deonb
Pattern Altitude
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- Aug 17, 2015
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deonb
I was looking at a property this weekend at Crest Airpark in WA, and then I looked up from Airnav how busy that airpark is and found this:
http://www.airnav.com/airport/s36
To my surprise it's rated as 312 aircraft operations/day on average (113880 operations in 2014). That would constitute an average of one "operation" every 2 minutes, considering we only have about ~250 flyable days per year over here. Even Wikipedia listed it as 271 per day back in 2005, so it's not just Airnav that's showing this.
I got curious so we went and sat next to the field to see how much traffic there would be in this little airpark that is supposed to be as busy as KCLE (Cleveland-Hopkins International).
But we waited quite a while and it was exactly what I expected. One guy landed in a 152 and taxied over to the hangars, and a student & CFI in a 172 doing some landing & takeoff practice. Not 6 planes in the pattern, or a line on takeoff that Airnav suggests. I also followed this area with FlightRadar24 over the last few days (granted would probably not help much), but also - nada.
Seems like a really nice neighborhood to live. The lawnmower and bikes in the area bothered a lot more than the airplanes. But if there truly are takeoffs every 2 minutes, that would become a bit much.
So what gives? Did we just get lucky and even though it was a beautiful day for flying, nobody was interested, and really a place like this can get crazy busy midweek?
Or does an Airnav "Aircraft Operation" mean something other than a takeoff or landing? There was this guy washing his airplane...
http://www.airnav.com/airport/s36
To my surprise it's rated as 312 aircraft operations/day on average (113880 operations in 2014). That would constitute an average of one "operation" every 2 minutes, considering we only have about ~250 flyable days per year over here. Even Wikipedia listed it as 271 per day back in 2005, so it's not just Airnav that's showing this.
I got curious so we went and sat next to the field to see how much traffic there would be in this little airpark that is supposed to be as busy as KCLE (Cleveland-Hopkins International).
But we waited quite a while and it was exactly what I expected. One guy landed in a 152 and taxied over to the hangars, and a student & CFI in a 172 doing some landing & takeoff practice. Not 6 planes in the pattern, or a line on takeoff that Airnav suggests. I also followed this area with FlightRadar24 over the last few days (granted would probably not help much), but also - nada.
Seems like a really nice neighborhood to live. The lawnmower and bikes in the area bothered a lot more than the airplanes. But if there truly are takeoffs every 2 minutes, that would become a bit much.
So what gives? Did we just get lucky and even though it was a beautiful day for flying, nobody was interested, and really a place like this can get crazy busy midweek?
Or does an Airnav "Aircraft Operation" mean something other than a takeoff or landing? There was this guy washing his airplane...
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