like, but it used to be stupid cautious, for instance it would stop right parallel to a stop sign like the law requires, then it would move forward as most of the time you can’t see cross traffic back there at the sign, if traffic was spotted it would stop a second time.

Normal driver stops once a little past where the law requires where they can see.

Update before last it now stops past the sign like human drivers. It used to be that it obeyed speed limits pretty closely, but now it drives close to average traffic speed.

It’s getting more and more to drive not precisely IAW the law like a high school driving coach, but more and more like a common driver.

It doesn’t like intersections, by that I mean it seems that it accelerates pretty briskly to clear them

Compared to what it used to be like, it’s brilliant now.

Not that I live in NY city, but I figure at dusk especially that it has to be a tough drive, I only watched a few min of this Video, this is the latest revision of Tesla FSD, and remember a Tesla is completely reliant on cameras only, no other sensors just vision just like we humans are. Anyway just if your curious

 

So how does it handle the rapidly-growijg number of traffic circles? Or does it do like so many people and Stop for that triangular YIELD sign?

[A64Pilot]

13 hours ago, Hank said:

So how does it handle the rapidly-growijg number of traffic circles? Or does it do like so many people and Stop for that triangular YIELD sign?

Even a few months ago traffic circles ate its lunch, now it handles them better than I do and I spent years in Europe so I learned then. If anything it’s not as conservative as I am, it will pull into traffic that I would wait for.

Someone on this site explained FSD perfectly as of a year ago, that it reminded them of a nervous teen driver, it was full of bugs, you would be driving down a country road and out if the blue it would brake hard. I think shadows would confuse it, but it could get exciting when someone was right behind you and the car hit the brakes for no reason, I drove then with my foot near the accelerator to hit the “gas” when it did. The steering wheel movements were jerky at parking speeds, you could tell it was making the effort, but it just wasn’t there.

I assume after years of trying and failing Elon had enough and spent God knows how much building an AI Supercomputer named dojo that’s teaching the cars to drive, I believe there is more than one now and expect they are doing things other than teaching the cars like maybe the Robots but that’s supposition. Plus Hardware 4 is now in production cars and at least the cameras are much, much better. He’s stated if he can’t make FSD work on hardware 3 cars he will update them for free. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Dojo

The Cyber Truck has been problematic FSD wise I don’t know why but it’s FSD updates are well behind the cars, I’m sure it will be fixed but as I don’t have a clue what the issue is as honestly I’m not really interested in the truck. Cool vehicle, just I don’t have any need for one.

Supposedly the Cybercab is going live this Summer in Austin. I suspicion it will be geo fenced and only allowed in certain areas that have been tested at first, because it won’t have the capability of being driven manually, I don’t think it will have controls in it, but who knows we have only seen prototypes

The Waymo model is I think a dead end, it has of course a great many sensors and is restricted to only areas that have been mapped to the centimeter.

But in my opinion FSD is tough, I mean hugely way more complex than Garmin self land or anything in an aircraft to include any ground ops.

So if you can teach a car to drive in NY City at rush hour then you could teach a jet to taxi anywhere on an airport I believe.

The future I think in cars and Commercial Aviation is Automation, not saying there won’t be a Pilot, but I think their job will be to take over if needed and that will be rare, so how would they maintain proficiency? I have no idea, maybe Sims? But successful automation is much safer than a Human that's been proven decades ago, who can hand fly an instrument approach with the precision of a coupled approach?

Almost all of my drives now start out in the garage when I tell the car “navigate to La Perla in Eustis” for example, that’s a restaurant in Eustis a town about 30 miles away that the Wife likes. Push a “button” on the screen and tap the brake to acknowledge I want the car to drive. The car backs out of the driveway, drives to the neighborhood gate where it stops and triggers the built in homelink to open the gate and drives to the restaurant and pulls into its parking lot, without me having to intervene at all. I do park it as the lot is dirt/gravel and I think it needs lines to park? Lots of construction in Eustis now with traffic cones etc and the car has no problems and it’s congested. We take the little dog as he enjoys going with us and when we get there I put the HVAC in dog mode where it maintains set temp until we get back and click the home button, tap the brake and the car drives home. It won’t pull into the garage it stops short I don’t know why, but I do have to drive the last 10 ft.

The cars are of course all internet connected so you get live traffic updates and it will reroute if it will save a time that you set, you see live Radar on the map like ADSB, get wx etc. Not sure if it’s happened yet but the cars will phone home and report things like flooded streets, construction, temporarily closed roads etc so other cars will reroute around the trouble area.

FSD is close, but I’ll never completely trust it, but as I get older I know the day is coming that I’ll get to the point that I shouldn’t drive, especially in night and maybe bad wx etc. Then I’ll really be even more appreciative of a FSD car. Assuming I live that long of course.

Edited Tuesday at 03:18 PM by A64Pilot