Originally Posted by
2StgTurbine
I disagree. When an aircraft is lined up for takeoff, but not cleared, they have most the lights on already. On the 737, the difference between "line up and wait" and "cleared for takeoff" is the difference between 5 lights and 7 lights. Kind of hard to tell from far away the difference between a lot of lights, and ALL the lights.
It appeared they were close enough to see the Jetblue rolling, they were less than 1000 apart. But you can't tell for sure from the youtube. As I said SWA might well have hit the brakes plenty early, just didn't get a word in until ATC told them to stop.
I agree that the lights don't tell you much.