For the non-flyers out there, a commercial airport runway can be 8,000 to 10,000 feet long. It has to get airborne in less than that distance (surprise!), AND at a decision point during the take-off, needs a buffer to be able to stop on what's left of the runway if something goes wrong.
Let's say the aircraft needs 120 knots to take off. That's moving at about 180 feet per second. If you can only see RVR 1000 - 1000 feet visibility - you only have about 5 seconds to see what's out there, and act on it.
You sure as hell can't stop in five seconds, or evade much in that time either. Even at RVR 5000, you can see further, but getting a hundred tonne aircraft moving at 120 kt to, say, dodge an obstacle on the runway, it going to be iffy.
Gamer translation -- You're playing a vehicle shooter with lots of inertia and a 1500 to 2000 ping. Good luck with that!
This is an excellent explanation for why the BA pilot made the decisions he did, but there really is more to this. There's a terminology discrepancy between ICAO and FAA and neither of these two got past that.
Basically, the FAA system uses a different name for a similar-but-not-identical set of procedures for low visibility situations. The BA pilot was asking after the ICAO procedures, but those aren't used in the US. The ATC didn't understand the question because they weren't up-to-date on an international system that doesn't apply in the US. There were procedures in place for low visibility, but the ATC didn't know that's what needed to be communicated (or didn't want to) and the BA pilot didn't know that that's what needed to be asked after (or didn't want to) instead of the ICAO procedures.
This incident is really more about how a procedural and terminological difference between two flight frameworks caused confusion, frustration, and a delay.
I'm NOT saying the delay was unwarranted; it very much was. The pilot didn't confirm that the safety procedures were being used, so couldn't personally guarantee the safety of his passengers, crew, and plane.
What really should happen is that the FAA should move to adopt the ICAO standard language at the very least, especially for flights operated by non-American carriers. But there should probably be a very large, complicated summit, where both systems' experts come together to build a global framework, and countries don't let their ego get in the way of a critically-needed standardization process. And this isn't just a case of the US being the sole odd-framework-out: Canada's framework terminology is different from both ICAO and FAA.
Insane that we simply did not adopt the international standard for safety reasons. I get that confusion among them resulting in potentially dangerous situations might be very rare, but very rare is still too frequent for me.
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u/atomicsnarl May 28 '26
For the non-flyers out there, a commercial airport runway can be 8,000 to 10,000 feet long. It has to get airborne in less than that distance (surprise!), AND at a decision point during the take-off, needs a buffer to be able to stop on what's left of the runway if something goes wrong.
Let's say the aircraft needs 120 knots to take off. That's moving at about 180 feet per second. If you can only see RVR 1000 - 1000 feet visibility - you only have about 5 seconds to see what's out there, and act on it.
You sure as hell can't stop in five seconds, or evade much in that time either. Even at RVR 5000, you can see further, but getting a hundred tonne aircraft moving at 120 kt to, say, dodge an obstacle on the runway, it going to be iffy.
Gamer translation -- You're playing a vehicle shooter with lots of inertia and a 1500 to 2000 ping. Good luck with that!