Japan's airport control towers stop using 'No.1' instruction for plane takeoffs | Hacker News Reader

Japan's airport control towers stop using 'No.1' instruction for plane takeoffs

www3.nhk.or.jp

80 pointsiooon151 comments

This reminds me of seeing a video about a demolition of something using explosives. The person was UK military and the person counted down "10..9..8..7..6.. .. 4..3..2..1..fire" They omitted 5 because supposedly it may sound like fire (as in shoot or do the thing now!).

Yeah this is standard practise in the UK armed forces/EOD teams. Source: spent time with No. 5131 Squadron in Akrotiri.

You mean Squadron No. .131 no? /s

Five frei!

Oh the nice folks with the RC-135s!

Same thing here in German military where instead of saying "zwei" because it might sound like "drei", you say "zwo".

It's quite useful even though its a small problem compared to all those problems which happen because of the way you read numbers above 20. "Twenty one" becomes "one and twenty". It's not as bad as French but still a pain and I've seen Germans mixing it up also.

When I was in 4th grade in Germany in the 90ies, the teacher once asked a classmate of mine to come to the blackboard. She asked her to write thirty-one ("einunddreißig", or "one and thirty"). She wrote "13", and the whole classroom exploded with laughter.

I guess this is how you instill math phobia in children.

I was born in Poland and we moved to Germany when I was a kid. As a child I learned it quite easily (and fortunately I was on a school full of migrant children - today you would call it "Problemschule" here in Germany, I guess - so nobody laughed at me), but my parents still don't get used to it after more than 30 years and struggle with it on a daily basis.

I'm a native German speaker and I have very strong feelings about this because it still trips me up when transcribing number groups by ear. If you ask me to write something down, spell out every digit individually so I don't have to pause every time to find out if you are going to say e.g. "drei", "dreißig" or "dreiundzwanzig". And for the love of god don't say "und" (and) before the final group either. But then again, even three digit groups pose problems (especially when the final group has fewer digits) - is the pause in "einhundert ... dreiundzwanzig" because it's two numbers or because you hesitated?

https://zwanzigeins.jetzt/

As an American South(east)ern kid, I was convinced either my ears were broken or I was dumb, because I couldn't understand how to count syllables in a word.

I understood the method the teacher explained...

... but I would always come up with the wrong number when listening in testing.

I finally asked my mother, who informed me that it's just the southern accent throwing me off, and the word 'that' shouldn't actually be pronounced the way my teacher was ('tha-yat').

So I feel childish academic bewilderment through no fault of their own. :(

I still remember confidently explaining to our teacher that the grammatical choice was always the one that sounded right, and being taken aback when she said other kids grew up where that rule of thumb wouldn't work.

In recent years I have seen a number of arguments break out in a game that requires single syllable answers. It is fascinating to see the disagreement over words like "orange" and several others I never would have imagined.

Learning German as a foreign language, that was one of the painful aspects. Also, who thought it was a good idea to have /dreißig/ sound so much like /dreizehn/? Anyway…

I mean, who thought it was a good idea that "fifty" and "fifteen" should sound so similar?

Yes indeed. This tripped me up occasionally when I was learning English as a foreign language as well!

We should just stop the whole teen thing and say it like we do everything else. Maybe onety five.

A tangentially related interesting note is that in German zwo also meant two, and so did zween. In old German some numbers were gendered and zwo is the feminine form. The only form that is used today "zwei" is the netuer form. Some languages still have this feature, for example in Russian "two" are два (m+n) and две (f). So this change is (technically) grammatically correct. English also had something similar (cf. twain).

I’m German and I never knew this! Thanks!

Zwo is still common today, because it's the word for two in some German dialects. The military adopting zwo would be similar to the American military adopting "y'all," a word that's commonly used and universally understood.

You're right, in southern Germany, Switzerland and Austria (?) it is still widely used in everyday life. It's interesting how northern dialects "choose" zwei while the southern ones preferred zwo. Also, IIRC in some regions the (few) elderly still use all three with their original grammatical rules.

It's definitely not common in Austria, and I also haven't heard it in Germany (outside of a "clarity of communications" context on the phone). Bavarian (which is close to many Austrian German variants) would use "zwoa", which sounds quite different too.

In Franconia, we use "zwo", "zwä" and "zwei", but it might just be very local to the small towns in my area.

As a non-native speaker, I've used it a couple of times at a bakery to make sure I don't get too much of what I'm asking for.

Doesn't help when I _do_ want three of something though...

In Croatian (and possibly other related languages) the number two (dva), like one (jedan), declines according to gender and case

Jedan prozor, jedna jabuka Dva prozora, dvije jabuke

Another unrelated quirk in Croatian (and I don't which other related language) is that with numbers 2, 3, 4 you use the genitive singular and with higher numbers the genitive plural

Tri prozora, tri jabuke, tri kune Četri prozora, četri jabuka, četri kune Pet prozora, pet jabuka, pet kuna (notice the -a ending)

I learned that when I wrote some software that converted numeric values in textual form. I never noticed the rule despite speaking correctly (born in a croatian family but I didn't attend school there so I only picked up the language by listening family members, reading tv subtitles and books).

I wonder if an average Croatian is aware of that plural forming rule or they just do the right thing without noticing.

Slavic languages in general seem to have retained this case and gender dependent declination of numbers, making them rather difficult to learn. For example most languages on this list [1] have complex declension tables for the number two.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B4%D0%B2%D0%B0

But it only works for numbers 1 and 2 and goes away for bigger numbers.

Probably a remnant of the dual case of Proto Indo European

I believe that's why in some contexts you'll hear "niner" rather than "nine" ti differentiate it from "five".

Also why ships use "port" to mean the left side. It was formerly "larboard" which sounds an awful lot like "starboard",

Similarly, the names of the months June and July sound similar in German (Juni and Juli), both ending in an ee sound, so when talking over the phone (or radio) the latter is often pronounced with an aye sound instead.

German also has a "phonetic alphabet" (i.e. nouns and proper names used to spell out letters over the radio) similar to the NATO phonetic alphabet. There are actually multiple because they differ between Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Germany also has two separate standards (of course): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchstabiertafel#Deutscher_Spr...

Most Germans know some of the postal alphabet (or an impromptu variation on it) because it's the older of the two. It's also worth mentioning that the postal alphabet was revised by the Nazis to eliminate "Jewish" (i.e. Biblical) names like Samuel, Zacharias and Nathan. Some of them were restored but that's how we ended up with Samuel/Siegfried, Zacharias/Zeppelin and Nathan/Nordpol. I'd say there's an 90% chance when spelling out a word or name over phone the other person will understand the postal alphabet and a 10% chance they'll be confused what you're doing.

In French banks, to avoid costly confusion, traders use the words "septante", "octante", and "nonante" in use in the French-speaking part of Belgium instead of "soixante-dix", "quatre-vingt", and "quatre-vingt-dix" (sixty-ten, four-twenty, and four-twenty-ten).

I don't know about French banks, but belgians don't say "octante", seems to be a common misconception! They say "quatre vingt", like the French. Swiss don't either, it's either "quatre vingt" or "huitante"

Indeed, I stand corrected!

I still think that "octante" was used on the trading floor, but it was more than 10 years ago, and I was not trading myself...

There are a couple of papers comparing language in children’s numerical ability and performance (particularly speed and accuracy). [1]

The theory espoused was simpler and quicker languages like Chinese (well at least the Chinese number system with quick mono-syllabic base ten based counting) resulted in faster computing ability with fewer errors than English with specialized words like eleven and eighteen rather than “tenty-eight”. The more exemptions to simple logic the slower and more error prone computing was for humans. French on this metric was at the bottom of the pile with polysyllabic non-simple words like quatre-vingt-dix.

I like the idea of Walloon or Fribourg French counting being a sort of high frequency trading hack for people of the 19th century with shorthand like “ûtante.”

[1] While not the paper I was looking for, this one + it’s reference section gets the point across: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.0273...

Thanks, very interesting! It took watching my children having to learn French numbers to realize just how difficult (and unnecessary) it was. Then you get used to it and it becomes second nature. I wonder if the added difficulty persists into adulthood...

I've seen English radio comms use "niner", presumably to make "nine" and "five" easier to distinguish on a noisy channel.

In English the military can say "niner" instead of nine esp on the radio to avoid confusion with "five"

I heard it was due to NATO and coincidentally german military. Where nine sounds like nein, so they change it to niner to avoid any potential confusions in case nato units need close cooperation.

sometimes also 'niner' instead of 'nine' for similar reasons.

In standard aviation phraseology it's "fife" for the number five and "niner" for the number nine, to avoid confusing between them.

ICAO standard prescribes "fower" as four (making it two syllables), as well as all the others that have been cited (tree/three, fife/five, niner/nine).

They used to say fiver instead, as well

Is that meant to sound less like “fire”??

That sounds even more like "fire"!

I bet they didn't.

I am not claiming it was standard, only that it was used. You can hear it in old WWII footage.

No, fiver is occasionally used by beginning aviation students though in confusion (DAMHIK).

And „tree“ instead of „three“.

You sure that wasn't just an Irishman doing the countdown?

„The ICAO, NATO, and FAA use modifications of English digits as code words, with 3, 4, 5 and 9 being pronounced tree, fower (rhymes with lower), fife and niner. The digit 3 is specified as tree so that it is not pronounced sri; the long pronunciation of 4 (still found in some English dialects) keeps it somewhat distinct from for; 5 is pronounced with a second "f" because the normal pronunciation with a "v" is easily confused with "fire" (a command to shoot); and 9 has an extra syllable to keep it distinct from the German word nein "no". (Prior to 1956, three and five had been pronounced with the English consonants, but as two syllables.?“

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet#Pronu...

Jamaican?

With things like this, you wonder how many times things got accidentally blown up early before people decided to just change the way we say numbers in that context.

Fun side effect: the awkward pause in the sequence also makes me pay more attention to the countdown.

From other comments it sounds like there are similar problems in more than one language, which I suppose is not surprising since the low counting numbers in many languages are short words and so have a higher chance of sounding like other short words.

I suggest switching to a non-number sequence with at least the end word not being short. My suggestion:

  drummers, pipers, lords, ladies, maids, swans
  geese, rings, birds, hens, doves, partridge

For extra safety, such as if the countdown is over a noisy communications channel or in a noisy environment, those words could be used in phrases so that even if a word gets garbled it will be easy to tell were the speaker is in the sequence:

  drummers drumming, pipers piping, lords a-leaping,
  ladies dancing, maids a-milking, swans a-swimming,
  geese a-laying, golden rings, calling birds,
  french hens, turtle doves, partridge in a pear tree

Or "So no one told you life was gonna be this way" -> Ignition! /s

We all know that "starboard" and "port" refer to a ship's right and left, respectively, when facing forward. But it used to be that the "left" word was "larboard". That's close enough to "starboard" to cause a lot of confusion, leading to the change to "port".

And of course, in Norway, “fire” is literally the word for four!

In Dutch, the word for four is also the word meaning "celebrate."

I feel like this would make a nicer confusion however :)

Tangentially related, when I was on the rowing team in college the coxswain commonly replaced ‘seven’ (the only two syllable number in the 1-10 range) with ‘save’, to maintain a smooth cadence for counting 10 strokes.

the number 1 in Mandarin Chinese is usually pronounced "yi" which can be mistaken for the number 7 ("qi"). so in certain contexts, e.g. reading out a phone number, it would be pronounced "yao" instead.

This reminds me of how they say 幺 (yāo) instead of 一 (yī) to avoid confusion in the Chinese military.

Don't towers all over the world give this information? It's almost every time I'm flying that the pilot tells us as we approach the runway we're number 1 for departure, or number 5 for departure

With explicit phraseology of "cleared for takeoff" or "line up and wait" every single time, and the tower not saying either of those things, how does "you're next" confuse things?

Is it possible that it was a language thing since English is required in these situations and is not any of these people's native tongue?

They do, it's incredibly common and it's useful information.

This Japanese response seems very confusing, it's hard to understand how this could possibly be relevant to the accident. Unless of course there's a Japanese/English phonetic overlap I'm not aware of.

> This Japanese response seems very confusing, it's hard to understand how this could possibly be relevant to the accident.

"The move comes after the misinterpretation of the phrase could have led to last week's deadly collision between a Japan Airlines passenger plane and a Japan Coast Guard aircraft on a runway at Tokyo's Haneda Airport."

That would indicate "you are next" was being used as a substitute for either/both of "line up and wait" and "cleared for take-off."

While that's certainly possible, it would be surprising.

Typical ATC commands at a busy commercial airport would be something like: "Taxi via XYZ, hold at ABC" (where ABC is close to, but a safe distance from, the runway surface)

"Line up and wait" (enter the runway, but hold while existing traffic clears the runway)

"Clear for takeoff" (runway is clear, you may depart)

In this incident, I don't think either of those last two commands were given.

I suspect that it was common, at least to that pilot's ear, that "line up and wait, you're number one for takeoff" had been heard together so many times that when he heard only the latter his brain "helpfully" filled in the former. Some terminology change is occasionally warranted.

If that was literally the words used probably need to enforce that it's "you're number one for departure" so that you can't inadvertently think takeoff meant cleared for takeoff

This may be down to how people interpret number 1 in a queue. Think of the floor numbers: some countries use 1 as a ground floor, some use 0. So being number 1 in line may mean something else in different cultures, and considering how cultures mingle nowadays, it's not hard to imagine someone just got confused there for a second.

Reportedly the sole surviving captain of the turboprop had understanding that he was cleared to enter the active runway, which to (ATC clip watcher non-pilot) me sounds like there is skill aspect to this accident stemming from lack of public interest in general aviation here in Japan.

There has also been news articles pointing fingers on this. I don't know whether it's media fixating out of depth or whether there is such early stage suspicion shared among investigators.

Just a typical corporate/bureaucratic response. They've already made a bigger joke of themselves with the announcement that traffic controllers are now officially instructed to look at screens.

'you are next' as in I am going next right after they guy goes. Or 'you are next' as in go now because its your turn.

We've already been through several disasters based on misunderstandings about whether or not a pilot was cleared for takeoff. That's why they explicitly use "cleared for takeoff" and if you hear anything other than that, you are not cleared for takeoff

It should be painfully obvious, given how often towers give sequence numbers, that "you're next" does not mean "you can go" or cleared for takeoff given that runways are used for dual operation takeoff and landing all the time

I wonder if this was a language situation, along with a pilot that is not used to operating at a large commercial airport (the coast guard) and maybe even some differences the Japanese coast guard/military writ large might have vs. civilian practices

There should be some explicit non-idiomatic variation of "you're on deck", since "you are next" is ambiguous.

Agree that this change doesn’t address what happened. I’m studying for my PPL and certainly very inexperienced at this but this accident seems to be a combination of many mistakes on everyone’s part.

I know when instructor and I were going in for a landing we’d always note that there was a plane lined up to take off. Granted haven’t done night flying yet but would imagine the same thing would occur.

When we’re lined up to take off, after we get permission to enter the runway, we confirm it over the radio then make sure nobody is on approach or at least far enough out to make a speedy departure if asked by tower.

I think some combinations of aircraft and runways leads to landing pilots not having a good view of the end of the runway

I’m just an avid ATC listener. I’m not a pilot, air traffic controller, or anything of the sort. I could very well completely off base. With that massive disclaimer out of the way, some of these changes really do come across as “we need to change something” meddling.

I couldn't tell in this case, but sometimes it is also definitely useful [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster#Lega...

There's the whole Ishikawa situation going on taking up the news in Japan, so I think there's very little pressure for them to just appear to be doing something.

On the other hand, they might be suspecting something, and apply this change as a stopgap just in case, even if they later settle down on another cause.

When dealing with incidents where there is no clear root cause, it's often advisable to implement guard rails to reduce the likelihood and/or impact of a repeat occurrence. As a result, this seems like a sane change.

Pretty much. If you have human controllers and human pilots, eventually someone's going to misunderstand an instruction. It happens every day all over the world. The backstop to this really can't be "give different instructions", because whatever you pick can be misheard too.

Obviously the primary backstop is supposed to be the pilots. The Dash 8 should have been listening to other traffic on that control frequency and should have known that there was an aircraft on final for that runway. The pilots of the A350 (and I don't understand why this angle isn't getting more attention) should have been looking out the window and seen the lighted-and-very-visible turboprop on the runway in front of them.

> The pilots of the A350 (and I don't understand why this angle isn't getting more attention) should have been looking out the window and seen the lighted-and-very-visible turboprop on the runway in front of them.

Because pilots know that it is incredibly hard or impossible to see an airplane lined up on the runway.

By lighted we mean that the turboprop had the required lights on the end of the wings and the end of the tail. Otherwise the airplane is totally black, on a totally black runway. Simply it is very easy to not notice the extra lights among all the lights of the runway.

The pattern you are trying to notice is 3 extra lights among many, and a small gap in the runway lights where they are obstructed.

> The backstop to this really can't be "give different instructions", because whatever you pick can be misheard too.

We know a solution for this. ASDE-X(Airport Surface Detection System) is a set of sensors (radars mostly) integrated together to monitor the ground movements of aircraft and automatically report deviations such as runway incursions.

https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/asde-x

Have you ever flown a plane? You're essentially blind to objects directly in front of and below you.

That's also true in a car of course, but there's a lot more ground below you when you're flying a plane.

From my experience, people who don’t know what they are talking about love to talk about pilot error and assign blame to the humans in the cockpit. You don’t see that often when reading experienced commenters who know that there should be 10 safety systems and features to prevent mistakes from getting catastrophic. Admiral Cloudberg’s analyses for example discuss at length the failures of all the mechanisms that allowed the crash to happen. It’s never “pilot need to git gud”. (Well, almost never, it was very nearly that for the recent Yeti Airlines crash).

It doesn’t help that there appears to be a, “cultural thread”? in aviation which believes that it’s a sign of your chops to talk like an auctioneer on the radio. There’s an infamous example on YouTube somewhere of this ATC telling pilots “cle te leh” for Cleared To Land.

If the signalling system is sufficiently modern, a train cannot drive over a red signal without being shut down. You cannot turn a signal green if there is another train on the track.

Why do we have this kind of state management for trains, but not for airports?

Because you cannot stop a plane mid air to wait for confusion to be cleared up.

No, but you can sound a loud warning in the cockpit if you're lined up as if on final and the runway isn't clear. Go-arounds are a standard maneuver.

It's dismissals like this that are preventing progress. I think the upthread comment was insightful and correct.

How do you determine programatically if the runway is clear? Or more accurately if it won't be clear when you get there? That's a substantially harder problem than you're letting on.

So, just to be glib, my car reports GPS positions at about 3 Hz at all times to an app (Teslamate) under my control, which is far more accurate than needed for runway incursion detection. And to boot, it literally drives me around, autonommously, every day, in an environment (my suburban neighborhood) vastly more complicated than any mere airport.

To say that the problem will require some engineering is correct. To claim it's infeasible is just ridiculous.

With a 'runway incursion system' - https://www.atgairports.com/solutions-and-systems/airfield-c...

You don't necessarily need a system that scales all the way down to tiny airports.

Major airports like Haneda presumably already have things like stop-bar lighting, for operating in foggy weather. If we already know where each aircraft is, and whether they're permitted to cross the stop bar right now - I can believe this runway incursion could have been detected.

Haneda does have such equipment, but it was not working at the time. This fact was promulgated in a NOTAM in effect at the time.

https://www.businessinsider.com/japan-jet-crash-runway-warni...

Well that at least seems like relatively low hanging fruit.

It’s hard, but come on. It’s totally doable.

> Or more accurately if it won't be clear when you get there?

I love how all the replies to your comment completely ignore this point.

If implemented as the other commenters naively suggest, it would cut the runway acceptance rate by probably 90%. Planes are normally sequenced so that each one touches down just seconds after the previous one turns off the runway.

Otherwise, the horn would be constantly blaring for the entire approach, which would do exactly one thing: train pilots how to ignore the horn. Exactly like gear warning horns in planes without a radar/lidar altimeter (based on airspeed and manifold pressure). So many gear-up accidents happened with the pilot reporting that he was distracted by the warning horn on final. Why? Because there were so many false positives that the horn became nothing more than a nuisance device. And now you’re in exactly the same situation as before the incursion warning system, but the pilots on approach have to communicate over the incursion horn all the time. Great idea, guys! Why didn’t anyone think of this before? Those aviation folks sure are stupid, aren’t they?

Even more problematic, the coast guard plane entered the runway just seconds before the JAL flight touched down. Even with a warning system for a plane on approach, there probably wasn’t enough time to execute a go-around.

Indeed. I am definitely not an aviation expert or professional but I do have a pilot's license and some hands on familiarity with how this all works.

It's not easily automated. That's just factual.

It's not impossible but it's way trickier than people who have never thought about this much are letting on. The accuracy of GPS is absolutely irrelevant for example.

On topics like this there are always "why don't they just do this" comments as if nobody in one of the most safety-minded has thought of it yet. I collect them in my HN favorites. Also there is a lot of safety that comes from not being too reactionary and adding complexity anytime someone has an idea. I think it's better to ask something like "does the industry use or plan to use any automation for this?"

You are right, designing a perfect system is complicated. Of course, you have account for planes that are expected to leave the runway before the next touchdown. The train equivalent for this is called CBTC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications-based_train_con...

My bigger point here is that there are a bunch of low-hanging fruit that could have prevented this. A system doesn't have to be perfect to be useful.

The tower could have known, that a plane was expected to land in the next 30 seconds. They could have automatically transmitted that to the cost guard plane and this could have sounded an alarm in the cockpit of the taxiing plane.

You 100% certain your system won't false? Playing a loud horn/sound on final is a good way to overload the crew and needlessly cause a crash.

If thee crew is this easily rattled, how come we trust their communication skills so much?

I see your point, but I think that the rate of false positives can be tuned to be very low, with a good design of the system.

In the rare event of a false positive, it’s still extremely unlikely that this will cause any more disruption than the co-pilot pushing a button and double checking with the tower.

I never said the crews were easily rattled. I can see you're more interested in argument than discussion so I'll leave you with this thought: software engineers can throw features into a product and A/B test it. When aviation engineers throw features into a cockpit without thinking through EVERY side, accidents happen. You're technically correct that, when skies are clear and the crew is idle, adding sounds and buttons is no big deal. But that's obvious, and not the scenario you need to be thinking about.

EDIT: I thought it was obvious from context but maybe not... Imagine I said "overload an already heavily loaded crew." An unloaded crew isn't normally worth worrying about.

I'm not sure a properly-designed warning would add much load to the flight crew.

They're already listening for "go around" commands from ATC. This would just be an automated "go around" based on runway sensor data.

The aeronautic industry settled in communication to prevent accidents, the tracked transport industry settled on physical lockouts. The lack of a solid, stable pathway probably influenced the path of the aeronautic industry's safety protocol development.

You can combine both.

Trains fail safe. If you cut the power to the wheels and apply the brakes, it will be inconvenient, but generally fine.

Planes by their nature fail unsafe: if you cut the power they fall out of the sky and crash.

So it's more difficult to design a signalling system for planes. Still, the idea seems good: couldn't we have a system that detects if the runway is occupied and broadcasts that information on ILS?

> Still, the idea seems good: couldn't we have a system that detects if the runway is occupied and broadcasts that information on ILS?

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

Forget air traffic control - who new ground control was so difficult and fraught with danger.

I happened to watch this video last night, which goes into some of the details of RIMCAS, the Runway Incursion Monitoring and Conflict Alert System, and how it failed to alert to a dangerous situation a few years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj7nG6gJqsU

Listening to the ATC recording, I feel like the real problem is that they didn't explicitly say "hold short" (which means "wait right before the runway on the taxiway"), like they do in the US. If you say that phrase, it's very clear where you're supposed to be.

If they want you on the runway, they say "line up and wait"

It seems bizarre to me that such a critical part of air safety is still handled by a bunch of people keeping a large amount of information in their heads and talking to each other over shitty radios. ATC needs some massive upgrades top to bottom. This "no changes, we have always done it this way" attitude is slowly starting to collapse on itself.

Yup, in no small measure, this is a problem of scaling.

It is true that "we've always done it this way (keeping stuff in our heads and talking on crappy radios)" has worked.

It is also true that there is more traffic than ever at almost every airport.

Every system has limits to its ability to scale. This system is evidently starting to exceed those limits. Beyond this one deadly accident, more worrying are the record number of near-misses in US airspace [0].

The entire system needs to be changed. It'll be interesting to see how they do this and still stay backwards-compatible with small general-aviation airports. Or will there be a hard-break at some class of airspace?

[0] https://www.aviationtoday.com/2023/09/12/alarming-rise-in-ne...

Part of the problem is that the scale of aircraft manufacturing is small. Cessna has produced fewer 172’s since the beginning of time (the most-produced civil aircraft in history) than Toyota sells Corollas in a month. So everything is expensive because of NRE.

That means nobody wants to pay to add another box to the cockpit. Now you have a game of prisoner’s dilemma: unless every aircraft is equipped with the safety technologies HN is proposing, you get little benefit. Until everyone has the little box, the controller still has to say everything over the radio (so unequipped planes can hear what everyone else is doing). “So what’s in it for me if I upgrade?”

So things like ADSB don’t happen until the FAA mandates that everyone spend $10k for parts and labor on cockpit upgrades and offers a new free digital weather service and a bunch of other sweeteners. And still some aircraft are exempt from the ADSB mandate.

Exactly. That's why I'm wondering if they'll just put a hard limit on GA and other aircraft, e.g., if you don't have ADSB and other upgrades, you can't go into any Class-A, Class-B, Class-C, or Class-D airspace....?

Depending on where you are, you can literally fly around in a GA plane with no radio and be perfectly legal. You can build your own airstrip (no approvals necessary other than any municipal building permits) and fly around with no radio in a homebuilt ultralight (no license or certification required).

Most of them are also also speaking a foreign language (English), even during a domestic flight.

As far as I can tell the ATC told the coast guard aircraft they were number 1 for takeoff but never cleared them for takeoff. They thought they were cleared and lined up on the runway, prepared for takeoff and even applied throttle just before the impact. Then the JAL aircraft basically landed on the occupied runway..

> They thought they were cleared [..]

I don't know how they could think that, they read back the ATC message and it seems unambiguous:

Tokyo TOWER: "JA722A Tokyo TOWER good evening. Number 1, taxi to holding point C5."

JA722A: "Taxi to holding point C5 JA722A Number 1, thank you"

They would also be able to hear the landing clearance for the other aircraft, no?. They would know someone was landing at that moment. Weird accident.

They checked in on the tower frequency after the landing clearance was given so they likely were on ground until that point.

> They would know someone was landing [...]

A good friend of mine worked for decades in ATC, I asked him earlier today what he'd have said, he thought "Taxi to C5 and hold" would have avoided confusion. In his view "Number 1" isn't helpful.

Similar article with some additional background.

https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2024/01/afc485d5a59b-japa...

In Japanese there are two words for some numbers. For example number 4 is yon or shi and for 7 it is shichi or nana. For announcements on train platforms they do not use shichi, because it sounds like "ichi", which is the word for 1. Also, I think they do not use "shi" for 4 for the same reason. (I hope I got this right, have not studied Japanese for 25 years).

Maybe someone from Japan can clarify if the are talking about the English word "number 1" or if they mean the japanese term "dai ichi".

English is used for air radio communications, per ICAO.

This is only a recommendation by ICAO where international traffic is expected. Towers and pilots speaking the local language is common outside the busy international routes.

it's the english phrase. all pilots and ATC in the world are required to use english.

it seems like the use of "number 1" made them think they were ready to take off, not that it sounded like a similar phrase. someone please correct me if i'm wrong.

That's not true, you can use the local language as well. What is required is to answer in English if prompted in English.

Though nowadays most major airports probably are English only, it wasn't so long ago that pilots were complaining that most of the traffic at CDG was in French for instance.

For what it's worth, I believe Japan is very strict in the English only however.

thanks for the info!

> it's the english phrase. all pilots and ATC in the world are required to use english.

This is not strictly true, is it? They should be able to speak English, but they are not required to use it. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/14254

yea my bad, just required to be able to use it and respond in english when prompted in english.

They avoid using the "shi" or "shichi" forms because "shi" also means "death".

Same in China with 4 (sì), although they have no issue with 7 (qī).

It makes a mess of hotel floors that try to cater to many cultures.

qī and sì sound nothing alike in any dialect of (Mandarin) Chinese I can think of, to Chinese speakers. Shi and shichi literally contain the exact same phoneme.

Someone unfamiliar with the languages might have thought that if they share the issue and even (within their phonetic limitations) pronunciation for the number 4 that this would also apply to 7, hence why I clarified that this was not the case.

They do not use 第一 (dai ichi), they use ナンバーワン (namba- wan).

Source: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20240109/k10014314211000.ht...

Also it seems like this is a temporary measure (seeing NHK says "対策では当面、事前に出発順は伝えずに離陸許可を出すとしています。" )?

Perhaps it will come back once the non-civilian traffic goes back to pre-earthquake levels?

There are many ways of counting in Japanese, such as a counting system based on shape, or people, or numbers.

numbers: ichi, ni, san, ....

or hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu,

people: hitori, futari, nin ..

Or by shape: hon (thin objects), ko (small round objects), mai (flat objects).

For all the numbers from 1 to 10 there are 2 series of numeral words because one series is of native Japanese words while the other are Chinese words in Japanese pronunciation.

After the adoption of the Chinese writing, all the signs have been taken together with their Chinese pronunciation, which has introduced a huge number of Chinese words in the Japanese language. The Chinese words are used mostly in the compound words that are written with 2 or more kanji, but also for some simple words.

For example, 4 is "yon" in native Japanese and "shi" in the Chinese variant that has been included in Japanese; 3 is "mi" in native Japanese and "san" in the Chinese variant, and so on.

There are contexts where the native Japanese numerals are preferred, but the native words for 4 and 7 are used more often than the others to avoid "shi" (Chinese death), as others have already mentioned.

The native Japanese words appear quite different from the Chinese words that form a large part of modern Japanese. The native words are usually much longer, with many syllables and with a large proportion of vowels versus consonants. Many native words seem structurally more similar to the words of the Austronesian languages, like those of the natives of Taiwan, who inhabited the Southern neighbor of Japan before the migration of Chinese into it during the last half of a millennium.

You'd think in 2024 every cockpit would show a meter-precision map of every other transponder blip on the same runway.

When do airplanes get Bluetooth 5.0?

It's pretty ridiculous that any passenger with a smartphone and ADS-B viewer app like FlightAware has a better view of the nearby planes than the pilots do in many cockpits.

We rarely consider the lives lost due to regulation that slows new tech.

It feels like civil international airports is the best place where dedicated embedded systems could be required for authorizing if not guiding airplanes to driveways.

These systems exist (they cover certain subsets of airport operations). They were disabled at the time of this incident; there was a NOTAM in effect.

I wonder if there are any additional common situations in life where miscommunication produces such immediate, high-amplitude feedback.

Not exactly common, but live-fire military operations come to mind (friendy-fire or civilian-casualty incidents and the like).

And suddenly the comment section is full of professional aviators.

Please don't post Reddit memes to HN.

I have a pilot's license. Many people do they are fairly common.

To nitpick, most will have GA, not commercial (i.e., professional) licenses.

But yeah, there's a lot of pilots.

If we’re nitpicking then the pros have ATP licenses so they can fly for the airlines

If we're really nitpicking...

In Europe and UK, an ATP is only required for those flying as pilot-in-command (i.e., captain) of a multi-pilot airplane for air transport purposes.

In the US after a crash in 2009, ATP or R-ATP is required for all scheduled air transport flights, but that is not all commercial flights. Ironically, that crash was flown by two ATP holders and so this requirement change would not have helped.

In both cases, a CPL is a prerequisite for the ATP (ignoring military hacks and some MPL stuff).

Even charter flights practically require an ATP due to IFR and night flying restrictions on CPL holders

Hmm? You can get instrument rating with CPL. There's also non-passenger commercial pilot jobs - cargo and agriculture for example. Those CPL holders are, by definition, professionals, even if other professional take the ATPL on top of their CPL.

I don’t have my FARs with me right now but I’m pretty sure CPL holders operating charter flights cannot fly in IFR or at night

Why is it hard to believe? In a group of my professional peers (about 12 people), there's one pilot (to be clear, one person who has a pilots license, and flies regularly). Just like there are also rock climbers, mountaineers, weightlifters, marathoners, CCGers, OCRers etc.

If anything, I would think we are more passionate about our hobbies, since it allows us to get away from thinking about work all the time!

It’s simple:

- get a sample the size of HN’s readership,

- apply the odds of each person having a license,

- bias slightly because of the audience’s demographics (which skews wealthy and technical),

- then consider that pilots are more attracted to aircraft-related stories,

and suddenly it’s not surprising to have dozens of qualified people in a thread like this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com