Gad, most of the country is shoveling snow in March. There's a lot I hate about California, but I had to run the a/c in my car when I went out for lunch today.

What does the airport do when this happens? Do they close down all runways for the day? Try to do something to thaw them, or what?

The response can vary. At the very least, the runway on which the accident occurred will be shut down, and might remain closed for quite some time, even days, while the accident investigators collect information (e.g. marking the debris field, measuring skid marks, etc).

At a large airport with multiple runways, some level of operation will probably continue on the unaffected runways. LGA is small and the runways intersect, so it's not surprising that the airport closed for a while. I'm sure they'll open operations using runway 4/22 at some point (if they haven't already).

During winter weather, airport operations will plow and chemically treat runways, but I've never heard of them trying to "thaw them."

So "reports" say they landed with a tail wind because 13 has ILS, but 31 doesn't. True? Why wouldn't you just use 4 in that case as they said 4-22 have ILS. 31 is only one that doesn't have ILS? Also "reports" say the previous two landings had GOOD braking action. One of the news channels had a pilot on that said the previous two aircraft could have been B737's and the reserve thrust is more effective on a B737 than a MD-88 because of the location of engines.

It's true that 31 is the only runway without an ILS. And I'm not sure what the winds were at the time of landing, but landing on runway 13 is a rare event. In all my years of flying into LGA, I can count on one hand the number of times I've landed on 13.

Watching the initial coverage on TV, I was confused about where exactly the plane was. At first, I assumed that the plane went off the end of the runway, but none of the runways has such a berm at the end. Later reporting showed that the plane actually departed to the left of runway 13, approximately 2/3 of the way down the runway.

This seems to indicate a loss of directional control. The pilots would not intentionally take the plane off the runway and, in fact, runway 13 has an EMAS overrun designed to bring the plane to a quick stop in such a situation. (Discussed in a post long ago.)

My guess (and that's all it is) is that they had asymmetric reverse thrust which, on a contaminated surface, can result in a loss of directional control if it's not immediately rectified. You remember an earlier post where I said I prefer the MD-90? This is one reason. The 90's reversers operate much more smoothly, while the 88's reversers require close attention to avoid excess power on one side or the other.

We'll find out for sure when the NTSB reports their findings.

I was curious about this too because I was pretty sure they had the "EMAS overrun" (or as I call it the cool **** that stops planes quickly) and was surprised it didn't stop the plane. I was wondering if the weather had effected it, but your answer makes more sense.

This isn't something that could be fixed or adjusted somehow? You'd think if there was just a "better way" that it could be corrected somehow? I guess something just requiring extra attention doesn't make it unsafe, but it would be crazy if you called out this idiosyncrasy literally the day before it was relevant like this!

Only runway 22 and 13 have the EMAS overrun. The other runways end at the water. The weather was a factor to the extent that the runway wasn't dry. On a dry runway, asymmetric reverse thrust is easier to control.

Of course, I should repeat that I don't know for a fact what caused this departure from the runway. Asymmetric reverse thrust as a contributing factor is just a guess.

Hello sir

i once flew from munich to Helsinki and just after take off, i noticed that the plane wasnt climbing anymore. The pilot said 3 minutes after take off, that he is unable to raise the gear and therefore he will land in munich again. the passenger should stay calm and everything is under control due to the unraised and locked gear. They repaired the plane 6 hours and the pilot said that one gear was broken. I dont know which one anymore. Did something like this happen once to you and is there some sort of safety feature that the gear will not raise when one gear is "not responding"?

Sry for my bad englisch. Keep up this awesome thread

You English is fine, and good question. I'm trying to recall if I've ever had a problem with landing gear and I don't think so. But as far as I know, there is no safety feature such as you describe and there have been many instances of just one wheel stuck. A friend of mine at ACA had a nose gear that wouldn't extend and he ended up landing at Dulles airport with it retracted. This was in a J-32 turboprop. Everything turned out fine and he has one of the bent props as a souvenir.

I'd much rather have gear that won't come up rather than gear that won't come down (such as on your case). Gear that won't retract is merely a nuisance, requiring a return to the airport (the FAA would take a dim view of a decision to continue to the destination with gear hanging down; our fuel burn calculations would be invalidated by the increased drag).

Would you ever continue to a more convenient airport in that case?

Like if you were taking off from a small regional airport with enough fuel for a 4-5 hour typical flight, and 30-60 minutes away from a major airport, would going to the major airport be an option? Or is it just, we can't trust our fuel numbers so we're going to land right away?

You can certainly go to a more suitable airport. If I take off from LGA and have a gear problem, I'm probably going to land at JFK where the runways are twice as long. If the most suitable airport (e.g., longer runways or CFR* facilities) is 30-60 minutes away you can make that decision too. But it's got to be defensible.


*Crash, Fire, Rescue

We landed in heavy snow the other night and I noticed at the gate the flaps were never "cleaned" up after landing on a B767. I didn't think much of it, but then I noticed a B757 at another gate that had just landed with the flaps still extended as well. It was late at night and I assume both were the last flights of the night for each aircraft. Did the heavy snow falling have anything to do with not retracting the flaps before reaching the gate?

You have mentioned ITT before about doing a different checklist for the first flight of the day. Is that a time-based requirement, i.e. if your aircraft has sat at a gate during the day for 6 hours between flights for lack of a crew, do you use a different checklist vs. the one for a normal turn?

Yes, the heavy snow was the reason. It's normal to retract the flaps after exiting the runway. In fact, it used to be that leaving your flaps down was supposed to signal that you wanted armed intervention (i.e. you had a hijacking going on).

When we land on a runway with snow or slush on it, we leave the flaps down because the tires will kick that stuff up onto the bottom of the wing. The accumulated snow/ice can cause problems with flap retraction and possibly damage the mechanism.

No, the "first flight" items on the pre-flight checklist are a subset of cockpit checks that are deemed necessary to accomplish only once per calendar day. The determination of which checks are first flight only is above my pay grade. Checking the hydraulic pumps is a first flight item, but checking the fuel pumps (all six of them, plus the crossfeed valve) is done before each flight. We check the overspeed warning once a day, but check the stall warning for each flight.

The old chestnut for general aviation used to be to leave the flaps until you're parked. The reason being that on most small planes, except for Mooneys which have a funky toggle switch, the flaps lever is pretty close to the gear lever. It would screw up operations at the airport to retract the gear by accident while you're rolling down the runway, but merely embarrassing and expensive to do it while parked.

Yeah, that one rings a bell. In an effort to help avoid mistakes like that, the gear lever and flap lever are different shapes. Most gear levers have a small "wheel" on the end, even on airliners. In GA planes, the flap lever is usually a flat, spatula-like lever. For the same reason, the controls on the throttle quadrant in GA planes (prop pitch control, mixture, throttle) all have different shaped knobs on them. Thus, you can tell without looking which of the controls you've got your hand on.

And this thread continues to deliver awesome tidbits like this years later.

Yeah that's a fun one, but now actually has me wondering, has someone leaving the flaps down accidentally ever resulted in an armed intervention?

I really don't think so, at least I never heard of it happening.

Another archaic procedure that was finally dropped from the Airmans Information Manual, was flying a triangular pattern to signal lost comms. This was in the AIM when I started flying and even then it seemed like the last refuge of the very desperate. If I recall correctly, you were supposed to fly one minute legs, turning 120 degrees after each minute. There was also a significance to whether you flew clockwise or counter-clockwise, but I can't remember what it was. The idea was that an alert controller would observe you flying this pattern and then... well I can't remember what they were to do even if they saw you. To my knowledge, this procedure was never done.

Edit: just did a Google search for "triangular pattern aviation" and found this link. Apparently this was originally a military thing and the alert controller would send up another aircraft to guide the other one in. Note: the pilot doesn't just have comm problems, he's also lost. Not having a good day.

Hey W0F0X, enjoy your thread.

Took a flight this week that got delayed because they loaded to much fuel on plane and said they were over weight with a full flight. They said it was a computer glitch to where the guys filling the fuel saw it was a 2 hour flight rather than a 1 hour flight. I don't understand how it could be over weight, if they can't fill the plane and fly over 1 hour how is that worth it to them? Unless they only use those small planes (not sure the model but it was a 50ish passenger delta ) for short flights.
Ever have anything like that happen?
Thanks.

Hi WOXOF

Was on an AA flight last Friday from Dallas/Fort Worth to Edmonton.
It was our turn to go but the pilot let another acft go ahead. He got on the radios and said we would be a couple of minutes because he was still waiting on the passenger totals and weight. We held three or four more minutes and then he got onto the runway and departed.

Is this common. Being next in line for departure and having to wait for operations to give you your passenger totals and weight?

It's not common, but happens from time to time. American has gotten much better on this, but I remember a time when it was so common for an American flight to be late getting their "numbers" that the Tower would often proactively ask if they were going to be ready when they got to the runway.

We usually get our final weight and performance data right around the time we pushback. It's rare that we don't have them before we taxi out.

posting because i find this pretty cool. if you were asked to pilot something like this would you consider it?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-31772140

Absolutely! It's historic.

I Hope WOXOF answers this one because it seems strange that the refuelers would be "determining" how much fuel is required, regardless of the flight duration. There are winds to figure, time/distance to destination, fuel required to get to a predetermined alternate airport, plus the required fuel reserve after that...

It sounds like they loaded extra freight (maybe not customer baggage) expecting that a certain amount of fuel would be taken on. If too much fuel was put on the aircraft would be overweight.

I was once on an America West flight from Vegas to Phoenix that ran so tight on fuel that we had to refuel due to a medical emergency and a double taxi in Vegas. Made a bad situation worse with the extra 30 minute refuel delay.