…we live on the approach route for GEG, and we’re used to some occasional overcast-weather low approaches, but this one sounded like it nearly took the roof off, and then was followed by another uncharacteristically loud low pass. We are the highest point on the approach, but they usually don’t descend below 10,000 feet until they’re beyond our ridge. We heard the first plane go on and on, still low, and think they made GEG ok, but wow, that was an adrenaline moment. It’s raining, but not violent weather. Dunno what’s going on with ATC.
Sheesh, just had a low airliner go over…
by CJ | Sep 16, 2010 | Journal | 15 comments
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Looks like they’re getting below 5000 feet over the city. Look at http://flightaware.com/live/flight/SKW485P/history/20100916/1525Z/KSFO/KGEG/tracklog for instance.
That noise level is not going to make people happy—I know the glidepath for GEG from here, right through the notch in a certain pine tree across the street, and that fellow was wide open clear below local line of sight to the airport: from my house I can see their flashing beacon, across the river and about 5-10 miles further on. Screaming all the way… Our ridge is somewhat above 2000 feet, and if they’re below 5000, are we talking feet above sea level? Getting just a bit close, there, Canada Air!
I’m further astonished to find that some crazy people are spending 1500.00 to get to Spokane from SF. That’s pretty desperate, when you could do it in the same plane for 50.00; and I would hope they have served them enough ‘free’ cocktails for the price. What an industry!
Don’t get me started. Being (voluntarily 🙂 ) trapped on a small bit of rock in mid-Pacific, I am NOT PLEASED with most airlines, whose policies are turning what should be at least a tolerable journey into one that is usually torturous.
Have you seen the latest from Italy? Saddle-seats for airlines, to pack passengers more closely. Nice in Italy, where an hour’s flight is about it. But try it on the Honolulu-SF run. Or to Sydney. http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/global/story.asp?s=13159748 And what about ladies in tight skirts? Do they get to sit sidesaddle? Do we do sleeping racks, or hammocks, like the British Navy of Napoleonic times: they figured 18″ was enough sleeping space for one man. If you just strung people up in suspended cocoons for the trip, they’d actually be safer. Drink service would be difficult. But oh, I forgot, they’re no longer serving snacks.
18″ is actually wider than the standard of most airline seats today, which is 17″. And if you are taller than about 5’6″, forget about your knees on most coach seats. You won’t see them until you land.
On long haul flights, I’d actually welcome the chance to lay down — bring on the hammocks!
Someone should remind the airlines that they are not running a carnival ride, where the passengers are on and off within 5 minutes, and the worst they have to worry about is someone throwing up on the Tilt-a-Whirl.
Kwaj? Do you work for Raytheon?
No, and no. I’m a librarian on Maui.
Much nicer rock! Mazel Tov!
http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/aep/aircraft_noise/
Calling your local airport tower can also help, if you know the destination, and if you have the tail-number of the flight.
One of the physical anthropology students I graduated with has a job measuring people’s rear ends. So the airlines can find the right seat to cram the most on, based on average measurements. I’m 7’1″, so I always get the emergency exit door seat. Glad I went with archaeology, but at least she has a steady job…
oooh, you should try living under the RAF and USAF fighter jets we get. they make you want to throw yourself down on the ground with your hands over your ears! they are not supposed to do it over us in fact. then the other delightful thing they do is go round and round and round high up above, and the noise is really annoying, you can’t hear quite sounds against it.
While I was stationed in San Diego all 3 times, I was at the Naval Training Center on Pt. Loma peninsula. That area is now the Marine Corps Recruit Depot. The flight path of the airliners from lindbergh Int’l Airport would take the planes over our barracks, or the school buildings, or wherever they were heading, over that part of the base. We would have to stop our lectures in class until the noise level abated enough that a low shout could be heard in the front rows of the classroom. If you were watching TV, you got the wonderful reflected waves off the bottom of the plane as it roared overhead. The DC-10s weren’t so bad nor were the L-1011s, but a 727 would shake the buildings for minutes. That area was populated by places that were assessed at over $300,000 so I wonder what the residents thought. I’m sure they were NOT happy when San Diego’s attempts to force the Navy to hand over NAS Miramar (Top Gun) to them for their “new” airport went for naught. NAS Miramar is now MCAS Miramar, Top Gun has moved to NAS Fallon, NV. Same thing with NAS Oceana in Virginia Beach. That was all swamp in 1943 when the Navy bought the land and made it into a naval installation. With the burgeoning tourist industry in Virginia Beach, plus all of the expansion done by the Navy in that area, more people moved in and around NAS Oceana. Now they’re angry because the F/A-18s fly over their houses, sometimes late at night. They want them gone, regardless of the fact that the Navy was there first, the night operations are a matter of training for nighttime carrier landings at sea, and to maintain pilot/radar intercept officer proficiency. Yes, it’s noisy, I could hear them from 10 miles away, so I can sympathize with the residents, but nobody twisted their arms to move into a flight zone.
In your case, CJ, I believe it’s a matter of wind direction, in that airliners don’t normally fly over your house so low. On occasion, we’d get the odd winds from the east in San Diego and the planes would land from the west. Much quieter landing than taking off, and kind of interesting to watch a big airliner come in low and slow for a landing a half-mile away.
Were you there in Va Beach for all the hubbub about possible crash landings into Lynnhaven Mall when it first opened?
I get the full brunt of those night landings when staying at my in-laws. They live close to the old Mayflower Hotel and one of the guest rooms has very leaky windows. But, Oceana was there long before I was so I figure I’ll deal with it.
I did look into some of the issues at the time – the newer planes dictated longer runways and then soon after the FAA and military safety started dictating larger hazard zones subject to encroachment.
Yeah, I bet in CJs case the recent changes in ATC in Spokane are probably the cause. Even though controllers are trained to deal with whatever tools and geometry they are given, if the mission changes then more attention is required. and maybe the FAA and its contractors aren’t immune to meters vs yards conversion any more than NASA 🙂
This is the first time they’ve done it in 3 years here,and the second and last was a little further west of us, so I think we had one ATC guy get a talking-to…there’s one other suspect: our brand new GPS-based ATC program, which has already led to 2 aborted landings and diversions to Seattle because pilots at Southwest aren’t trained to use it.
I used to live down by Lawton, where the US Army met the USAF from Altus AFB, and we had a little rivalry going on—the flyguys thought it’d be fun to buzz Lawton, so they’d come over in Korean-war era jets REAL low. We’d hear ’em up there, and we’d come outside and me mum would stand there with us—and all the rest of the neighbors, and I mean, they were LOW. So mum and others called the USAF over at Altus and the CO said that if we could get a tail number he’d stop it. Heh. We could not only get tail numbers, we could just about pick the pilot out of a lineup. We were waiting for ’em, got tail numbers, and miraculously the low passes stopped—but on that last run, on the pull-up, apparently, one of the guys lost a wing pod which (we didn’t see it) went sailing over our houses and off into the wild near the Army artillery range. We heard the USAF was offering a big reward for it—[and somebody was in a lotta trouble]—so we kids went out pod-hunting for a long ways about, trying to draw a trajectory [we lived next an artillery school] between the plane-passes and that area. Somebody finally found it, but it wasn’t us: sigh.
I grew up in Rush Springs, which is smack in the middle of the Fighter jets Route. We got to see some spectacular mock dog fighting with F-16s and I swear I seen Stealth Bombers doing mock runs over Rush Springs. The Army used to do there parachute jumps outside of Rush Springs in a Farmers field lol.