Firefighting vehicle was fitted with situational awareness display capable of showing aircraft positions
US investigators probing the fatal New York LaGuardia runway collision have disclosed that the firefighting truck involved was equipped with a situational awareness display that showed the position of aircraft and other ground vehicles.
This display, a tablet supplied by surveillance specialist Indmex Aviation, could provide both visual and aural alerts to the vehicle’s crew when it approached runways, says the National Transportation Safety Board.
But it adds: “It did not have the capability to detect or warn of impending collisions.”
The truck was part of a group of seven vehicles responding to an emergency on 22 March.
After travelling along taxiway D it entered runway 4 ahead of the other vehicles, immediately being struck by an Air Canada Express MHIRJ CRJ900 regional jet rolling out after landing.
Investigators have yet to reach conclusions, but preliminary findings indicate that the truck’s crew was cleared to cross the runway — despite red taxiway warning lights indicating approaching aircraft traffic — and did not respond to the tower’s subsequent urgent orders to stop.
LaGuardia has an ASDE-X surface-detection system which amalgamates surveillance data from several sources, including transponders, and presents a real-time picture to controllers.
But investigators had previously stated that the vehicles in the group did not have transponders fitted.
“Multiple ground vehicles [without transponders] were intermittently detected as radar targets, while holding on taxiway D,” says the inquiry.
“However, due to their close [and varying] proximity to each other, and the intermittent merging and unmerging of radar targets, the ASDE-X system was unable to establish high-confidence tracks.”
Without transponder-equipped vehicles, it adds, the ASDE-X system “could not uniquely identify” each of the seven vehicles, or reliably determine position and track.
Instead of showing seven distinct identifiers representing the individual vehicles — four firefighting trucks, a tool truck, mobile airstair, and a police car — the system displayed only two radar targets on taxiway D.
This meant it could not correlate the track of the advancing fire truck with that of the approaching aircraft and, as a result, did not predict a conflict — there was no aural or visual alert in the control tower warning of a potential conflict.
ASDE-X surveillance information also triggers the activation of the runway entrance lights, which illuminate the taxiway centreline in red ahead of a runway intersection to warn that an aircraft is landing or departing.
Investigators have disclosed that these warning lights came on a few seconds before the fire truck obtained tower clearance to cross the runway. They remained lit for 30s as the truck neared the intersection, on a converging course with the regional jet, and entered the runway.
The post LaGuardia runway collision inquiry seeks to learn why truck crew unaware of landing CRJ first appeared on FlightGlobal.