Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr.JR
Last flight I was on, as we were circling down for landing I saw a plane ahead of us. The plane attempted to land, and out of the corner of my eye, I see the plane that was ahead of us in the air had landed and we pulled out and landed after another 10 minutes in air before landing again. I thought our pilots were dumb for not realizing that another plane was ahead of them yet went in for landing anyways. Am I right to be upset? Note, this was a smaller airport.
I'm a little confused because it sounds like there's three planes here: your plane and the red and green one above. But it sounds like your plane had to go around because the preceding plane had not cleared the runway (one plane at a time on the runway is a pretty firm rule). And then getting vectored back for landing took 10 minutes.
If I've got this right, it could be the fault of any of three people: your pilot, the controller or the pilot of the landing plane. If your pilot was told to follow the preceding traffic and was cleared for the visual approach, it's his responsibility to make the spacing work. I've been with guys when they get too aggressive and we end up having to go around. Bonehead move.
Sometimes the controllers get overly-optimistic in their spacing and finally realize that their plan isn't working, so they send the landing plane around (note: no 5 mile separation is needed if plane #1 isn't a heavy).
Sometimes it's just that the pilot of plane on the ground doesn't clear the runway when everyone expects him to, and goes right past the expected turnoff and now has to taxi another 2000' to the next turnoff.
Good related story: A Delta MD-88 is on the approach to Runway 22 at LGA and is following a Midwest Express jet (ME). The spacing is tight so our hero slows to final approach speed and even starts doing some s-turns down final (just what it sounds like: banking the plane left and right of centerline to increase the spacing from the preceding traffic).
ME lands and then slowly goes right by the last turnoff and now has to go all the way to the end of the runway to clear. Our hero is pissed and doesn't want to go around. The controller is also waiting to the last possible moment to issue the go around and our hero is down to 100' before the runway is clear and he can be cleared to land.
Now he lands and makes the first turnoff and the FO says to him, "Hey, you can turn off here and get in front of Midwest" (ME was taxiing back on the taxiway towards where our hero had turned off the runway.)
"Damn right!", says the Captain, "that f***er knew exaclty what he was doing" and he pulled onto the taxiway well ahead of ME to proceed to the gate.
About this time the Captain realized he had a stuck mike and he sheephishly told the tower, "Uh, sorry tower, I didn't realize my mike was hot."
"Don't worry about it", the controller said, "you were just saying what all of us were thinking up here."