Ever feel like a scooter on the autobahn?

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Gubbins

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I just had another experience flying in to Houston Hobby with a 737 breathing down my neck, doing S turns and the tower controller begging me to go as fast as I can, and then when I finally landed implored me to get my pile of junk off the runway immediately...

It makes me feel like I'm riding a scooter and trying to merge onto the autobahn. :D
 
Don't have that problem at the home drome. I have been warned of wake turbulance from the B-1900 ahead of me, however. :D
 
They don't play favorites, I get the same treatment in the King Air. The implied question is "why are you here anyway? Don't you know this airport belongs to SWA?"

Gubbins said:
I just had another experience flying in to Houston Hobby with a 737 breathing down my neck, doing S turns and the tower controller begging me to go as fast as I can, and then when I finally landed implored me to get my pile of junk off the runway immediately...

It makes me feel like I'm riding a scooter and trying to merge onto the autobahn. :D
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Gubbins said:
I just had another experience flying in to Houston Hobby with a 737 breathing down my neck, doing S turns and the tower controller begging me to go as fast as I can, and then when I finally landed implored me to get my pile of junk off the runway immediately...

It makes me feel like I'm riding a scooter and trying to merge onto the autobahn. :D
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Had the opposite experience once. Airline pilot got chewed real good by the controller for not making his immediate takeoff immediate and forcing the controller to send me and my TriPacer on a go around. I'm sure I had a smirk on my face. ;)
 
geneseib said:
Had the opposite experience once. Airline pilot got chewed real good by the controller for not making his immediate takeoff immediate and forcing the controller to send me and my TriPacer on a go around. I'm sure I had a smirk on my face. ;)
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"And the ant started smacking the elephant in the rear, screaming 'Take it like the ***** you are!"
 
Gubbins said:
I just had another experience flying in to Houston Hobby with a 737 breathing down my neck, doing S turns and the tower controller begging me to go as fast as I can, and then when I finally landed implored me to get my pile of junk off the runway immediately...

It makes me feel like I'm riding a scooter and trying to merge onto the autobahn. :D
Click to expand...

I'm sure glad you didn't take the reverse high speed.

(Oh... Captain....!) ;)
 
One time, day of 2005 Big 12 Champ game (this was back when Texas had a college football team), I was asked for 120 to short final, and I told 'em, "I can give you more," and he said, "Gimme all you got."

Then he asked the SWA jet behind me to keep *his* speed up for the guy behind *him*.

The Paul Harvey "rest of the story" (for me, anyway) is that I was about 2 minutes from being cleared for the approach, when they "spun" me for traffic - and ended up giving me the south Texas tour, overflew Galveston and San Jacinto and all kinds of interesting places. It was 57 minutes later that I was finally cleared for the approach.

Same day, a guy in a King Air coming in from the west kept trying to do a pop-up IFR to Hobby, kept being told, "unable." After about 3 or 4 tries, the guy called up again, and App responded, "King Air WHO?" When he asked for Hobby again, controller told him, "give it up, not happening - you want Sugar Land, or you want to tell your passengers to watch the game on TV?" He took Sugar Land.
 
Gubbins said:
I just had another experience flying in to Houston Hobby with a 737 breathing down my neck, doing S turns and the tower controller begging me to go as fast as I can, and then when I finally landed implored me to get my pile of junk off the runway immediately...

It makes me feel like I'm riding a scooter and trying to merge onto the autobahn. :D
Click to expand...

Im surprised they didnt bring you in on 13L/31R.. was it an IFR day or winds not favoring the parallel? During the pushes, I used to come in from west of the field, overfly the tower and descend in a left or right base for the GA runway. Avoid the fast movers altogether.

Most of the time when coming into a place like that I was more than willing to do a short base to short final, crowbar descent to get in, get down and get off the runway as quick as possible...
 
have same experience down in Beaumont with the t38 from Nasa, boy wen they are shutting miss approaches they really make my pathfinder fell like a snail.
Plus they are jerks, i have to circle around by the time i finish my circle sob is back and i have to circle again. Have got pretty ****ed with tower guy more then once about this.
 
skyflea said:
have same experience down in Beaumont with the t38 from Nasa, boy wen they are shutting miss approaches they really make my pathfinder fell like a snail.
Plus they are jerks, i have to circle around by the time i finish my circle sob is back and i have to circle again. Have got pretty ****ed with tower guy more then once about this.
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I wouldn't say that makes them jerks. They are flying at a safe speed for their aircraft. If I'm at a low fuel state, I'm not going to safely get below 200 kts in the GCA box (unless I want to risk a departure or dirty up and burn 3x the fuel). I'd blame tower or approach for the mishandling. It's not like those dudes just over-rule your presence in the pattern.....they are being either vectored around (if shooting approaches), or are extending as needed (in the VFR pattern) to facilitate your pattern work.......and apparently having that spacing getting gooned away by ATC.
 
Part of my says, "**** them.. it's not like they thought you'd be doing 160 down final." It's your runway til ya clear. Do the best you can and fly safe.
 
Gubbins said:
I just had another experience flying in to Houston Hobby with a 737 breathing down my neck, doing S turns and the tower controller begging me to go as fast as I can, and then when I finally landed implored me to get my pile of junk off the runway immediately...

It makes me feel like I'm riding a scooter and trying to merge onto the autobahn. :D
Click to expand...

Oh, absolutely. It's an entirely different kind of flying, altogether.

-Rich
 
Dunno 'bout the scooter bit but had an interesting approach into PUB once. I was cautioned to not run over a Mooney while not being run over by a Citation. It was...interesting...and I don't want to do it again.

(not many Cherokees get told to slow down for a Mooney..)
 
There's always someone you need to slow down for or vice versa. It makes sense to do your best on this. Remember that when you're the faster plane, it isn't comfortable going slower. Plus, at the airports where it typically happens, you usually have long runways, so carrying extra speed isn't a big deal.
 
Going into ORD one December 23 in the early 60's in a Beech 18 with shaky Jakes, a load of auto production parts and mucho ice on the airframe putting us way over gross (of course being freight dogs we were over gross before takeoff) the controller wanted us to maintain 200 kt until over the fence.
(it was a nasty freezing rain night out over Lake Michigan and arrivals were stacked up like dominoes)
We got a good laugh out of that and informed approach that it was not going to happen - so he just switched us to Tower and let him deal with it.
Got the same directive from the tower and actually laughed at him. Told him we might make 200 going straight down. He said we would have to go around. Told him we were unable, that straight in and onto the ground at full throttles was our only option and did he want us to declare an emergency?
Well, No. He didn't want that so just do the best we could and "United xxx turn to heading yyy NOW"
On the ground they had to chip the ice around the cabin door so we could get out. In the pilots lounge waiting for the ice to melt enough to let us depart we got a call from the United dispatcher having a cow over his flight xxx having to burn a zillon dollars in fuel until they could work him back into the landing sequence. (Joel made me take the call being I was more 'diplomatic' - Joel came to a bad end in Africa when flying a DC6 with food to starving villages he took a heat seeking missile into his left wing)
The dispatcher was swearing (and probably red faced), I politely told him I didn't control icing wx and we had asked Tower if he wanted an emergency. He finally calmed down a lot, said he had BTDT flying freight and we parted amicably.
 
I was working a case one night in Narragansett Sound and headed for KPVD for fuel. We contacted the tower a few miles out and were using the "Rescue" callsign to signify we were on an active case, instead of "Coast Guard Helicopter xxxx". The tower informed us they had traffic on a two mile final and asked us if we could slow to 130kts. (We had the 3F firewalled in order to get back to the area.) I agreed, and slowed to the requested speed, and were cleared #2 for a straight in. As we approached I began to slow down to our normal approach speed of 90 and the tower called us, obviously upset, asking if we were in trouble. I told him no problem, and he replied that he didn't know a 130 could fly that slow. I told him they couldn't. Silence ensued until we got over the threshold and I asked for a ramp landing. There was laughter in the background as our approval came through.
 
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