Narrative:

I was working local east 1. We were north flow and IFR. We were backed up on departures because of the weather and route structure. We had one route out the east departure gate. The majority of the departure aircraft were eastbound departures. The departures had to fly a 010 heading instead of the RNAV departure. I cleared an E145 for take off heading 010. I then put an ATR72 in position. The prop departures fly heading 030 on departure per the SID. I anticipated that the E145 would be 6;000 and airborne; which we do every departure where the 6;000 and airborne rule can be used; and told the ATR72 fly heading 030 and issued his take off clearance. On my runway scan; I saw the E145 had lifted his nose wheel and then slowed down. I immediately canceled the ATR72's take off clearance. It sounded like my transmission had been stepped on; so I went back again and told him to cancel his take off clearance and hold in position. The E145 informed me that he had had a bird strike and aborted take off. I told the E145 to exit the runway and contact ground. ATR was moved to runway 35C and cleared for take off. The runway was inspected and a bird removed. To me what happened was a save; not an operational error. Due to my awareness and my runway scan; I stopped a major event. I used anticipated separation; which like I said before we use everyday a thousand times a day. The flm on duty told the operations manager that it looked good and that I had handled everything like I was suppose to. So my recommendation is not to put deals on people that do there job and do it well. I did everything right and had proper phraseology; but because my first transmission was possibly stepped on; and the ATR had just started his roll and the E145 hit a bird; there was an operational error. So I guess I will not be using anticipated separation anymore just in case something happens like this; even thought anticipated separation is a tool in the .65 that we can use and we use it everyday. My other recommendation would be to come up with radios or software so that no matter who keys up at the same time my transmission overrides and it always goes out.

Related reports:

Google
 

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Tower Controller described an identified technical error when clearing a second departure for takeoff when the first departure aborted due to a bird strike; the second departure was instructed to cancel take off.

Narrative: I was working Local East 1. We were north flow and IFR. We were backed up on departures because of the weather and route structure. We had one route out the east departure gate. The majority of the departure aircraft were eastbound departures. The departures had to fly a 010 heading instead of the RNAV departure. I cleared an E145 for take off heading 010. I then put an ATR72 in position. The prop departures fly heading 030 on departure per the SID. I anticipated that the E145 would be 6;000 and airborne; which we do every departure where the 6;000 and airborne rule can be used; and told the ATR72 fly heading 030 and issued his take off clearance. On my runway scan; I saw the E145 had lifted his nose wheel and then slowed down. I immediately canceled the ATR72's take off clearance. It sounded like my transmission had been stepped on; so I went back again and told him to cancel his take off clearance and hold in position. The E145 informed me that he had had a bird strike and aborted take off. I told the E145 to exit the runway and contact ground. ATR was moved to Runway 35C and cleared for take off. The runway was inspected and a bird removed. To me what happened was a save; not an operational error. Due to my awareness and my runway scan; I stopped a major event. I used anticipated separation; which like I said before we use everyday a thousand times a day. The FLM on duty told the Operations Manager that it looked good and that I had handled everything like I was suppose to. So my recommendation is not to put deals on people that do there job and do it well. I did everything right and had proper phraseology; but because my first transmission was possibly stepped on; and the ATR had just started his roll and the E145 hit a bird; there was an operational error. So I guess I will not be using anticipated separation anymore just in case something happens like this; even thought anticipated separation is a tool in the .65 that we can use and we use it everyday. My other recommendation would be to come up with radios or software so that no matter who keys up at the same time my transmission overrides and it always goes out.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.