The importance of radio communications... *The Canadian TSB reported that it was detected the #2 radio did not transmit or receive.* // Thanks to those who voted on Twitter for this video to be published today :)
Whether the pilots where at fault or not really gets murky. They clearly knew vehicles where operating on the airport and suspected their comm might be the problem. So I'd give it a 50/50 whether they get violated or not. If they do it would be for reckless operation since radios are not technically required at an uncontrolled field.
As a retired Canadian FSS, this is pretty standard politeness, mannered, appreciative pilot [the first one]. The truck driver is understandably WTF!! in his head but managed to keep it in check pretty well. This is an extremely rare situation that no one could have changed. Sure gives me the willies tho!
You can also tell because the name of the airport is written incorrectly in tha video commentary. It is spelled as:Sault Ste. Marie( pronounced: Soo Saint Marie) Also known as The Soo
at first I was really confused, because I thought the first plane would do the screw-up, but they kept (very very friendly) double, tripple and even quadruple-checking everything ^^
Hah, me too! I was like, okay so what's going wrong here... the pilot is only talking to the trucks, is he missing the tower frequency entirely or something? Is the tower going to freak out because they have no idea this whole convo is going on and everybody else knows the runway is safe as the pilot lands? Hmmm... well that went well--oh hai there green plane of magical-appearing-ness. I get it now.
Not being familiar with how uncontrolled airports work, it's like a pilot trying to contact ATC of a controlled airport, then finds he can only talk to the janitor!
Here's how a landing at an uncontrolled airport works; you're in contact with 'center' (enroute ATC) and they guide you to the runway. At some point, they will clear you for the approach, since there is no terminal ATC. Then you're on your own. Since there is no tower, there will be no clearance to land and none is required. You'll switch to the local airport frequency and state your position and intentions, often several times. Usually, there is no answer because there is no one else around. So you simply proceed with your approach and landing. I've done it hundreds of times. This is a very rare incident, radios don't fail very often and to blame the pilots is foolish. They were following the same procedure they had done many times at this airport. They had no way of knowing that the radio had failed. The guys on the ground could have been a bit less jerkish though.........further, at an uncontrolled airport, vehicles on the runway need to ALWAYS be on the lookout for approaching aircraft, especially in lousy weather when the pilots can't see very far.
Not a pilot myself (Workin' on it tho!) but knowing my anxieties, I'd have been a bit suspect hearing Toronto saying Sunwing was down and not hearing it over radio 2 from Sunwing himself. That said, it brings a question to my mind for a pilot... Toronto ATC wouldn't be reporting touchdowns for an untowered field without being asked, would they? If not, would Toronto have been able to tell if Sunwing was down without Sunwing announcing it, via radar/etc? I wouldn't necessarily say the pilots are specifically at fault, as I know untowered landings are routine to most all pilots, and it's not out of the ordinary to just hear nothing upon approach. It was just in that small nook of "odd" in this situation that I really couldn't say they did anything specifically wrong. A lot of people forget it's possible to do nothing wrong and still have a bad outcome for an event. It's just life. Thank god nobody was hurt here.
Just wondering, what is the procedure in situations like this? Where you can't get any information on FI or the weather status. The previous plane did an awesome job getting in touch with airport operations, is that mandatory? Or how do you assure that runway is clear on bad conditions?
I'm a bit unclear as to what you believe "Center" is. If you mean a Traffic Controller like a tower, this airport does not have one. As RR KNL said, you go to the airport's frequency and announce what your position and intentions are. If there's vehicles to clear the runway, as there are here, they are on the freq as well doing the same. If intentions conflict, you coordinate a solution with each other, not a traffic controller.
It's interesting, isn't it? This would be considered a very small international airport in a more isolated community of roughly 75,000 people. Seems so strange that no one besides ground crew is helping these large planes land.
This was handled surprisingly well on both sides. Nobody got angry or started yelling, and the professionalism was just amazing. A lot of pilots and ATC should take notes.
Select airports have an automated system similar to what you are describing. If a runway is not safe for use, red embedded lights will illuminate. Taxiway/runway intersections also have these lights. LAX and DFW for sure have this system.
Kevin Metz For non aviators, those “select” airports are large ones where the control tower turns lights on/off as an extra safety measure. At smaller or non towered airports the idea of changing the lights is quite brilliant. I think an easy fix would be to have the lights slowly pulse on/off when the runway is unsafe, which would not require any change to bulbs and would be easy to see from the air. Alternatively the lights could simply be switched off if ground ops doesn’t need to see them, but this could confuse the pilots into thinking the lights are non functioning or they are lost, so pulsing would be better.
Canadian Argument: Canadian 1: "Ey boys got a little close there ey." Canadian 2: "Soory aboot that boys." Canadian 1: "Soory we had to get so angry at you."
That must be the most chill pilot I've ever heard. Truck: "You landed with two vehicles on the runway, could have been catastrophic!! This WILL be reported!!". Pilot: "😒 Whatever".
@@user-wq9mw2xz3j And it was in making an assumption that was the error - in life and death situations like this, I wouldnt want to try my luck on an assumption.
I live here. Was listening on LiveATC while this happened. Was amusing to say the least! There are a lot of problems with our airport in general; one of our TWO runways is basically out of commission entirely, old comm equipment, bad viewing angles from tower. Not to mention we've been using the exact same 300 and Q400s for years. Thankfully stuff like this is a rarity, even for CYAM.
Interesting enough, I worked at YAM during this time. This incident was because late flights arriving into the airport don't have ATC services. Since the incident, for late night flights, the airline now reports the aircraft's ETA to the maintenance chief once we receive indication the aircraft is airborne and en route.
As I said in a previous comment, they could however have done better by keeping an eye on the approach for landing lights, and/or making a radio call to check ETA before allowing vehicles to re-enter the runway.
So turns out transport canada decides not to investigate this further. Makes sense tho: tower was closed at the time (so not an incursion), Jazz was operating IFR (and probably on the ILS approach) so they didn't need to overfly the field, and they believed comms to be operational because they had been talking to center.
Seems like they've exposed a pretty gaping hole in the system at small airports, if one equipment malfunction can potentially cause a collision on the runway.
It requires the crew to evaluate and react, like almost all of the redundant systems on an aircraft. Radios are harder to evaluate when you are in a low traffic or non towered area.
An equipment malfunction, at night, with low visibility, and snow (requiring trucks on the runway to clear it periodically, thus the vehicles), at an _uncontrolled_ airport. The rules for uncontrolled airports are that you contact any other aircraft in the area and announce your landing, usually several times, and coordinate with them in lieu of having a tower to do it for you. Since they were the only ones in the sky and knew Sunwing had already landed/cleared the runway, they used COM2 to communicate with ground and got no response. That's not exactly unusual for an uncontrolled runway, so they went ahead and landed. If it wasn't night, or if it wasn't low visibility/they weren't IFR, or if ground had been smart about not being on the runway when they knew another plane was landing in the next 15 minutes, then there wouldn't have been any issue at all. It's kind of a perfect storm moment, except nothing catastrophic ocurred.
yeah, that was my impression as well. They messed up and blamed it on a faulty radio. Give some maintenance guy a bottle of maple syrup to write it up as a blown fuze or something and you're good to go.
Its ok to be skeptical; but A IFR [ instrument flight rules ] Aircraft transitioning to a uncontrolled airfield Is normally one of the most guarded experiences that pilots face. There are a lot of uncertainties as you transition from approach control to either Unicom or airport advisory. I cannot easily believe that the crew would blatantly disregard the risk involved. There was also a lot of posturing [ hither and yarn ] on the frequency about who was at fault that would have been better done after the aircraft was no longer operating or moving. I think we all get the critical nature of this event, but you can get ahead of the facts trying to make immediate judgements.
Radio problems are unusual. But not THAT rare. On one of my many visits into Zurich Airport, my radio started to act weird. While I could hear ATC they couldn`t hear me. After that they PTT (Push to talk) button got stuck. So there we also had a stuck mic situation. Started to hold at Whiskey 2, worked on the problem which in the end pretty much fixed itself and continued the approach. From there on till touchdown went smoothly. Like I said, it happens.
@@BlackFoxFalcon On a lot of aircraft the radio is actually in the avionics bay; the radio head is what is seen in the cockpit. There are relays and control equipment that make the two units work as one. In my experience pilots are very cautious operating revenue flights into Uncontrolled Airfields, approach control points out known traffic but you are entering less structured environment. enjoy your flights.
There seems to be a large amount of confusion in the comments so allow me to clear it up a little. You are allowed to land without clearance at uncontrolled airports (which is what this airport is). Only at a towered or controlled airport are you required to receive clearance before landing. The only reason the Sunwing was asking the trucks questions was because they wanted a report on the conditions of the runway. They weren't required to communicate with the trucks like that at all. All they're expected to do is give their own position reports as they did later in the video (when they say 8 miles out, 4 miles, etc). Its important to note they are expected to report, but NOT required. An aircraft is perfectly legal to land and take off at an uncontrolled airport without communicating on the radios at all (although I don't recommend it ). In this situation, the plane is at fault due to a comm system failure. A situation that will likely be regarded as unfortunate, but understandable. As a result, it is highly unlikely anyone was reprimanded for this. Despite the rules and regulations which are there to protect everyone in aviation failures do happen. If someone has a failure but doesn't realize it that makes the failure far far worse. Given this situation, it is unreasonable to assume the Dash 8 would be aware of their failure as once again at an uncontrolled airport no one is expected or required to respond to them. So despite the tone of the truck crews, who were understandably shaken up, the Dash 8 crew while at fault technically, had very little chance if any to avoid the situation. With the exception being if they had been aware of their comms 2 failure. In that case, it's likely they would have troubleshot by using comm 1 and the situation would have been averted. An important takeaway pilots can take away from this is if you are ever unsure of the viability of your equipment, test it. Much better to waste a second double checking than fly around with broken equipment you don't even know is broken. A few useful resources which relate to this event and others like it. Nasa report on uncontrolled airport incursions: asrs.arc.nasa.gov/docs/rs/61_Runway_Transgressions_NonTowered.pdf FAA Guide to Ground Vehicle Operations Page 22: www.faa.gov/airports/runway_safety/media/ground_vehicle_guide_proof_final.pdf FAR 91.126 Operating on or in the vicinity of an airport in class G airspace: www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.126 If you have any questions feel free to ask. I fly for a living and am always happy to answer people's questions or find the right answer if I'm unsure. After all, as every pilot knows all our licenses, whether PPL or ATP, is at its root a license to learn.
Were they ever aware of the trucks being there in the first place? They mention knowing that other aircraft had made it in? Where did they get that information while missing the comms with trucks on the runway?
@@ConnorDuffy. Almost all aircraft nowdays has transponders which pick up and respond to incoming signals allowing for those with the capabilities to know where the aircraft is. There's also adsb-out and radar which work in different ways but provide a similar result. The incoming traffic likely asked approach (who they were talking to before switching to this airports frequency) if any planes had landed at this uncontrolled field since the runway conditions were unknown.
So, isn't this a *massive* safety shortfall? It's snowing so the trucks need to clear the runway to make it safe to land, yet there's no requirement for the plane or trucks to communicate with each other AT ALL? Surely a sensible system would be to have any aircraft or vehicle announce it's intention to use a runway - e.g. "Airplane on approach", "Airplane taking off", "Airplane taxiing down runway", "Ground car inspecting for FOD", "Plough entering runway", etc. What's getting to me is how the system as it stands hasn't led to a bunch of crashes.
@@jakethadley even though I don’t know if they had fixed the problem yet, but it has been four years since the incident , so they probably have fixed the problem.
Once on the ground, the pilot said a "reset" fixed his radio and it was working now. Shouldn't he have done that while still in the air when he was getting no response from anyone? Also wondering how these guys are out on a runway clearing snow and don't see/hear an incoming plane. You'd think they would be somewhat watching out for that.
This airport is towered, just the tower was closed (these were likely delayed flights or late night flights). It's pretty common, even in the US, for smaller airport towers to close at night.
8 min in I'm like "ok the plane landed with no issues... whats the point of this video again?" and then I realised theres another 6min left of the video
I think this was my favorite video yet. It gave some insight into how small airports work (whew knew the pilot communicates directly with Ronnie in the blower!). Everything was great with the Sunwing communications. The Jazz pilot didn't clue into the severity of his error for some time. I'm glad the boss, Ronnie, Jeff and Terry were ok. We can't find a cador on this, although it was written up in the Aviation Herald. odd.
Silverlight Unicorn even at larger controlled airports the ops vehicles come equipped with radios. Otherwise how are they suppose to get clearance to perform inspections and such on active runways. We hear this down in Windsor a couple of times a day at the FBO. "Staff 23 cleared alpha, runway 30, runway 07, hotel, foxtrot, golf." Sounds something like that.
I don't know if I'd consider this an "error" by the pilot. The pilot of the Jazz flight said he was making his calls. Often times at uncontrolled airports you can make all your calls and no one respond; so a lack of response isn't uncommon. There was no way for the pilot to know his #2 radio wasn't working properly until he had landed and saw there were vehicles on the runway. Radio failure can happen and the pilots not know about it. There was no reason to check the #2 radio in flight because for all they knew, it was working. I'm just glad they were at the far end of the runway in use and not at the middle or near the arrival end. Could have been bad.
Vehicles that are going to be operated on taxiways and, especially, runways usually have aviation radios and tune to the CTAF/Tower/Ground/Ramp/whatever-is-appropriate-for-the-situation frequency. At a controlled field, they must get clearance to use a taxiway or runway, just like the aircraft. You don't want some truck driving onto a runway where a 747 has been cleared to land. Nor do you want some truck pulling out in front of an oncoming aircraft on a taxiway. At uncontrolled fields, it's still best for them to advise of what their doing for the same reason airplanes need to do it. Contrary to what the truck driver in this video seemed to believe, it's not that easy to see a truck at the other end of a long runway, especially if they don't have bright lights and/or it's inclement weather. Even airplanes can be hard to see without their lights, especially smaller ones. When flying short final, you're usually focused more on the arrival end of the runway (because you'd ideally like to put your aircraft there,) not the departure end. It's best for everyone operating in the same environment to be on the same frequency, that way they can all directly hear each other's position and intention reports and not have to rely on some go-between to relay information. For very busy airports, this will be split up into lots of different frequencies for different parts of the airport (sometimes even dedicated Tower frequencies for each runway at very busy airports,) but at small, uncontrolled fields, everyone at the whole field is usually on the same frequency, ground and air vehicles alike.
These trucks had the radios and were on the Tower/Ground frequency that they transmitted, I believe 118.8. That's where all aircraft are to make contact before landing at this facility. When the ATC tower is staffed, that's the tower freq. When it isn't, it's advisory or ground staff.
Obviously the jazz captain should be 100% certain that the runway is clear but I really can’t blame him in this situation. If I’m flying into an airport with an MF and I call all my position reports, hear no conflicting traffic, see no conflicting traffic I would assume that there is no conflicting traffic. The pilots have no way of telling if their 2nd radio is working or not because not getting a response is pretty typical at uncontrolled airports. Only way to prevent this in my eyes is equipping the ground vehicles with transponders so that the q300 gets an RA for the conflicting on the runway.
As former cabin crew on the beautiful Q400 I thought this re-enactment and the real times radio comms was superb. VASAviation has to be the best aviation channel on YT. Thanks guys
Next time, don't have operations plow the runway, just leave the 10" of snow and have Jazz do a belly landing sliding along like a giant Bobsled with all the passengers throwing up their arms and shouting "WHEEEEEEEEE!!!" And That's how Canadians have fun... :)
A bit of a gap in the procedures there. If the #2 COM was indeed faulty then the pilot did nothing wrong. Nor did the trucks. When something like that can happen and NO ONE involved is at fault that means the rules need to be fixed.
@@ValeCorp I think he's just saying in order for it to not happen again, it is only reasonable that we should consider new protocols and procedures for such an event. This one is pretty difficult though, hmm. For me at least, I guess I don't know enough about radio technology as yet lol.
Blake Belladonna The reasonable thing is a change of procedures: An automated X should be installed at the threshold, and be activated / deactivated by ground workers when they are on the runway. It costs, but it avoids such situations.
The pilot was at fault for landing in an unverified, unsafe condition. They basically 'winged it'. They could have done a low altitude flyover. Craziness.
This reminds me of an Aeroflot crash in Omsk back in the days of the USSR. The controller authorized trucks to dry the runway despite not having authority to. Then he proceeded to forget to turn on warning lights and fall asleep while the second controller was absent due to staff shortages. Meanwhile, the maintenance workers failed to turn their lights on, as they were too bright for their liking. When the pilot asked for landing clearance, the pilot got a muffled response that he interpreted as them saying "free" in Russian. The end result was the plane crashed into the trucks, killing 174 on the plane and 4 in the trucks, with only 5 survivors on the plane. (The 4 cockpit crew and one passenger.) en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_3352
Okay, I couldn't help it. When the De Havilland showed up on screen, sneakily and all of a sudden, I laughed hard as if it was Leslie Nielsen pulling a stunt.
As a Canadian, it got me every time they were saying “Sault StMarie” but the “Sault” part was always omitted or replaced by “to” in the captions! 😅 (Sault pronounced Soo) Still an amazing job with subtitles
They should not be saying "Sault" at all, standard radio protocol is to eliminate all extraneous portions of an airport name. The only reason for including the full name is when there is a similarly named airport in the immediate area.
@@mytech6779 Uhh..."Sault" is not an extraneous portion of the airport name. The city/airport's name is literally "Sault Sainte Marie." It's a package deal. By your logic, pilots and ATC should use "York" instead of "New York."
@@roberthanson2636 That's just childish. JFK airport is often shortened to Kennedy over the radio. They use "Seattle" rather than "Seattle-Tacoma international". "New York Skyports Seaplane Base" would be called "Skyports" in most local radio comms. "New York" is a poor example because it is only two words and two syllables, and there is no "New York" airport in any case. Anything official like a clearance is likely to use the airport code ie kilo sierra echo alpha.
@@mytech6779 Ok - you can be as pedantic as you want (I'm not American, I'm not an expert about minute terminology used at their local airports) but it shouldn't be an issue to at least think about it hypothetically. *If* JFK was simply called "New York" and *if* you heard simply "York" on the radio when someone was talking about it, would you understand what they're talking about? No, of course not. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to fill in the blanks here. As far as SSM goes, I'm talking about places where the **city name** consists of multiple words (so your Seattle comparison doesn't even apply - "Seattle" is one word). There are other examples you could have subbed in yourself if the semantics of NYC airports were too much for you to handle (ie: "Worth" instead of "Fort Worth," "Vegas" instead of "Las Vegas," "Francisco" instead of "San Francisco"). My point is that "Sault Sainte Marie" is an entire city name. Not a fancy commemorative airport name, the city name. There is nothing "extraneous" in the name "Sault Sainte Marie" and omitting part of it is like omitting an arbitrary part of another city name. If it's "childish" to omit random parts of city names, then you are guilty of doing that here. The city and airport of Sault Sainte Marie are referred to as "Sault Sainte Marie" and nothing else. I don't know how to make this simpler for you.
Was this not the one where it was found that the vehicle on the runway had the radio volume so low that it didn’t hear the comms? Also the sun glare meant the pilot couldn’t see the truck on the runway. Either that or this is scarily similar, but the pilots were not found to be at fault for that one in the report I read.
"Just wondering why you landed an airplane on a runway you weren't 100% was clear" Maybe because its an uncontrolled airport and nobody got back to them with their calls so on their end they were 100% certain it was clear....
How were they 100% certain of the runway being clear if their calls were going unanswered while they were clearly expecting an answer? They could have 1) used radio _number one_ if they already had previous issues contacting Sunwing *and* the airport on radio number two, or 2) do a go-around at a low altitude to get a better visual of whether or not the runway was safe to land.
@@shannonlane2508 uncontrolled airport means under normal operations you do NOT expect a return They saw a plane lane, saw the runway lights on, good to go under normal operations
B.S. with weather like this, on an airport they clearly often go to, they should know there is somebody in the tower. Even if it is uncontrolled. And especially when visibility is shit, get into radio contact or do a low pass. No, these guys are not in the right.
The Jazz was way ahead of schedule. Knowing it's snowy conditions and crews would be clearing snow, they should have erred on the side of caution. They said they were in contact with Sunwing, so they could have checked thru them.
The biggest issue here is that Jazz was running 20 minutes early and didn't notify ground. They say they heard Sunwing talking, so they knew ground was there. When they got no reply, that was a clear indication that something was wrong. Then they turned on runway lights (taking that as sufficient warning for ground)... except they were already on from Sunwing's landing. So ground crew had zero warning. They even admit they "assumed" all was good. Pilot training 101 - never assume!
They assumed they had turned the lights on, but the snowplow crews always have the lights on when they’re working to avoid running over them with their equipment. I live just a few miles from Sault Ste. Marie (on the Michigan side) and I always expect the lights to be on when it’s snowing. These guys in the Jazz should have expected it too. They also should have expected trucks on the runway. Even if the tower was closed, there should be an ATIS or AWOS for weather condition reporting, if they had bothered to check that they would have noticed #2 radio wasn’t working.
The way I understood it is that Jazz heard the SunWing on Center's freq saying they were down. Never heard anything about them hearing Sunwing and the ground crew talking....
I've been flying since the seventies and I have never seen a temporary X on a runway. Alway check the NOTAMS for airport information concerning runway usage.
I hate arguing policy and procedure with "I've always done it this way" people because they're almost 100% of the time simply ignorant to reality. Here, READ. There's even a picture for you of a portable lighted X set up for a temporary closure of a runway: www.cfinotebook.net/notebook/aircraft-operations/terminal/airport-markings-and-signs You don't see them because you don't fly approaches into closed runways. You purposefully check NOTAMS so you don't. If you had, you'd see them.
Nobody did anything wrong, just an unfortunate equipment failure. Sure there are things that could have been done, the pilots of the Jazz could have tried the CTAF on com 1 but there's not really a way to tell if what your transmitting isn't being picked up, because frequencies are very often silent, just means there's no traffic.
When capcha pops up, I take the audio challenge and always intentionally type in homonyms of what I hear, just to spite them. If the voice says "A cool summer day perhaps" I type "Hakul some her diaper has". So I'm to blame for bad captions,.
One of the most decent, well mannered and professional pilot I've ever heard, the first one... Hats off to his way of approach and for making a super and perfect landing by communicating so decently with the ground vehicles... 👌👌❤❤
As someone who flies for this airline into CYAM on a weekly basis the pilots did nothing wrong. Once Toronto cleared them for the approach they were in uncontrolled airspace.
Maybe by the book they did nothing wrong, but common sense says that you should inform the ground crew of your landing, especially since they apparently knew there was traffic on the runway. This was very irresponsible of the Jazz crew.
I can understand the vehicles being pissed, but I am impressed at the calmness of the pilot through it all. Surely his asshole turned into a suction cup when he had those vehicles in sight. I am glad he handled the situation with professionalism.
If it was necessary to monitor Center I would have switched them to my number two and asked for a radio check from them. If it was unreadable I would have proceeded with using the number one Radio for all primary communications. Hindsight is 20-20. Could have easily happened to anyone seeing as Radio calls at uncontrolled airports are frequently broadcast with no return.
I just started taking flight school at an uncontrolled airport and I have not flown long enough to know for sure, but before landing, we fly over the runway to make sure nobody is on it.
IFR only get you TO the airport, on a final. The landing isn't ILS, so it's VISUAL and yes, it means you MUST confirm the runway is clear before landing on it. You don't have to fly over it if you have good visibility, but if you do not, don't land. You have NO idea what's there. Vehicles, aircraft, people or debris. You're an airline pilot. You have no right to assume anything.
Absolutely correct. For about 13 years, I lived in Iron Bridge on the Trans-Canada highway #17, about a 90 minute drive to the Soo. You live in the Soo, Darcy??
God, i remember landing once in uncontrolled airport in the bahamas, they had 1 person on the radio, single strip airfield... and i got clearance to land in cessna Caravan and on final approach, (pulling a sideslip for short runway) there was a buffoon ON THE RUNWAY in a piper cub trying to take off with his radio on the wrong frequency.
Quite the opposite. It's exactly when the airport is uncontrolled when 100% of the fault is on the pilots. There's no clearances, only advisories, and all decisions have to be made with certainty. Something goes wrong that could have been foreseen, like vehicles on the runway, you just don't land. There's lives at stake.
palonazo Disagree. Uncontrolled field technically you don’t have to make two way communication with anyone, you just have to make advisories of your position in the CTAF. These guys clearly had a radio failure that they were on aware of. So based on that information it’s safe to assume that they were making there advisory calls, heard no one else giving advisories, and assumed the traffic pattern/runway/airport was all there’s like any other pilot on any other CTAF all by themselves would do. Now. If your VFR technically there’s no requirements to be making radio calls. But obviously in the METARS the field was very much IFR and so they knew they didn’t have to visually check for “no radio/not making calls traffic”
I'm not a pilot, but do fly in small planes, and investigate accidents for a living -- and make recommendations for preventing them. Clearly there is a massive difference in vigilance required when landing at a seldom-used, uncontrolled airport in daylight with good visibility, versus: 1. Night time 2. Snowing, recent in time 3. Airport has snow-clearing equipment 4. Airport has a reasonable amount of traffic -- you spoke with a jet which just landed 5. You suspect you have radio problems -- on the above call 6. You are not flying a 2-seater 7. Your own airline had a crash in snowy conditions at this airport, just a year ago So, without talking about "fault" or "following procedure" -- ideally aren't there things the pilots could have done differently which would have avoided the near disaster? Should procedures be clarified or changed?
The question is, when did they tune in the CTAF frequency on COM1? If they had it on COM2, and they landed, what sparked on their heads, "hey, we already landed and haven't heard anything on COM2, maybe our COM2 is having issues, let's try COM1 and see if we can talk to that rig over there by the end of the runway?".
These are absolutely perfect and stereotypical Canadian voices, just identical to the voices in the movie "Canadian Bacon". The blower driver just isn't going to let this go, he wants his pound of flesh.
Well yeah, when you're making $10 an hour, and somebody making 100k makes a mistke, you want to milk that shit for as long as you can. He probably still gloats about it to this day.
Excellent video. Do you guys have a "Beep Back" settup on your CTAF frequencies like we do here in Australia. After you finish transmitting, the ground station auto reponds with a loud single tone to indicate it has heared your radio.
I know this is WAY late to the game, but I just wanted to note that the city being referenced here is "SAULT Sainte Marie", not just "Sainte Marie" (going off your captions). Pronounced "Sue" as in a person's name or the legal action thereof, and most commonly referred to as "The Soo" (or, "The Twin Soos" if you're referring to both the Canadian city and it's US town literally right across the St. Marys River, sharing the same name and nickname); oftentimes you'll hear people from that area pronounce it so quickly, that it sounds like "Susaint Marie". "Sault de Sainte Mary" basically means "The Rapids of Sainte Mary". Think French-Canadian, eh? Sorry for the shitty boring information... QUICK EDIT: Sounds like some of the radio comms (truck 88 and 96) are also referencing "Sault Area Traffic". Not 100% sure on that one, but it'd make sense, as "Sault Area [insert anything here]" is a common reference for a lot of things in that area. Sault Area High School, Sault Area Hospital, Sault Area Art Council, etc.
@@jerrybutler605 I have heard numerous stories from people who work in restaurants and in other retail chains that mention Canadians are very rude or dismissive. The idea that canadians are all super nice or pleasant is a bold faced lie honestly.
Wouldn't it be a wise idea to turn off the runway lights when it is occupied by other planes/vehicles? As to make it a little bit more obvious that it isn't available for landing.
What's important to know about Canadian regulations versus U.S. regulations: both regulations state that there is a visibility minimum for landing. It is most likely that those minimums were at play here and since the pilot admitted to a "squall" hindering his view of the runway end, it's possible. However, the Canadian regulations state the minimums simply as advisory to safety. They are not a requirement. In the U.S., however, having less than the minimum means you are forbidden from landing. This is likely the reason why this Jazz pilot didn't face any legal reprocussions. Technically, he didn't break any regulation. However, I'm sure not adhering to landing visibility minimums is frowned upon and perhaps even forbidden by Air Canada management and it's likely the pilot was either punished or even fired for putting lives at risk without an urgent need to. It's negligence, even if it isn't a crime.
Could there not be some sort of permanantly installed visual signal installed at the start of the runway that when active effectively tells pilots to abort their landing. Most of the time they shouldn't need it because of radio, but as a fail-safe, surely it's not such a bad idea..
The pilot didn't assume anything. He had his #2 radio tuned in and was making his calls (at least that's what he said and there isn't evidence to contradict that). When landing at a non-towered field it isn't uncommon to make calls and receive no response if traffic is light or if no one is operating there; so he had no way of knowing that there were vehicles were there. He thought, much like every other pilot would, that the traffic pattern was empty and the airport was clear. I'm just glad no one was hurt
+TheRight Because non-pilots don't actually understand what the procedure for an uncontrolled field is and that the pilot's apparently followed it, nor have they seen first-hand what it looks like to land an airplane on a 1-to-2-mile-long strip of pavement, let alone in bad weather. It's not always easy to see something on the opposite end of the runway, especially if it's not lit up well.
The Right To Arm Bears When Lansing at an uncontrolled field, Airplanes don’t technically communicate with each other. They give advisories of the CTAF(Common Traffic Advisory Frequency) about there position. If you landing at an Uncontrolled field and you don’t hear anyone, then your SUPPOSED to assume you have the field to yourself and watch for traffic if the field is VFR( since surprisingly if it’s VMC conditions you don’t need a radio at all to fly into class G) Now. The weather clearly was not VMC and these guys were IFR so they’re supposed to be focused on the instruments.
"he had no way of knowing that there were vehicles"???? at an airport during a snowstorm?????. he didn't suspect the snowplows. so he was prepared to land on a runway full of snow then. and you want us to believe pilots are smarter?
wow..... all i kept thinking about watching this, was CRANBROOK...... those jazz pilots need to refresh themselves on pacific western flight 314 & feel very very VERY fortunate to be alive, and still have a job
Runway had lights on and wasn't closed, the pilots had just talked to sunwing who landed moments before and indicated that the runway was cleared of vehicles.
Plus that guy on the ground refused to answer any questions directly, he kept answering with indirect stuff. Pilot: how much time do you need to clear the runway? Ground: I need to get a blower out here. Pilot: how much longer until the runway is clear? Ground: I'll have another truck out here in 15 minutes. Pilot: Is the runway clear? Ground: I'd like a ham sandwich and fries. So infuriating!
Hi, I'm one of those aviation enthusiasts, so I can't talk about rules in a professional manner, but as a linguist I can definitely pick apart whatever Jazz pilots were saying. 1. When reprimanded about not asking for clearance to land, the pilots respond that they were trying to figure out if they had an issue or if it was an issue at the airport Conclusion: they acknowledge that they were aware of a potential radio issue while still up in the air 2. Jazz pilots state that Toronto ATC notified them that Swg landed at Saint Marie. Conclusion: Jazz pilots realized they might have a radio issue when they couldn't hear Swg make announcements of their position and intentions on approach, assuming that Swg either (a) didn't have an issue with the radio themselves or (b) they didn't follow the procedure for an uncontrolled field to announce their intentions (the latter being unlikely unless you want to cause a crash) It is obvious that Jazz pilots considered a radio malfunction and decided to proceed with the landing without being 100% sure that they were heard. I assume this is usually the case on advisory frequencies at uncontrolled fields (you can't be 100% sure that anyone heard you), unless there is other traffic listening to the same frequency and you should be able to communicate on it. It appears that no announcements coming from Swg on advisory freq seemed odd to Jazz pilots, so that's how they got to the idea of perhaps having a radio malfunction. Now what pilots are supposed to do in a situation of suspect equipment failure like that, I don't know, but to me at least it seems illogical to just land the aircraft, especially because it appears that radio 1 where they were listening to Toronto ATC worked fine.
They are supposed to try another radio, if present. If not, they should approach visually, if possible and attempt a landing. If they cannot get visual confirmation of the runway being clear, they should either divert to a place with better weather or declare an emergency and hope for the best.
how do you make sure a runway is 100% clear if there is no tower? i realize they didnt see them and the radio wasnt working, but in a normal situation with no vehicles on the runway and no snow who would respond to a landing plane to let them know its clear?
"Like, so sorry there, eh? Didn't see you guys ooot there on the ice, eh? Can I buy you guys a hot cuppa cocoa there, eh? Darn shame ya pooped yer pants there, eh? We'll file our gosh darn diddly report there, fellas."
Two ways to tell if you’re having radio transmission problems: 1) no side tone ( can’t hear yourself transmit), 2) the other pilot can’t hear you transmit (other pilot should be monitoring transmissions) Other than that it’s Unicom so, always expect the unexpected - ground and flight crews Thanks for posting
The Jazz crew admitted they were having doubts about the radio even well before they landed. Why didn't they do a radio check, just asking anyone on frequency to confirm that they can hear them?
It is so refreshing in today's world to hear someone own up and take responsibility for their mistake. Not sure what repercussions the pilot will face for this type of event, but I give him credit for admitting fault and apologizing.
Mostly likely the worst that will happen is a good reaming from the FAA and maybe a fine but other then that nothing, it was a simple mistake caused by an unforeseen failure in an area where the pilots are used to not hearing a response on the radio. Yeah they could have done something different but technically they are not required to.
They were talking to a common traffic advisory frequency (CTAF). It's only there so pilots can give their position in the air or on the ground. When pilots talk on this frequency, they never expect a reply because there isn't a controller or anything, and there might not even be anybody else listening. They made their calls, and after receiving no reply I believe it was justified that they would assume nobody else was in the vicinity, and therefore proceed with the landing. Of course they care about what might be on the runway, but there was no real way to know.
Actually, he blamed everything on the radio when he should have apologized for putting people in danger because he landed on a runway without verifying that it's clear.
10:20 - So you have a question regarding the safety of the airport, and you land, hoping it'll turn out OK? In the SNOW? Man. I'm glad you weren't MY instructor.
I heard something about some airports installing colour coded runway & taxiway lights. I wonder if it would be worth it to have them turn red &c when a runway is unavailable.
![[REAL ATC] American B738 forced to land WITHOUT FLAPS AT JFK!](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ATVYGjkgq2A/mqdefault.jpg)
![[REAL ATC] American B738 forced to land WITHOUT FLAPS AT JFK!](/img/tr.png)
The importance of radio communications... *The Canadian TSB reported that it was detected the #2 radio did not transmit or receive.* // Thanks to those who voted on Twitter for this video to be published today :)
Very good video, good job LIKE
Just out of curiosity were the pilots put at fault or no?
That would mean that the pilots were not at fault.
yes, their responsility to establish contact and if in doubt do a radio check, or use a different radio (they could have used COM1)
Whether the pilots where at fault or not really gets murky. They clearly knew vehicles where operating on the airport and suspected their comm might be the problem. So I'd give it a 50/50 whether they get violated or not. If they do it would be for reckless operation since radios are not technically required at an uncontrolled field.
That first pilot was possibly the most polite, well-mannered, most appreciative pilot I’ve ever heard.
As a retired Canadian FSS, this is pretty standard politeness, mannered, appreciative pilot [the first one]. The truck driver is understandably WTF!! in his head but managed to keep it in check pretty well. This is an extremely rare situation that no one could have changed. Sure gives me the willies tho!
@@suestoons x
. . . and the second one sounded stoned and dismissive.
@@suestoons if it was Tui metal they were probably Dutch :P
My opinion too 👌👌
You can tell it's Canadian because they are close to yelling at each other and then they apologize to each other at the end.
LimitedOptionsMan LMAO
LOMan lel
LOMan this was the most Canadian thing I think I have ever watched on RUclips.
You can also tell because the name of the airport is written incorrectly in tha video commentary. It is spelled as:Sault Ste. Marie( pronounced: Soo Saint Marie) Also known as The Soo
Quite a thick accent on that guy lol
at first I was really confused, because I thought the first plane would do the screw-up, but they kept (very very friendly) double, tripple and even quadruple-checking everything ^^
Hah, me too! I was like, okay so what's going wrong here... the pilot is only talking to the trucks, is he missing the tower frequency entirely or something? Is the tower going to freak out because they have no idea this whole convo is going on and everybody else knows the runway is safe as the pilot lands? Hmmm... well that went well--oh hai there green plane of magical-appearing-ness. I get it now.
tirsden 😂 😂
@@asdasda286 This is the part of the job where "It's 95% routine and 5% WTF!"
Yep, well done!
Not being familiar with how uncontrolled airports work, it's like a pilot trying to contact ATC of a controlled airport, then finds he can only talk to the janitor!
Here's how a landing at an uncontrolled airport works; you're in contact with 'center' (enroute ATC) and they guide you to the runway. At some point, they will clear you for the approach, since there is no terminal ATC. Then you're on your own.
Since there is no tower, there will be no clearance to land and none is required.
You'll switch to the local airport frequency and state your position and intentions, often several times. Usually, there is no answer because there is no one else around. So you simply proceed with your approach and landing.
I've done it hundreds of times.
This is a very rare incident, radios don't fail very often and to blame the pilots is foolish. They were following the same procedure they had done many times at this airport. They had no way of knowing that the radio had failed.
The guys on the ground could have been a bit less jerkish though.........further, at an uncontrolled airport, vehicles on the runway need to ALWAYS be on the lookout for approaching aircraft, especially in lousy weather when the pilots can't see very far.
RR KNL Thank you for that excellent explanation.
Not a pilot myself (Workin' on it tho!) but knowing my anxieties, I'd have been a bit suspect hearing Toronto saying Sunwing was down and not hearing it over radio 2 from Sunwing himself. That said, it brings a question to my mind for a pilot... Toronto ATC wouldn't be reporting touchdowns for an untowered field without being asked, would they? If not, would Toronto have been able to tell if Sunwing was down without Sunwing announcing it, via radar/etc?
I wouldn't necessarily say the pilots are specifically at fault, as I know untowered landings are routine to most all pilots, and it's not out of the ordinary to just hear nothing upon approach. It was just in that small nook of "odd" in this situation that I really couldn't say they did anything specifically wrong. A lot of people forget it's possible to do nothing wrong and still have a bad outcome for an event. It's just life. Thank god nobody was hurt here.
Just wondering, what is the procedure in situations like this? Where you can't get any information on FI or the weather status. The previous plane did an awesome job getting in touch with airport operations, is that mandatory? Or how do you assure that runway is clear on bad conditions?
Thanks you for the explanation, btw.
I'm a bit unclear as to what you believe "Center" is. If you mean a Traffic Controller like a tower, this airport does not have one. As RR KNL said, you go to the airport's frequency and announce what your position and intentions are. If there's vehicles to clear the runway, as there are here, they are on the freq as well doing the same. If intentions conflict, you coordinate a solution with each other, not a traffic controller.
"Truck 96 - Please climb to 4000ft and hold East of runway 12, Traffic 270' Jazz-8 on Final approach."
Truck 96--where are you!
Libery One, that joke will never get old. :)
EPIC !!!!!!!!!
@@liberyone5185 passed the 40K feet now .... some snow here, started plowing
That got a long laugh out of me ahaha
Wow. Maintenance acts as operations and ground. I hope those guys are getting paid well
Seems like a small airport in a quiet area. They probably get paid a living wage, but nothing to gawk at.
Normal for these small remote airports
It's interesting, isn't it? This would be considered a very small international airport in a more isolated community of roughly 75,000 people. Seems so strange that no one besides ground crew is helping these large planes land.
@@MuzzCat05 woah big comeback right there
@@MuzzCat05 sounds like hes being informative but didnt want it to snowball into a full discussion
This was handled surprisingly well on both sides. Nobody got angry or started yelling, and the professionalism was just amazing. A lot of pilots and ATC should take notes.
No the guy on ground was an asshole
So disappointing I was hoping for drama 😞
that wouldnt happen at JFK
@@TheChickenlipz87not like San Carlos trying to “fly the tower”
Lights on the runway should change pattern when is not clear to be used.
That would be an idea!
Select airports have an automated system similar to what you are describing. If a runway is not safe for use, red embedded lights will illuminate. Taxiway/runway intersections also have these lights. LAX and DFW for sure have this system.
@@TylerF35A threshold lights and runway edge lights should be red
Kevin Metz For non aviators, those “select” airports are large ones where the control tower turns lights on/off as an extra safety measure. At smaller or non towered airports the idea of changing the lights is quite brilliant. I think an easy fix would be to have the lights slowly pulse on/off when the runway is unsafe, which would not require any change to bulbs and would be easy to see from the air.
Alternatively the lights could simply be switched off if ground ops doesn’t need to see them, but this could confuse the pilots into thinking the lights are non functioning or they are lost, so pulsing would be better.
I... I don't see how this would help in heavy snow... I mean, maybe if said lights were on poles, a foot or two off the ground...?
Canadian Argument:
Canadian 1: "Ey boys got a little close there ey."
Canadian 2: "Soory aboot that boys."
Canadian 1: "Soory we had to get so angry at you."
Yes because that’s actually how they talk 🙄
Canadian 2: " not a problem ya hoser! - time for a beer eh?"
Canadian 1: "Oh yeah, mine's with poutine. By the way, soory agayn boys."
I know almost nothing about planes or airports or the lingo they use, yet here I am watching video after video.
Hahaha thanks! :)
Me too .it's fascinating
Because you were a pilot in a past life. Think about that pal
Same. I have learned a lot though, and now understand much of it.
The same here
Jeff: What's the name of the captain??!
Jazz: C***
Hahahaha! I'm dying! 😂😂😂😂
That must be the most chill pilot I've ever heard. Truck: "You landed with two vehicles on the runway, could have been catastrophic!! This WILL be reported!!". Pilot: "😒 Whatever".
sounded like he was high
In the truck driver's defense, they were probably shook up by suddenly seeing a plane in their face and realizing they were almost plowed into.
@@TimAyro The trucks were working because there was 8cm of snow on the ground. That sort of thing can really bugger up a landing.
@@TimAyro they went out directly after the first plane landed. They assumed no other was coming because they didnt hear anything on radio.
@@user-wq9mw2xz3j And it was in making an assumption that was the error - in life and death situations like this, I wouldnt want to try my luck on an assumption.
Wow, those yellow vehicles have some ludicrous speed acceleration!
It's called fast forward
Wooosh
@@za-se4jv thnx ly
They've gone plaid!
When you land a airplane but realize it is not FSX steam edition.
And you realize you were logged onto VATSIM the whole time
With Full ATC and a big event was running
roger dodger, gonna have to request you go ahead and post it to the blog
dika2saja if he applied steam logic, his call sign would have been Air Force 1
I was wondering why he didn't use the word sauceboss
damn the Sunwing and the truck driver were so nice to each other, love it :D most canadian thing ever
Except for the missing hugs! Hehehe...
Nice? The guy was being an asshole
I live here. Was listening on LiveATC while this happened. Was amusing to say the least! There are a lot of problems with our airport in general; one of our TWO runways is basically out of commission entirely, old comm equipment, bad viewing angles from tower. Not to mention we've been using the exact same 300 and Q400s for years. Thankfully stuff like this is a rarity, even for CYAM.
Interesting enough, I worked at YAM during this time. This incident was because late flights arriving into the airport don't have ATC services. Since the incident, for late night flights, the airline now reports the aircraft's ETA to the maintenance chief once we receive indication the aircraft is airborne and en route.
I liked how stable and professional the pilot kept his tone and words and actively working thru the issues. Thankyou for posting! ☺️
"We don't hold you guys at fault at all." You damn right you don't.
As I said in a previous comment, they could however have done better by keeping an eye on the approach for landing lights, and/or making a radio call to check ETA before allowing vehicles to re-enter the runway.
Funny how it ended up being ground crews fault after the investigation
Was waiting for the Jazz pilot to say "I think they're buying it, eh."
So turns out transport canada decides not to investigate this further. Makes sense tho: tower was closed at the time (so not an incursion), Jazz was operating IFR (and probably on the ILS approach) so they didn't need to overfly the field, and they believed comms to be operational because they had been talking to center.
Seems like they've exposed a pretty gaping hole in the system at small airports, if one equipment malfunction can potentially cause a collision on the runway.
It requires the crew to evaluate and react, like almost all of the redundant systems on an aircraft. Radios are harder to evaluate when you are in a low traffic or non towered area.
An equipment malfunction, at night, with low visibility, and snow (requiring trucks on the runway to clear it periodically, thus the vehicles), at an _uncontrolled_ airport.
The rules for uncontrolled airports are that you contact any other aircraft in the area and announce your landing, usually several times, and coordinate with them in lieu of having a tower to do it for you. Since they were the only ones in the sky and knew Sunwing had already landed/cleared the runway, they used COM2 to communicate with ground and got no response. That's not exactly unusual for an uncontrolled runway, so they went ahead and landed. If it wasn't night, or if it wasn't low visibility/they weren't IFR, or if ground had been smart about not being on the runway when they knew another plane was landing in the next 15 minutes, then there wouldn't have been any issue at all. It's kind of a perfect storm moment, except nothing catastrophic ocurred.
yeah 1 malfunction can also bring 747's down what's new.
I'm not your buddy, guy!
Such is the risk we accept in industrial society
The "radio problems" card. Works every time.
yeah, that was my impression as well. They messed up and blamed it on a faulty radio.
Give some maintenance guy a bottle of maple syrup to write it up as a blown fuze or something and you're good to go.
Its ok to be skeptical; but A IFR [ instrument flight rules ] Aircraft transitioning to a uncontrolled airfield Is normally one of the most guarded experiences that pilots face. There are a lot of uncertainties as you transition from approach control to either Unicom or airport advisory. I cannot easily believe that the crew would blatantly disregard the risk involved. There was also a lot of posturing [ hither and yarn ] on the frequency about who was at fault that would have been better done after the aircraft was no longer operating or moving. I think we all get the critical nature of this event, but you can get ahead of the facts trying to make immediate judgements.
Radio problems are unusual. But not THAT rare. On one of my many visits into Zurich Airport, my radio started to act weird. While I could hear ATC they couldn`t hear me. After that they PTT (Push to talk) button got stuck. So there we also had a stuck mic situation. Started to hold at Whiskey 2, worked on the problem which in the end pretty much fixed itself and continued the approach. From there on till touchdown went smoothly. Like I said, it happens.
@@BlackFoxFalcon On a lot of aircraft the radio is actually in the avionics bay; the radio head is what is seen in the cockpit. There are relays and control equipment that make the two units work as one. In my experience pilots are very cautious operating revenue flights into Uncontrolled Airfields, approach control points out known traffic but you are entering less structured environment. enjoy your flights.
all you commenters are morons
There seems to be a large amount of confusion in the comments so allow me to clear it up a little.
You are allowed to land without clearance at uncontrolled airports (which is what this airport is).
Only at a towered or controlled airport are you required to receive clearance before landing. The only reason the Sunwing was asking the trucks questions was because they wanted a report on the conditions of the runway. They weren't required to communicate with the trucks like that at all. All they're expected to do is give their own position reports as they did later in the video (when they say 8 miles out, 4 miles, etc). Its important to note they are expected to report, but NOT required. An aircraft is perfectly legal to land and take off at an uncontrolled airport without communicating on the radios at all (although I don't recommend it ).
In this situation, the plane is at fault due to a comm system failure. A situation that will likely be regarded as unfortunate, but understandable. As a result, it is highly unlikely anyone was reprimanded for this.
Despite the rules and regulations which are there to protect everyone in aviation failures do happen. If someone has a failure but doesn't realize it that makes the failure far far worse. Given this situation, it is unreasonable to assume the Dash 8 would be aware of their failure as once again at an uncontrolled airport no one is expected or required to respond to them. So despite the tone of the truck crews, who were understandably shaken up, the Dash 8 crew while at fault technically, had very little chance if any to avoid the situation. With the exception being if they had been aware of their comms 2 failure. In that case, it's likely they would have troubleshot by using comm 1 and the situation would have been averted. An important takeaway pilots can take away from this is if you are ever unsure of the viability of your equipment, test it. Much better to waste a second double checking than fly around with broken equipment you don't even know is broken.
A few useful resources which relate to this event and others like it.
Nasa report on uncontrolled airport incursions: asrs.arc.nasa.gov/docs/rs/61_Runway_Transgressions_NonTowered.pdf
FAA Guide to Ground Vehicle Operations Page 22: www.faa.gov/airports/runway_safety/media/ground_vehicle_guide_proof_final.pdf
FAR 91.126 Operating on or in the vicinity of an airport in class G airspace: www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.126
If you have any questions feel free to ask. I fly for a living and am always happy to answer people's questions or find the right answer if I'm unsure. After all, as every pilot knows all our licenses, whether PPL or ATP, is at its root a license to learn.
Were they ever aware of the trucks being there in the first place? They mention knowing that other aircraft had made it in? Where did they get that information while missing the comms with trucks on the runway?
@@ConnorDuffy. Almost all aircraft nowdays has transponders which pick up and respond to incoming signals allowing for those with the capabilities to know where the aircraft is. There's also adsb-out and radar which work in different ways but provide a similar result.
The incoming traffic likely asked approach (who they were talking to before switching to this airports frequency) if any planes had landed at this uncontrolled field since the runway conditions were unknown.
So, isn't this a *massive* safety shortfall? It's snowing so the trucks need to clear the runway to make it safe to land, yet there's no requirement for the plane or trucks to communicate with each other AT ALL?
Surely a sensible system would be to have any aircraft or vehicle announce it's intention to use a runway - e.g. "Airplane on approach", "Airplane taking off", "Airplane taxiing down runway", "Ground car inspecting for FOD", "Plough entering runway", etc.
What's getting to me is how the system as it stands hasn't led to a bunch of crashes.
@@jakethadley even though I don’t know if they had fixed the problem yet, but it has been four years since the incident , so they probably have fixed the problem.
Once on the ground, the pilot said a "reset" fixed his radio and it was working now. Shouldn't he have done that while still in the air when he was getting no response from anyone? Also wondering how these guys are out on a runway clearing snow and don't see/hear an incoming plane. You'd think they would be somewhat watching out for that.
This airport is towered, just the tower was closed (these were likely delayed flights or late night flights). It's pretty common, even in the US, for smaller airport towers to close at night.
8 min in I'm like "ok the plane landed with no issues... whats the point of this video again?" and then I realised theres another 6min left of the video
Why all the controversy? I would have just activated slew mode and dropped right onto the runway.
lmao
Be advised a hot air balloon just went vertical at mach 2
you see a hot air balloon doing 400 knots, runway heading.. and an F22 diving for the riva.
I don't even play but I watch Air Force Proud's channel and this comment is very underrated😂 Post of the thread!👋
"Is that ProductForce94"
This was cool to see. Never would have thought that a Sunwing jet would fly into an uncontrolled airport.
successfully even...
With only 120 feet of cleared runway.
120 feet of width, smartass.
Last I knew YAM had a control tower. Probably after hours and the tower was closed for the night.
@@SirFloofy001sure tha t wasnt the width?
I think this was my favorite video yet. It gave some insight into how small airports work (whew knew the pilot communicates directly with Ronnie in the blower!). Everything was great with the Sunwing communications. The Jazz pilot didn't clue into the severity of his error for some time. I'm glad the boss, Ronnie, Jeff and Terry were ok. We can't find a cador on this, although it was written up in the Aviation Herald. odd.
Silverlight Unicorn even at larger controlled airports the ops vehicles come equipped with radios. Otherwise how are they suppose to get clearance to perform inspections and such on active runways. We hear this down in Windsor a couple of times a day at the FBO. "Staff 23 cleared alpha, runway 30, runway 07, hotel, foxtrot, golf." Sounds something like that.
I don't know if I'd consider this an "error" by the pilot. The pilot of the Jazz flight said he was making his calls. Often times at uncontrolled airports you can make all your calls and no one respond; so a lack of response isn't uncommon. There was no way for the pilot to know his #2 radio wasn't working properly until he had landed and saw there were vehicles on the runway. Radio failure can happen and the pilots not know about it. There was no reason to check the #2 radio in flight because for all they knew, it was working.
I'm just glad they were at the far end of the runway in use and not at the middle or near the arrival end. Could have been bad.
Vehicles that are going to be operated on taxiways and, especially, runways usually have aviation radios and tune to the CTAF/Tower/Ground/Ramp/whatever-is-appropriate-for-the-situation frequency. At a controlled field, they must get clearance to use a taxiway or runway, just like the aircraft. You don't want some truck driving onto a runway where a 747 has been cleared to land. Nor do you want some truck pulling out in front of an oncoming aircraft on a taxiway. At uncontrolled fields, it's still best for them to advise of what their doing for the same reason airplanes need to do it.
Contrary to what the truck driver in this video seemed to believe, it's not that easy to see a truck at the other end of a long runway, especially if they don't have bright lights and/or it's inclement weather. Even airplanes can be hard to see without their lights, especially smaller ones. When flying short final, you're usually focused more on the arrival end of the runway (because you'd ideally like to put your aircraft there,) not the departure end. It's best for everyone operating in the same environment to be on the same frequency, that way they can all directly hear each other's position and intention reports and not have to rely on some go-between to relay information. For very busy airports, this will be split up into lots of different frequencies for different parts of the airport (sometimes even dedicated Tower frequencies for each runway at very busy airports,) but at small, uncontrolled fields, everyone at the whole field is usually on the same frequency, ground and air vehicles alike.
The error is not in communications, but in landing on a runway when it isn't clear. That's the error, not radios being out.
These trucks had the radios and were on the Tower/Ground frequency that they transmitted, I believe 118.8. That's where all aircraft are to make contact before landing at this facility. When the ATC tower is staffed, that's the tower freq. When it isn't, it's advisory or ground staff.
Obviously the jazz captain should be 100% certain that the runway is clear but I really can’t blame him in this situation. If I’m flying into an airport with an MF and I call all my position reports, hear no conflicting traffic, see no conflicting traffic I would assume that there is no conflicting traffic. The pilots have no way of telling if their 2nd radio is working or not because not getting a response is pretty typical at uncontrolled airports. Only way to prevent this in my eyes is equipping the ground vehicles with transponders so that the q300 gets an RA for the conflicting on the runway.
Very interesting incident indeed. Poor Jazz-pilots and ground vehicle-drivers, must have been in shock for sure!
As former cabin crew on the beautiful Q400 I thought this re-enactment and the real times radio comms was superb. VASAviation has to be the best aviation channel on YT. Thanks guys
Next time, don't have operations plow the runway, just leave the 10" of snow and have Jazz do a belly landing sliding along like a giant Bobsled with all the passengers throwing up their arms and shouting "WHEEEEEEEEE!!!"
And That's how Canadians have fun... :)
I believe we call it a toboggan, but yeah, we'd be up for that.
Sanka... you dead?
😂😂😂😂
A bit of a gap in the procedures there. If the #2 COM was indeed faulty then the pilot did nothing wrong. Nor did the trucks.
When something like that can happen and NO ONE involved is at fault that means the rules need to be fixed.
Mickey Bitsko have you not heard of a accident?
@@ValeCorp I think he's just saying in order for it to not happen again, it is only reasonable that we should consider new protocols and procedures for such an event.
This one is pretty difficult though, hmm. For me at least, I guess I don't know enough about radio technology as yet lol.
Blake Belladonna The reasonable thing is a change of procedures: An automated X should be installed at the threshold, and be activated / deactivated by ground workers when they are on the runway. It costs, but it avoids such situations.
Vale Corp have you not heard of preventable accidents?
The pilot was at fault for landing in an unverified, unsafe condition. They basically 'winged it'. They could have done a low altitude flyover. Craziness.
this is the coolest shit i've ever seen. the professionalism was amazing!
awesome video, knowing what all the taxiways were was a great help too. Thanks VASAviation!
Thank you for watching :)
I've never heard of an arrival aircraft talking to one of the vehicles instead of the tower
It's a non-towered airport.
This reminds me of an Aeroflot crash in Omsk back in the days of the USSR. The controller authorized trucks to dry the runway despite not having authority to. Then he proceeded to forget to turn on warning lights and fall asleep while the second controller was absent due to staff shortages. Meanwhile, the maintenance workers failed to turn their lights on, as they were too bright for their liking.
When the pilot asked for landing clearance, the pilot got a muffled response that he interpreted as them saying "free" in Russian.
The end result was the plane crashed into the trucks, killing 174 on the plane and 4 in the trucks, with only 5 survivors on the plane. (The 4 cockpit crew and one passenger.)
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_3352
That sounds like the Soviet Union all right.
Okay, I couldn't help it. When the De Havilland showed up on screen, sneakily and all of a sudden, I laughed hard as if it was Leslie Nielsen pulling a stunt.
As a Canadian, it got me every time they were saying “Sault StMarie” but the “Sault” part was always omitted or replaced by “to” in the captions! 😅 (Sault pronounced Soo)
Still an amazing job with subtitles
They should not be saying "Sault" at all, standard radio protocol is to eliminate all extraneous portions of an airport name. The only reason for including the full name is when there is a similarly named airport in the immediate area.
@@mytech6779 Uhh..."Sault" is not an extraneous portion of the airport name. The city/airport's name is literally "Sault Sainte Marie." It's a package deal. By your logic, pilots and ATC should use "York" instead of "New York."
@@roberthanson2636 That's just childish. JFK airport is often shortened to Kennedy over the radio. They use "Seattle" rather than "Seattle-Tacoma international". "New York Skyports Seaplane Base" would be called "Skyports" in most local radio comms. "New York" is a poor example because it is only two words and two syllables, and there is no "New York" airport in any case.
Anything official like a clearance is likely to use the airport code ie kilo sierra echo alpha.
@@mytech6779 Ok - you can be as pedantic as you want (I'm not American, I'm not an expert about minute terminology used at their local airports) but it shouldn't be an issue to at least think about it hypothetically. *If* JFK was simply called "New York" and *if* you heard simply "York" on the radio when someone was talking about it, would you understand what they're talking about? No, of course not. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to fill in the blanks here.
As far as SSM goes, I'm talking about places where the **city name** consists of multiple words (so your Seattle comparison doesn't even apply - "Seattle" is one word). There are other examples you could have subbed in yourself if the semantics of NYC airports were too much for you to handle (ie: "Worth" instead of "Fort Worth," "Vegas" instead of "Las Vegas," "Francisco" instead of "San Francisco").
My point is that "Sault Sainte Marie" is an entire city name. Not a fancy commemorative airport name, the city name. There is nothing "extraneous" in the name "Sault Sainte Marie" and omitting part of it is like omitting an arbitrary part of another city name. If it's "childish" to omit random parts of city names, then you are guilty of doing that here. The city and airport of Sault Sainte Marie are referred to as "Sault Sainte Marie" and nothing else. I don't know how to make this simpler for you.
As someone from Michigan it bugged me a little too! :P
That rear yellow accelerates like a boss! ;)
Love this channel! Really informative and should I say, very entertaining.
Thank you for watching :)
VASAviation - You're welcome!
Clearance? From ground trucks? At a non towered airport?
Ok.
Was this not the one where it was found that the vehicle on the runway had the radio volume so low that it didn’t hear the comms? Also the sun glare meant the pilot couldn’t see the truck on the runway. Either that or this is scarily similar, but the pilots were not found to be at fault for that one in the report I read.
"Just wondering why you landed an airplane on a runway you weren't 100% was clear"
Maybe because its an uncontrolled airport and nobody got back to them with their calls so on their end they were 100% certain it was clear....
What do you mean uncontrolled? Truck 26 had 'er all covered, eh ?
How were they 100% certain of the runway being clear if their calls were going unanswered while they were clearly expecting an answer?
They could have 1) used radio _number one_ if they already had previous issues contacting Sunwing *and* the airport on radio number two, or 2) do a go-around at a low altitude to get a better visual of whether or not the runway was safe to land.
@@shannonlane2508 uncontrolled airport means under normal operations you do NOT expect a return
They saw a plane lane, saw the runway lights on, good to go under normal operations
B.S. with weather like this, on an airport they clearly often go to, they should know there is somebody in the tower. Even if it is uncontrolled.
And especially when visibility is shit, get into radio contact or do a low pass. No, these guys are not in the right.
@@rens9313 there is no tower, that’s why it’s uncontrolled
The first flight/ground crew interaction is pure wholesome Canadian niceness
I'm from Sault ste Marie and live pretty close to CYAM so its pretty cool to see this.
The Jazz was way ahead of schedule. Knowing it's snowy conditions and crews would be clearing snow, they should have erred on the side of caution. They said they were in contact with Sunwing, so they could have checked thru them.
The biggest issue here is that Jazz was running 20 minutes early and didn't notify ground. They say they heard Sunwing talking, so they knew ground was there. When they got no reply, that was a clear indication that something was wrong. Then they turned on runway lights (taking that as sufficient warning for ground)... except they were already on from Sunwing's landing. So ground crew had zero warning. They even admit they "assumed" all was good. Pilot training 101 - never assume!
They assumed they had turned the lights on, but the snowplow crews always have the lights on when they’re working to avoid running over them with their equipment. I live just a few miles from Sault Ste. Marie (on the Michigan side) and I always expect the lights to be on when it’s snowing. These guys in the Jazz should have expected it too. They also should have expected trucks on the runway. Even if the tower was closed, there should be an ATIS or AWOS for weather condition reporting, if they had bothered to check that they would have noticed #2 radio wasn’t working.
FnixGhod1 Really, wasn't it just ground crew saying they heard SunWing fine. If so, Jazz heard nothing but silence until on ground.
The way I understood it is that Jazz heard the SunWing on Center's freq saying they were down. Never heard anything about them hearing Sunwing and the ground crew talking....
I like these new ATC videos where people like you put text explaining what certain things mean, not just transcribe what's said
Turning the lights off or having an X at the threshold of the runway would be nice during runway work.
Yeah, the latter would work. When major airports work on a runway, they close it.
But an X on the runway means the runway is permanently closed.
Only a permanently affixed X on the runway would mean that (like painted on). An X simply means it's out of service.
I've been flying since the seventies and I have never seen a temporary X on a runway. Alway check the NOTAMS for airport information concerning runway usage.
I hate arguing policy and procedure with "I've always done it this way" people because they're almost 100% of the time simply ignorant to reality. Here, READ. There's even a picture for you of a portable lighted X set up for a temporary closure of a runway: www.cfinotebook.net/notebook/aircraft-operations/terminal/airport-markings-and-signs
You don't see them because you don't fly approaches into closed runways. You purposefully check NOTAMS so you don't. If you had, you'd see them.
Nobody did anything wrong, just an unfortunate equipment failure.
Sure there are things that could have been done, the pilots of the Jazz could have tried the CTAF on com 1 but there's not really a way to tell if what your transmitting isn't being picked up, because frequencies are very often silent, just means there's no traffic.
The captain of the Jazz is absolutely at fault. You *DO NOT* land at a towered airport without clearance.
dcorbe that airport isn't towered.
dcorbe no fucking tower there mate
I suppose the guys in the trucks were the tower then, huh? Dude you're a joke, this was an uncontrolled airspace at the time of the incident.
Yeah, I was wondering why they were directly communicating to the trucks, no tower explains that.
Letterkenny ATC, my new favorite show!
Your videos are amazing!
Am I the only one here who is annoyed at the fact that the subtitles say “to saint Marie” instead of Sault Ste Marie?
Nope. It bugged me to too when they thought heads up, there eh, was heads up, Terry. Hey, Terry, heads up, there, eh. A plane just landed.
it's actually Salt State Mary.
When capcha pops up, I take the audio challenge and always intentionally type in homonyms of what I hear, just to spite them.
If the voice says "A cool summer day perhaps" I type "Hakul some her diaper has". So I'm to blame for bad captions,.
the name of the community is spelled "Sault Ste. Marie"
Adam Kilfoyle Ste. Is sainte though
yes. But it is written Sault Ste. Marie
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sault_Ste._Marie_Airport
Semantics, Adam.
Was gonna write the exact same
Isn't that the same as Sault Sainte Marie?
One of the most decent, well mannered and professional pilot I've ever heard, the first one... Hats off to his way of approach and for making a super and perfect landing by communicating so decently with the ground vehicles... 👌👌❤❤
I love how at the start the atc and the vehicles call each other by their real names.
Pretty mellow Jazz pilot.
As someone who flies for this airline into CYAM on a weekly basis the pilots did nothing wrong. Once Toronto cleared them for the approach they were in uncontrolled airspace.
Maybe by the book they did nothing wrong, but common sense says that you should inform the ground crew of your landing, especially since they apparently knew there was traffic on the runway. This was very irresponsible of the Jazz crew.
@@etikkakurkkucanadian transportation board confirmed radio malfunction.
CARs state that you have to be 100% sure the runway is clear before landing.
"They are not amused" is a massive understatement ;)
I quote this video a lot, specifically "that could have been catastrophic"
I can understand the vehicles being pissed, but I am impressed at the calmness of the pilot through it all. Surely his asshole turned into a suction cup when he had those vehicles in sight. I am glad he handled the situation with professionalism.
If it was necessary to monitor Center I would have switched them to my number two and asked for a radio check from them. If it was unreadable I would have proceeded with using the number one Radio for all primary communications. Hindsight is 20-20. Could have easily happened to anyone seeing as Radio calls at uncontrolled airports are frequently broadcast with no return.
I just started taking flight school at an uncontrolled airport and I have not flown long enough to know for sure, but before landing, we fly over the runway to make sure nobody is on it.
Not in instrument conditions you don't.
Oh, okay. it has been clear skies every time so idk.
IFR only get you TO the airport, on a final. The landing isn't ILS, so it's VISUAL and yes, it means you MUST confirm the runway is clear before landing on it. You don't have to fly over it if you have good visibility, but if you do not, don't land. You have NO idea what's there. Vehicles, aircraft, people or debris. You're an airline pilot. You have no right to assume anything.
Watching the animation and Jazz appears at the end of the runway inbound... "Wait. Who's that then?"
Wowzers. Had to find the full video after I just saw a short clip of the #2 plane landing.
Small correction...the town is “Sault Ste. Marie,” pronounced “Soo Saint Marie.”
Absolutely correct. For about 13 years, I lived in Iron Bridge on the Trans-Canada highway #17, about a 90 minute drive to the Soo. You live in the Soo, Darcy??
@@getdusty1 I do not. Down south Sarnia way, but I’ve driven through it several times to get west 😉
Small world Darcy. I lived in Lambtom County (Sarnia) for the first 49 years of my life.
I detect heavy Ontario accents all the way here.
Ontario White people accents.***
That's coming from a guy from PEI?
An uncontrolled airport and a very rare radio failure. This could happen to anyone.
God, i remember landing once in uncontrolled airport in the bahamas, they had 1 person on the radio, single strip airfield... and i got clearance to land in cessna Caravan and on final approach, (pulling a sideslip for short runway) there was a buffoon ON THE RUNWAY in a piper cub trying to take off with his radio on the wrong frequency.
uncontrolled field- pilots not at fault
Quite the opposite. It's exactly when the airport is uncontrolled when 100% of the fault is on the pilots. There's no clearances, only advisories, and all decisions have to be made with certainty. Something goes wrong that could have been foreseen, like vehicles on the runway, you just don't land. There's lives at stake.
palonazo Disagree. Uncontrolled field technically you don’t have to make two way communication with anyone, you just have to make advisories of your position in the CTAF. These guys clearly had a radio failure that they were on aware of. So based on that information it’s safe to assume that they were making there advisory calls, heard no one else giving advisories, and assumed the traffic pattern/runway/airport was all there’s like any other pilot on any other CTAF all by themselves would do. Now. If your VFR technically there’s no requirements to be making radio calls. But obviously in the METARS the field was very much IFR and so they knew they didn’t have to visually check for “no radio/not making calls traffic”
usaswimmer1020 read the regulations
I'm not a pilot, but do fly in small planes, and investigate accidents for a living -- and make recommendations for preventing them. Clearly there is a massive difference in vigilance required when landing at a seldom-used, uncontrolled airport in daylight with good visibility, versus:
1. Night time
2. Snowing, recent in time
3. Airport has snow-clearing equipment
4. Airport has a reasonable amount of traffic -- you spoke with a jet which just landed
5. You suspect you have radio problems -- on the above call
6. You are not flying a 2-seater
7. Your own airline had a crash in snowy conditions at this airport, just a year ago
So, without talking about "fault" or "following procedure" -- ideally aren't there things the pilots could have done differently which would have avoided the near disaster? Should procedures be clarified or changed?
The question is, when did they tune in the CTAF frequency on COM1? If they had it on COM2, and they landed, what sparked on their heads, "hey, we already landed and haven't heard anything on COM2, maybe our COM2 is having issues, let's try COM1 and see if we can talk to that rig over there by the end of the runway?".
These are absolutely perfect and stereotypical Canadian voices, just identical to the voices in the movie "Canadian Bacon". The blower driver just isn't going to let this go, he wants his pound of flesh.
Assuming the Jazz pilots brought their hockey gear, Ronnie, Jeff and Terry are going to smoke them at shinny on Friday.
Well yeah, when you're making $10 an hour, and somebody making 100k makes a mistke, you want to milk that shit for as long as you can. He probably still gloats about it to this day.
@@B3Band your average Jazz pilot is not making 100,000 a year
They seemed like decent working fellas. No one wants to die when doing a job.
And by flesh he means back bacon
As a Canadian that grew up listening to live scanners, the guys on the trucks sounded very familiar.
I love that stuff
Excellent video. Do you guys have a "Beep Back" settup on your CTAF frequencies like we do here in Australia. After you finish transmitting, the ground station auto reponds with a loud single tone to indicate it has heared your radio.
AFRU is definitely nice to have at remote locations, doesn’t help when either ground or other aircraft aren’t monitoring CTAF though
@@alexwu8077 we have it at every CTAF airport that is licenced.
@@Ozgrade3 I know this, irrelevant to the point I was making
I know this is WAY late to the game, but I just wanted to note that the city being referenced here is "SAULT Sainte Marie", not just "Sainte Marie" (going off your captions). Pronounced "Sue" as in a person's name or the legal action thereof, and most commonly referred to as "The Soo" (or, "The Twin Soos" if you're referring to both the Canadian city and it's US town literally right across the St. Marys River, sharing the same name and nickname); oftentimes you'll hear people from that area pronounce it so quickly, that it sounds like "Susaint Marie".
"Sault de Sainte Mary" basically means "The Rapids of Sainte Mary". Think French-Canadian, eh? Sorry for the shitty boring information...
QUICK EDIT: Sounds like some of the radio comms (truck 88 and 96) are also referencing "Sault Area Traffic". Not 100% sure on that one, but it'd make sense, as "Sault Area [insert anything here]" is a common reference for a lot of things in that area. Sault Area High School, Sault Area Hospital, Sault Area Art Council, etc.
ronnie and jeff the MVPS
These are so interesting to watch
Glad to know that :D
Canadians: even when they're angry, they're polite about it!
cyclonicleo No, that's just professional radio behaviour.
i don't know what Canadians you have met. all the ones i have met are jackasses and are very rude.
@@moviemaker2011z :(
@@moviemaker2011z I've never had any issues with Canadians. Not sure what your issue was with them. Treat them right they treat you right.
@@jerrybutler605 I have heard numerous stories from people who work in restaurants and in other retail chains that mention Canadians are very rude or dismissive. The idea that canadians are all super nice or pleasant is a bold faced lie honestly.
Wouldn't it be a wise idea to turn off the runway lights when it is occupied by other planes/vehicles?
As to make it a little bit more obvious that it isn't available for landing.
@smarts Can't argue with that.
Though, some of the approach lights are not on the actual runway and could be turned off during these occasions.
What's important to know about Canadian regulations versus U.S. regulations: both regulations state that there is a visibility minimum for landing. It is most likely that those minimums were at play here and since the pilot admitted to a "squall" hindering his view of the runway end, it's possible. However, the Canadian regulations state the minimums simply as advisory to safety. They are not a requirement. In the U.S., however, having less than the minimum means you are forbidden from landing. This is likely the reason why this Jazz pilot didn't face any legal reprocussions. Technically, he didn't break any regulation. However, I'm sure not adhering to landing visibility minimums is frowned upon and perhaps even forbidden by Air Canada management and it's likely the pilot was either punished or even fired for putting lives at risk without an urgent need to. It's negligence, even if it isn't a crime.
Quite a thick Canadian accent on that pilot there hahaha
If the runway is closed, mark it with lighted X's
If we had to mark with X everytime a runway closes...
Yeah, but you do. The runway wasn't closed this time, but it should have been.
Takes a while to get the lighted Xs out there and started up. Better to just try to plow the runway.
Could there not be some sort of permanantly installed visual signal installed at the start of the runway that when active effectively tells pilots to abort their landing. Most of the time they shouldn't need it because of radio, but as a fail-safe, surely it's not such a bad idea..
@@roboko6618 Agreed. Two mounted strong LED panels in a cross formation just beyond the treshold would do the trick
Too many non pilots making ridiculous comments about things they know nothing about. Maddening.
The pilot didn't assume anything. He had his #2 radio tuned in and was making his calls (at least that's what he said and there isn't evidence to contradict that). When landing at a non-towered field it isn't uncommon to make calls and receive no response if traffic is light or if no one is operating there; so he had no way of knowing that there were vehicles were there. He thought, much like every other pilot would, that the traffic pattern was empty and the airport was clear. I'm just glad no one was hurt
Bert Macklin iOS lloo
+TheRight Because non-pilots don't actually understand what the procedure for an uncontrolled field is and that the pilot's apparently followed it, nor have they seen first-hand what it looks like to land an airplane on a 1-to-2-mile-long strip of pavement, let alone in bad weather. It's not always easy to see something on the opposite end of the runway, especially if it's not lit up well.
The Right To Arm Bears When Lansing at an uncontrolled field, Airplanes don’t technically communicate with each other. They give advisories of the CTAF(Common Traffic Advisory Frequency) about there position. If you landing at an Uncontrolled field and you don’t hear anyone, then your SUPPOSED to assume you have the field to yourself and watch for traffic if the field is VFR( since surprisingly if it’s VMC conditions you don’t need a radio at all to fly into class G) Now. The weather clearly was not VMC and these guys were IFR so they’re supposed to be focused on the instruments.
"he had no way of knowing that there were vehicles"???? at an airport during a snowstorm?????. he didn't suspect the snowplows. so he was prepared to land on a runway full of snow then. and you want us to believe pilots are smarter?
wow..... all i kept thinking about watching this, was CRANBROOK...... those jazz pilots need to refresh themselves on pacific western flight 314 & feel very very VERY fortunate to be alive, and still have a job
In my head I pictured the first pilot as Christoph Waltz from Django
To be fair... the airport trucks were doing a really bad job of coordinating eachother so, it's not all the pilots fault
THE PACER not the pilots fault at all
Runway had lights on and wasn't closed, the pilots had just talked to sunwing who landed moments before and indicated that the runway was cleared of vehicles.
Plus that guy on the ground refused to answer any questions directly, he kept answering with indirect stuff.
Pilot: how much time do you need to clear the runway?
Ground: I need to get a blower out here.
Pilot: how much longer until the runway is clear?
Ground: I'll have another truck out here in 15 minutes.
Pilot: Is the runway clear?
Ground: I'd like a ham sandwich and fries.
So infuriating!
@@BigYoshi826 That pilot wasn't the one who landed whilst there were vehicles on the runway it was the guy after, just in case you didn't realise
Hi, I'm one of those aviation enthusiasts, so I can't talk about rules in a professional manner, but as a linguist I can definitely pick apart whatever Jazz pilots were saying.
1. When reprimanded about not asking for clearance to land, the pilots respond that they were trying to figure out if they had an issue or if it was an issue at the airport
Conclusion: they acknowledge that they were aware of a potential radio issue while still up in the air
2. Jazz pilots state that Toronto ATC notified them that Swg landed at Saint Marie.
Conclusion: Jazz pilots realized they might have a radio issue when they couldn't hear Swg make announcements of their position and intentions on approach, assuming that Swg either (a) didn't have an issue with the radio themselves or (b) they didn't follow the procedure for an uncontrolled field to announce their intentions (the latter being unlikely unless you want to cause a crash)
It is obvious that Jazz pilots considered a radio malfunction and decided to proceed with the landing without being 100% sure that they were heard. I assume this is usually the case on advisory frequencies at uncontrolled fields (you can't be 100% sure that anyone heard you), unless there is other traffic listening to the same frequency and you should be able to communicate on it.
It appears that no announcements coming from Swg on advisory freq seemed odd to Jazz pilots, so that's how they got to the idea of perhaps having a radio malfunction.
Now what pilots are supposed to do in a situation of suspect equipment failure like that, I don't know, but to me at least it seems illogical to just land the aircraft, especially because it appears that radio 1 where they were listening to Toronto ATC worked fine.
They are supposed to try another radio, if present. If not, they should approach visually, if possible and attempt a landing. If they cannot get visual confirmation of the runway being clear, they should either divert to a place with better weather or declare an emergency and hope for the best.
how do you make sure a runway is 100% clear if there is no tower? i realize they didnt see them and the radio wasnt working, but in a normal situation with no vehicles on the runway and no snow who would respond to a landing plane to let them know its clear?
You have to use your EYE, and EAR on the uncontrolled airport
"Like, so sorry there, eh? Didn't see you guys ooot there on the ice, eh? Can I buy you guys a hot cuppa cocoa there, eh? Darn shame ya pooped yer pants there, eh? We'll file our gosh darn diddly report there, fellas."
What are you trying to imitate? Nobody talks like that here.
Two ways to tell if you’re having radio transmission problems: 1) no side tone ( can’t hear yourself transmit), 2) the other pilot can’t hear you transmit (other pilot should be monitoring transmissions)
Other than that it’s Unicom so, always expect the unexpected - ground and flight crews
Thanks for posting
Thank you! That helps me understand how to diagnose a malfunctioning radio!
The Jazz crew admitted they were having doubts about the radio even well before they landed. Why didn't they do a radio check, just asking anyone on frequency to confirm that they can hear them?
The Jazz pilot sounds like he's just ready to roll over to Bravo, roll a spliff, grab a Tims and call it a day bud.
It is so refreshing in today's world to hear someone own up and take responsibility for their mistake. Not sure what repercussions the pilot will face for this type of event, but I give him credit for admitting fault and apologizing.
Mostly likely the worst that will happen is a good reaming from the FAA and maybe a fine but other then that nothing, it was a simple mistake caused by an unforeseen failure in an area where the pilots are used to not hearing a response on the radio. Yeah they could have done something different but technically they are not required to.
Nix Ryu The Sergal not required to care about those who might be on the runway?
They were talking to a common traffic advisory frequency (CTAF). It's only there so pilots can give their position in the air or on the ground. When pilots talk on this frequency, they never expect a reply because there isn't a controller or anything, and there might not even be anybody else listening. They made their calls, and after receiving no reply I believe it was justified that they would assume nobody else was in the vicinity, and therefore proceed with the landing. Of course they care about what might be on the runway, but there was no real way to know.
Actually, he blamed everything on the radio when he should have apologized for putting people in danger because he landed on a runway without verifying that it's clear.
FAA? This is in Canada and no, not the worst thing that can happen.
10:20 - So you have a question regarding the safety of the airport, and you land, hoping it'll turn out OK? In the SNOW? Man. I'm glad you weren't MY instructor.
did they have a filed ETA
if they did, was it passed down to the trucks?
I heard something about some airports installing colour coded runway & taxiway lights. I wonder if it would be worth it to have them turn red &c when a runway is unavailable.