airtraffic

Author Topic: EVA15, What Are You Doing!  (Read 20294 times)

Offline lajim

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EVA15, What Are You Doing!
« on: December 18, 2016, 01:53:52 PM »
Early Friday morning I heard a jet flying low over our house near Pasadena (25 northeast of LAX).  There are large mountains just to our north through east and I was very concerned.  There were east winds (and fog) that evening so LAX was landing and taking off to the east.  Sometimes we hear planes flying overhead on the GABRE departure. However, this was louder than anything I have ever heard and was relieved when I didn't hear a crash. I decided to check the LAX archive and Flightradar24 and was shocked. EVA15 departed LAX and made a left turn to the north, and for some reason continued to fly north causing a separation issue with an Air Canada flight. Once that was resolved, the controller had to ask multiple times for EVA15 to "turn to the south".  Eventually the turn was made but by then the plane was very close to elevated terrain. The first screen shot on the attached shows EVA15 at 5,000 feet (roughly over my location) headed towards 6,000 foot terrain.  The second screen shot shows the overall route that was taken including the tight right turn to the south. The communications between the controller and the pilot were less than stellar (e.g., the controller kept saying "turn to the south" rather than "turn right heading 160"; "EVA15, what are you doing!").  There was another SOCAL frequency on this feed that I have edited out, so it's possible there are some key communications that were not picked up by the feed.  Still, this sounds a bit scary to me.




Offline fulanito

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Re: EVA15, What Are You Doing!
« Reply #1 on: December 18, 2016, 11:30:30 PM »
There seemed to be a lot of confusion and a potential read back error. The EVA015 pilot read back LEFT turn heading 180(from a 090 heading), which from the information I gathered, would result in a loss of separation from the ACA. The instruction to EVA was cut out by another transmission so it's hard to tell whether the controller gave a LEFT or a RIGHT turn. Additionally when the controller realized that the aircraft was turning left, the resulting transmissions to both ACA and EVA were very confusing. Another thing I can't understand (then again I have no knowledge of the current traffic situation or her airspace), after issuing the right turn to 180, she issued a left turn to 270, and then questioned the pilot about what he was doing and subsequently gave another turn southbound. No traffic advisory or traffic alert seemed to have been issued either, however her primary job was obviously to prevent a collision if the loss of separation had already happened. Having said that, the EVA pilot could have expedited the right turn by disengaging the autopilot(which I'm gathering he did not, since the turn back to the right seemed to take forever). All this is speculation from my side though, but glad to see that everyone walked away alive.

Offline slinzer

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Re: EVA15, What Are You Doing!
« Reply #2 on: December 19, 2016, 11:13:49 AM »
This was a fascinating clip.  At first it sounded like Eva was the ones who were screwed up (and I am not saying they are absolved 100%) but the controller really gave horrible instructions.

"Stop your climb immediately" and "Turn South" as well as her headings all over the place are a real challenge for a pilot team where english is their second language.  Not an excuse, but the controller is definitely culpable her.

My opinion and happy holidays.


Offline SirIsaac726

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Re: EVA15, What Are You Doing!
« Reply #3 on: December 20, 2016, 01:06:13 AM »
That was painful to listen to. The EVA crew clearly screwed something up but the instructions from ATC were atrocious and only made things far worse than they ever had to be.

Offline Tarciso2000

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Re: EVA15, What Are You Doing!
« Reply #4 on: December 20, 2016, 08:20:00 AM »
I guess the ATC was just confused with the stunts of EVA15. Although I didn't see the path in flightradar24 I just listened to the ATC recording and the pilot seemed not to follow her instructions. Probably a language issue as already said

Offline VASAviation

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Re: EVA15, What Are You Doing!
« Reply #5 on: December 20, 2016, 11:22:14 AM »
I put the maps and audio together here... Not 100% exact but we can make an idea!  :wink: :wink:


Offline lajim

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Re: EVA15, What Are You Doing!
« Reply #6 on: December 20, 2016, 01:05:22 PM »
Local news is reporting that FAA says potential controller error and are investigating if the flight was too close to the elevated terrain.  As fulanito noted, EVA responds "left 180" at about 1:00 mark.  The controller's instruction for this turn had been blocked by another frequency on this feed so was not recorded. Thus, we can't tell from the recording if it was a readback error or an incorrect ATC instruction. Per the news story, sounds like the controller may have incorrectly directed the left turn. This still doesn't explain how long it took to initiate the turn back to the south. If you listen to this in real time on the LiveATC archive (not the edited MP3), it takes FOREVER. 

Victor:  Great job on the animation. When I plot the FlightAware lat/long coordinates on GoogleMaps, it shows the flight path just south of Mt. Wilson (less than 2,000 feet).  Given their speed at nearly 400 mph (~570 feet/second), this was a very near miss...

Offline oktalist

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Re: EVA15, What Are You Doing!
« Reply #7 on: December 20, 2016, 01:57:03 PM »

Offline fulanito

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Re: EVA15, What Are You Doing!
« Reply #8 on: December 20, 2016, 04:24:58 PM »
Local news is reporting that FAA says potential controller error and are investigating if the flight was too close to the elevated terrain.  As fulanito noted, EVA responds "left 180" at about 1:00 mark.  The controller's instruction for this turn had been blocked by another frequency on this feed so was not recorded. Thus, we can't tell from the recording if it was a readback error or an incorrect ATC instruction. Per the news story, sounds like the controller may have incorrectly directed the left turn. This still doesn't explain how long it took to initiate the turn back to the south. If you listen to this in real time on the LiveATC archive (not the edited MP3), it takes FOREVER. 

Victor:  Great job on the animation. When I plot the FlightAware lat/long coordinates on GoogleMaps, it shows the flight path just south of Mt. Wilson (less than 2,000 feet).  Given their speed at nearly 400 mph (~570 feet/second), this was a very near miss...
My understanding of the delayed turn back to the south was because it takes a while to go from a left turn to a right turn with the autopilot, on top of the confusion of the controllers instruction. Left heading 180, turn initiated, during the turn get issued a right turn to 180 while passing heading 010, AND then a short moment later get issued a LEFT turn to a 270 heading, om top of that being questioned about what they were doing. I think the pilots were following atc instructions, however her instructions did nothing to de-escalate the situation. And with that many confusing instructions, I don't blame the pilots for not really knowing what to do in a timely manner. I doubt they will pin it as pilot deviation and more likely make it controller error. Thankfully the outcome wasn't as bad as it potentially could have been.

Offline tyketto

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Re: EVA15, What Are You Doing!
« Reply #9 on: December 21, 2016, 02:30:16 PM »
Local news is reporting that FAA says potential controller error and are investigating if the flight was too close to the elevated terrain.  As fulanito noted, EVA responds "left 180" at about 1:00 mark.  The controller's instruction for this turn had been blocked by another frequency on this feed so was not recorded. Thus, we can't tell from the recording if it was a readback error or an incorrect ATC instruction. Per the news story, sounds like the controller may have incorrectly directed the left turn. This still doesn't explain how long it took to initiate the turn back to the south. If you listen to this in real time on the LiveATC archive (not the edited MP3), it takes FOREVER. 

Victor:  Great job on the animation. When I plot the FlightAware lat/long coordinates on GoogleMaps, it shows the flight path just south of Mt. Wilson (less than 2,000 feet).  Given their speed at nearly 400 mph (~570 feet/second), this was a very near miss...
My understanding of the delayed turn back to the south was because it takes a while to go from a left turn to a right turn with the autopilot, on top of the confusion of the controllers instruction. Left heading 180, turn initiated, during the turn get issued a right turn to 180 while passing heading 010, AND then a short moment later get issued a LEFT turn to a 270 heading, om top of that being questioned about what they were doing. I think the pilots were following atc instructions, however her instructions did nothing to de-escalate the situation. And with that many confusing instructions, I don't blame the pilots for not really knowing what to do in a timely manner. I doubt they will pin it as pilot deviation and more likely make it controller error. Thankfully the outcome wasn't as bad as it potentially could have been.

The problem though, is at the 1:49 mark into the clip, the controller definitely issues a "turn right heading 180" call to EVA15, in which EVA15 acknowledges the call with the proper readback. Yet they continue that turn left and northbound.

there may be grounds for both being in error here, however with the feed rotating between frequencies, we don't know what the controller's first call was out side of hearing "heading 180". We don't initially hear if the controller said to turn left or turn right.

In all honesty, with the proper pointouts and resolving the TA with the ACA jet, continuing with the left to 270 after EVA15 turned northbound would have resolved the entire issue. Thankfully with the new SIDs coming online in the next 3 months, that will resolve some of the issues related to this, to a degree.

BL.

Offline GeoffSM1

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