Is this interpretation right? There are parallel runways, and the plane departing on the runway on the right turned left, into the path of the plane departing parallel on the left?
Yes that's what happened. And this is a very common mistake.
A bit simplified, but what happens is that each flight is assigned a departure procedure during startup. That procedure is runway specific and designed to keep traffic clear of other runways so they can have traffic departing from multiple runways at the same time.
Imagine a runway on the left and one on the right, the left runway departure procedures would have an early left turn and the right runway departure procedures would be straight ahead until some altitude and then a right turn.
Now if you depart from the right runway but accidentally select the departure procedure for the left runway, the instruments (and autopilot) would indicate a left turn at about 500ft, right into the path of traffic from the left runway.
This mistake is common when for example a plane is first assigned the left runway and then during taxi changes to the right runway. Or the preflight paperwork includes the left runway departure procedure, but the actual assignment from ATC is the right runway (this was a source of incidents in Amsterdam for a while with some airlines)
Kind of blows my mind how primitive this whole system still is. Audio quality is really bad. They're sending instructions by voice. The way they know who is speaking is by just saying their callsign with every message.
Like with all voice communications, context is important. There are only a limited number of things normally said and most transmissions are about things that were decided before the flight. Everyone involved is used to the bandwidth limited audio used here. Non-pilots have none of this context and normally have a hard time understanding these transmissions.
For ATC environments the voice data is a series of pre-expected prompts. You could do something different but you would pretty much have to redesign the whole system from scratch without making things significantly more complex. Complexity is the enemy of reliability.
Primitive but has been working well enough for decades is so much better than the prospect of Accenture coming in with their absolutely incompetent bullshit.
Is this significantly different from the near mid-air collisions that happen on a regular basis?
The audio does an excellent job of showing a layperson how difficult it is to interpret and who's going wear based on sound, and then I had to go back through the video to see the turn.
These people aren't being paid to do this right now? Is that right? I'm not American, but that's what I've heard.
No, TCAS alerts are inhibited at low altitude. It goes in steps by altitude (above ground) from no alerts at all, to only traffic warning but no resolutions, to resolution but no descends, to normal full operation.
Yes, TCAS II warns all the way down to 100m AGL (around 320ft above the ground), and they were already between 1000ft and 1500ft (~400m).
It may or may not have advised what to do (to climb/descent/etc.) because that is turned off below 1000ft, and they were approximately at that altitude at the time.
I was watching KBOS https://www.flightaware.com/live/airport/KBOS on Thursday morning and saw a couple of Cape Air flights that looked like they were within 500 feet of each other. I suspect we'll be hearing more of these stories soon.
ITY621 does a readback: "...climb DLREY," meaning they confirmed the departure path for 24L extends forward before heading left; which is different for 25R, which heads left shortly after takeoff: "...RNAV DOCKR."
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[ 0.25 ms ] story [ 24.2 ms ] threadA bit simplified, but what happens is that each flight is assigned a departure procedure during startup. That procedure is runway specific and designed to keep traffic clear of other runways so they can have traffic departing from multiple runways at the same time.
Imagine a runway on the left and one on the right, the left runway departure procedures would have an early left turn and the right runway departure procedures would be straight ahead until some altitude and then a right turn.
Now if you depart from the right runway but accidentally select the departure procedure for the left runway, the instruments (and autopilot) would indicate a left turn at about 500ft, right into the path of traffic from the left runway.
This mistake is common when for example a plane is first assigned the left runway and then during taxi changes to the right runway. Or the preflight paperwork includes the left runway departure procedure, but the actual assignment from ATC is the right runway (this was a source of incidents in Amsterdam for a while with some airlines)
If you're really interested, read this incident report via Google Translate, it describes exactly how this type of incident happens: https://www.lvnl.nl/voorvallen/20220415-verlies-van-afstand-...
There's got to be a better solution surely?
For ATC environments the voice data is a series of pre-expected prompts. You could do something different but you would pretty much have to redesign the whole system from scratch without making things significantly more complex. Complexity is the enemy of reliability.
The audio does an excellent job of showing a layperson how difficult it is to interpret and who's going wear based on sound, and then I had to go back through the video to see the turn.
These people aren't being paid to do this right now? Is that right? I'm not American, but that's what I've heard.
It may or may not have advised what to do (to climb/descent/etc.) because that is turned off below 1000ft, and they were approximately at that altitude at the time.
Sort your country out!
ITA plane taking off around 1:08:15. The camera doesn't follow it but you might be able to hear someone yelling wtf around 1:08:58.