Okay I watched the second NTSB press briefing twice yesterday and have some juicy deets to dish out for you fine folks. Some of this was previously available/self evident but I wanted to wait a bit for the NTSB to do its thing. Here we go  Longer post so maybe bookmark and read later.

• First off, as the chairwoman succinctly emphasized: If a airline crash happens, many things likely went wrong. Flying is so safe because it has defense in depth built in. I personally would like to say we must resist the very natural desire to focus on "okay, who f'ed up". This is a search for the truth.

• The controller clearly at least twice told the truck to stop before the crash

• Two controllers were in the air traffic control tower cab (in layman's terms, the top most part of the tower with windows where the active ATCs oversee things and work) at the time. They had just gone on duty for the "midnight" (22:30-06:30) shift at ~22:30ish local time.

• There is conflicting information on which air traffic controller was in charge of operations on the ground.

• The controllers at the time were dealing with another emergency on the ground. So there was a heavy workload on controllers who were also working multiple positions. NTSB cautions about talking about "controller distraction" as they were doing their job.

• The controllers were doing combined positions since it was the midnight shift. This is the standard operating procedure for a lot of airports, including Newark. (See other #ChillyATCAdventures posts). The chairwoman has concerns about this nationwide common practice and so do I.

• Conflicting reports on how many certified ATCs were in the facility overall. ATCs are supposed to take periodic breaks and be relieved by another controller.

• The truck did not have a transponder to report its location. The airport did have airport surface detection equipment (ASDE-X) but the ground radar did not alert since the proximity of multiple ARFF trucks caused the system to have low confidence.

• The automatic runway status lights were operational and indicated it was not clear to cross the runway

• Chairwoman Homendy is awesome, as usual

#AvGeek