Fear of flying
Posted January 14, 2007 at 6:36 pm
One of the things I like about my current apartment is the view. Not only is it great (and I can get wonderful sunrises), but it provides a daily fix for one of my fascinations: watching planes.
Folks who have visited my Flickr account may have noticed that I sometimes just hang out in Gravelly Point to watch planes really close up.
I don’t know which came first: the fear or the fascination. I do not like to fly. I’ll do it if push comes to shove, but I’ve also been known to drive many hours to avoid flying.
Anyways, while the weather here wasn’t great, it wasn’t horrible either. Given that, it doesn’t exactly help my fear that I witnessed two “do-overs” this weekend…one yesterday, one today.
Whenever I see this, I figure it’s a pilot who doesn’t land at National very often. Check out the problem on the map.
In general, when planes land from the north towards the south, they basically fly over the Potomac into the downtown area. This helps reduce noise and presumably provides some measure of safety if a plane experiences a problem.
Sometime a while back, the FAA allowed planes to essentially cut the corner over Rosslyn, VA, which is just north of Arlington National Cemetery.
This is probably fine and good, but if you look at the map, you can see that the runway that lines up with this approach is actually a shorter one that cuts diagonally across the main runway, which lies almost directly north/south.
So I think what happens is a newbie pilot (to National) visually lines up with the shorter runway, and then realizes that 1) it’s the wrong runway and 2) there’s no time to line up with the correct runway.
So hello, do-over.
These things don’t even make the news, so I guess they aren’t that big of a deal. But given how much I “love” flying, I can’t imagine how I would react to getting that close to landing and then feeling the plane begin to ascend!
Update, 1/16: Jake thought I might be confusing planes from the same airline who were landing and taking off at the same time. Here’s a short video I shot yesterday showing a normal approach and landing, picking it up just as it approaches the Washington Monument. I actually can’t see the planes taking off when they take off to the south…they are under the treeline. But I sure can see a plane that approaches and then flies over the airport.
January 15th, 2007 at 11:49 am
Ummm…where do I start? This is exciting that you have a radio in your home that listens in on the tower transmissions from Reagan National to the aircarft approaching. You would hear all of the detail in the transmissions if there were an aborted landing with a “go-around” to follow, so there would be no mystery as to what prompted the missed approach. This is a perfect example of an unqualified person talking about something that they do not know about. My question to you is - did you actually see the missed approaches that occurred and watch the 2 aircraft climb back up, re-enter the pattern and execute a landing on the second approach or did you just happen to see 2 different airplanes with the same airline paint job on them and you thought it was the same aircraft each time? The approach to runway 15 would have always have been there and there would not be any change by the FAA to this since the runway is open to traffic…it would not have been recently opened due to some kind of change. Besides, the length of this runway is 5,204 ft….that is almost a mile long. I guess it just takes one person who knows nothing to cause a panic in the other people who know nothing.
January 15th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
> My question to you is - did you actually see the missed approaches that
> occurred and watch the 2 aircraft climb back up, …
Yes, I saw the missed approaches and watched the airplanes climb. The one on Saturday was routed to the west (over Alexandria). The one on Sunday turned over the Potomac; I watched that one until I lost it from my view.
BTW, you’re right, I’m not particularly “qualified” in terms of air traffic control, but having been in that apartment for over three years, it\’s pretty clear when a bigger jet is heading to National from a non-standard approach.
When I see that, I generally get up to watch and see.
Also, this isn’t the first time. There was one of these last weekend as well. And a couple of months ago, there was a thunderstorm blowing into the area, and I watched what appeared to be the same plane miss twice. Or maybe it was the same airline; two different planes.
But in either case, what I’m seeing is either a do-over or a plane flying at low altitude over the airport. These planes are not touching down (or even clearing the tree-line from my vantage point).
> The approach to runway 15 would have always have been there …it
> would not have been recently opened due to some kind of change
I didn’t say the approach to the runway changed. I said that there was a change that allowed planes to cut over Arlington during their approach. I can’t find the link (it was a while back, but after 9/11), but it was covered because of the noise implications for residents of Arlington.
I’m just guessing that because planes are (seemingly) often approaching the airport from over Rosslyn (rather than over the river), it can be trickier to make that sharp turn by the 14th St bridge…particularly since the alternate runway lines up with that approach.
BTW, I don’t think I can pick the tower up from my home…probably too far away. But I have thought about getting a radio for Gravelly Point. I’ve seen do-overs there too.
January 15th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Oh, here’s a followup to my last point. What I did find was this in a Google cache of an old Arlington County news item. This was *right* after 9/11. It states:
“Pilots at National are no longer allowed to use the ‘river visual’ approach, of following the Potomac River as a winding guide to and from the airport. Flight paths must be direct.”
See http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:QzDlcWVmsxAJ:www.arlingtonva.us/Departments/Communications/NewsDigest/Scripts/ViewDetail.asp%3FIndex%3D579+%22airplane+noise%22+%22arlington+county%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=11
Interesting. I’m sure things have changed since then. Maybe I’ll see what else I can dig up about requirements for flying into National.