Close Call at JFK

Skip Miller

Skip Miller

Final Approach
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Skip Miller
A 747 cargo plane and a commuter jet came very close at JFK. (Note I didn't say "near miss" to avoid the buzzing flock of pedants that usually follows!)

The article on this is on the NY Times website here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/11/nyregion/11miss.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin

Fortunately, it was a miss plane (heh) and simple. Perpendicular but not intersecting runways so it was not a LAHSO operation. The 747 landed long and elected to go around. The commuter jet elected to go around too (against the controller's continued clearance to land), and had to turn behind the 747. Missed the wake turbulence too.

What is that old adage about hours of boredom and moments of panic? I'm sure the commuter pilots know it well at this point! Good job to them!

-Skip
 

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Sounds like the Commuter did the right thing to me. Abort, turn to pass behind the 747 and above the wake turbulance.
 
That's either great luck or really great situational awareness! I don't quite understand from the article, though...did Eagle go around because they were concerned with wake turbulence, or were the concerned with the wake turbulence because they were going around (for some other reason)?

EDIT: Look at the airport diagram again, I can see why they wouldn't have wanted to try to land 22L when the heavy was on the go from 13L...that's just a bad runway configuration if everyone's not doing what they're supposed to!
 
While there is no report out, and this is just speculation, it seems to me that there is a chance that this will happen given the perpendicular operations, if one or both of the aircraft decides to go around.

~ Christopher
 
It looks like a very similar runway configuration to one that Boston uses with simultaneous ILSs to runway 27 and 22L to hold short of 27, the big difference being the intersection is at the roll out end of both runways, so there's no risk of getting a hair cut from an aircraft going around unless you're on the go too (and you damn well better tell tower PDQ that you're going so they can give you a vector away from 27's final, 22R's departure, and downtown).

I don't know much about this new miraculous technology that is going to remove all danger from the New York area that the Senator seems to be shilling, but it better do a damn good job of recognizing the difference between an unintentional conflict and the controllers pushing tin, because that's the only way that La Guardia (and I'm sure JFK and Newark) moves as many planes as they do (and they still don't move as many as they need to). It's not uncommon to be landing 22, 3 miles in trail of a Mad Dog, and not get your landing clearance until sometime after the 500 foot callout because the Mad Dog is still on the roll out while they're simultaneously crossing guys at GG, P, and E to get them over to runway 13 for departure...not to mention the guy shooting the gap on 13 when you're inside of a two mile final. And that's on a slow day. If this new whiz bang **** starts giving them an alarm every time they do that, their volume is going to go down drastically, and not do anything for the stress level of the controllers and pilots.
 
Yeah, the CA is usually useful, but sometimes, it just says what everyone already knows: there is a lot of traffic close together, now quite your damn beeping.

~ Christopher
 
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