Man, I don’t know what’s going on at SFO, but…
Continue reading: The FAA Is Investigating Yet Another SFO Runway Incident
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@anon really? You post as anonymous just to post some dumb comment like that on a post that relates to a Mexican airline? Btw this is also why a wall is pointless...just saying. But yeah take your racism and ignorance some other place. Like breitbart. And don’t be a coward while you’re at it. If you’re going to comments like that, at least me man enough to not do it anonymously.
I feel like sometimes it shouldn't be necessary to include a /sarc tag but I digress
I found anon's statement to be a funny, sarcastic critique of the wall and those commentators here who always turn the most banal posts into political firestorms.
Anon, you are not supposed to have an opinion that liberals don't like and certainly not post it anywhere.
I have seen a lot of hypocritical liberals as well. Collectively they say something and individually do something else. Like those rapists in Hollywood. Our all those women suddenly waking up to protect others.
They know when to milk the media.
BTW racism is not illegal. My right to hate any race and talk bad about it is protected by the constitution.
You would think they'd start to require approaches to be started on ILS (or a kind of ILS confirmation), even under visual conditions, and allowed to continue under visual, to avoid this kind of confusion.
It shouldn’t happen, but those runways are awfully close to each other (like 500 feet apart). I can’t think of another major airport where the runways are so close. They may need to enhance the approach lighting and runway markings in some way to mitigate this happening.
Richard is spot-on. SFO has the closest runways of any major US airport at 750 feet. Plus the design is particularly symmetric (two pairs of runways intersecting the other pair at 90 degree angles roughly midway, let alone taxiways). It doesn’t absolve pilots, of course, but that’s a big reason why. If you watch takeoffs and landings at SFO, it’s slightly terrifying; landings and takeoffs, even on a clear sunny day, are something like 20-30 seconds apart from crossing each other.
SFO also suffers from frequent delays due to this highly subpar configuration—basically whenever there’s any fog or rain. The airport had planned for decades to do more Bay infill to resolve this, but environmentalists killed any prospects of that ever happening. The long-term plan is for the FAA NexGen system to allow more automated guidance, but who knows when or if that will ever get off the ground.
As a former Air Traffic Controller at SFO let me add my $0.02 worth. The runway center lines are 750 feet apart. The edges of the runways are closer. While there is quite a bit of attention being paid to loss of separation issues because of Air Canada there have always been less than minimum separation incidents. In the past there wasn't CNN and only a few people monitored airplane frequencies. Now days these frequencies are constantly being monitored and issues reported to the media so it appears that these problems are increasing.
On another note.... Can you remove the political comments? They are really not very additive.
I walk my Greyhound's around the park that surrounds SFO. I saw an AF 744 make a roaring go around three years ago and counted the 39 minutes it took to go around and land. At one time they'd land and take off planes at the same time which scared people. Don't see that much anymore..
One more reason to monitor ILS even if cleared for approach !
The best insurance you can have for free when using parallel runways !
You say that 1 mile final is far away, but it really isn't. It's about 25 to 30 seconds from landing...
@ Ole -- I was making that point as a relative matter. With the previous incident, the plane was *50 feet* from hitting one of the four planes on a taxiway. A mile is much further than 50 feet. I didn't say one mile is far away, I said that it isn't as severe of an incident. To quote the post:
"Now, this incident isn’t as severe as what happened to the Air Canada jet that potentially only missed four planes by about 50 feet. After all, this plane was still a mile from the runway."
@Quacky, those runway numbers aren't just there for reference, they show the direction they face. '28' is 280 degrees. Since they are parallel, they have to both be 28.
@Ben, it *allegedly* was 50 ft above ground, unless you know something I don't?
Regardless my point was to emphasize that although the aircraft allegedly was further away from touching down, one mile final is still very close. I feel that you wrote it in a way where that wasn't done. The average reader probably doesn't know really know how long it tales.
I'm still floored by the AC incident. Runways are illuminated with white beacons, taxiways are blue. I've not flown through SFO, but I'd assume they have LED airfield lights by now, wherein the color difference is even more dramatic.