This sounds like valuable technology becoming available to ATC. Meanwhile the age old Runway Incursion Device (RID) consisting of clearly delivered and understood clearances, eyes, ears, standard operating procedures on the flight deck and flight deck discipline remains paramount.
OK, that’s a start, which apparently was already in the development stream, not that fate ever cares about that.
So it can notify the controller “when a runway is occupied or closed”. I thought that controllers already have the means to determine that. Will RID be smart enough to predict when that might happen, so the controller can do something proactive about it?
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The FAA is being very misleading about the RID. The 74 facilities already have a RID this is just a newer version. There is no new safety features of this newer version just a standardized version across the NAS. Its a digital post it note. I worked at 1 of these 74 facilities for most of my 35 year ATC career. The RID is just another memory aid, nothing more.
“RID”
Would this have helped at Midway? Nope. Incursion didn’t occur until South West was seconds from touchdown. “RID” is just another band-aid on top of countless band-aids. Entire system needs a top to bottom reinvention.
Actually NO, the RID provides no safety alerts of an impeding collision like what happened at MDW. The RID is a passive digtial memory aid thats it.
MDW has ASDE-X but it did not alert in this scenario, the bigger question is why not? Had the ASDE alerted, ATC would have been required to issue the go-around obviously they didn’t. The SWA pilots are the only reason this event wasn’t catastrophic! God Bless thise pilots for their awareness!
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It needs ASDE-X+AMASS in operational mode to truly generate a real time alert and mandated response when a runway collision is predicted. It may have been operating in limited mode, in which case, alerts I don’t believe are generated. It’s been a while since I had to know the details. The AMASS enhancement is the most up to date version.