I thought I heard ATC call "Southwest abort." If so, did the sim get it wrong, or did SW not abort, or did I just hear it wrong?

I heard those words, but wasn’t sure if it was said by ATC or one of the FedEx pilots.

So if the fedex pilot said "southwest abort" (different new sources confirm this) and the swa pilot made a split second decison that he didn't have a enough runway space and/or he trusted the fedex pilot, how much trouble is the swa pilot in?

Granted this assumes he had some idea where the fedex pilot was located.

That’s a difficult spot. If I’m the pilot and I clearly hear my call sign with a call to abort, I’d probably initiate the abort if I’m below V1. But my call sign includes the flight number, e.g. “Delta 103, abort!” I would expect ATC to use the full call sign. A landing aircraft can perhaps see the company livery of the departing aircraft and not know the flight number, hence the generic call.

Bottom line for the departing pilot is to make a split second decision that is the safest course of action. And, btw, the landing aircraft has no business calling for the rolling aircraft to abort. His action, upon seeing that plane, should be to initiate a go-around and advise ATC “FedEx 202 going around. Traffic on the runway.” Because even if SW heeds his call to abort, FedEx is still going around.

There seems to be a whole host of problems before this, but, FedEx waited too long to make the go around call, right?

I’m going to assume that FedEx decided to go around as soon as they concluded that SW would not be airborne in time for FedEx to land. I’d love to see the pilots’ statements, but I don’t know if those are made public.

https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-s...22-close-call/

This is fairly disturbing. Any preliminary thoughts? Almost two months for it to go public.

It is disturbing, but I don’t like to engage in baseless speculation. I can’t even imagine how this happens.

Here’s a great discussion of the FedEx-Southwest incident at Austin TX. I highly recommend this YouTube channel by Kelsey, a 747 cargo FO. And it turns out that it was very low visibility at the time...low enough that it required an autoland by FedEx.

Nailed it!

That's interesting. The fog part and the way he breaks down the different perspectives of fed ex, air traffic and southwest. Very good video ty

Aside, I fly yyz to gru and back often for a layperson, and you've piloted to gru often. Do you have any comments or stories about gru that a red eye infotainment watching sleeping customer would never know otherwise

I like how his background is a cheap hotel room. Very appropriate for a pilot.

For those of you who enjoyed my previous aviation history article, my current one just dropped. It has a connection to this forum, but I won't specify more than that unless the poster wants to self ID, as I don't want to trainwreck anyone. You can find it on pp25-34 here.

I don't mind people knowing. Garick has written a great article about my grandfather based on a diary he had when he was flying bombers in WWII.

Thanks again Garick, you Rock.

My pleasure. Thanks again for access to his papers and photos. This one was a lot of fun.

Sitting at IAH the other day on a boring layover and watching gate operations made me wonder.

My understanding is that each airline pays the airport for a certain amount of gate space. So, United is paying for more spaces at IAH than American, while the situation at DFW would be reversed. Who handles the gate scheduling? Does each company decide which gates will take their planes? Or does the airport assign gates out of the allocation blocked out for an airline?

Essentially, when my gate changes between the time I leave and the time I land, who's decision was it?

Sitting at KSAN and we’re delayed because the airport is using runway 9, and apparently we can’t accept that and need to depart runway 27. Aren’t the runways the same length regardless of which way you’re taking off/landing? What am I missing here?

Wouldn't that be the same runway? Are they turning the airport around?

If you're lucky, the buildings at the departure end of 09. I'd guess you've got a heavy plane that might not have the performance numbers to climb out over potential obstacles should something go wrong, but I'm not a pilot.

Wind shift.

Take offs and landings are preferably into the wind.

Yeah, that’s what I’m confused about - they aren’t turning the airport around.

Hmm, maybe. Sounded like it was a runway thing but maybe it was just the dumbed down explanation.

Winds have been consistent and plenty of aircraft taking off on runway 9.

It looks like winds did in fact shift at around 1 pm yesterday, out of the south in the morning then turning to generally from the west, at times going as far as 320 degrees. That's an excellent reason to want to take off from runway 27.

A quick survey of SAN shows several 500' tall buildings within a mile east of the airport. Wikipedia mentions that the FAA restricts building heights in San Diego to 500' within 1.5 miles of the airport, so the city seems to be making full use of it. A comfortable, standard approach would have you crossing the runway threshold at 50 feet on a 3 degree descent. Doing the math, at a mile out that puts you around 325 feet. Clearly that won't work going over the city, so any approaches landing on runway 27 are going to be steep. Climbing out steep is normal. I'm sure W0X0F has mentioned exact numbers here before but you're certainly climbing much steeper than 3 degrees on takeoff. Since it's much more efficient to have traffic landing and departing in the same direction it makes sense for SAN to use runway 9 as much as possible, letting the landing traffic descend over the ocean and requiring the departing traffic to climb quickly to avoid the city obstacles.

Normally if the winds require using runway 27 it shouldn't be that big of a deal though. You need to come in steeper but I'm sure they do it all the time. The obstacles in the city also affect the design of radio/GPS guided approaches in bad weather though. Descending more aggressively puts a higher workload on the pilot to make sure they're hitting the right altitudes. A majority of approaches are designed to be used by all kinds of aircraft with a range of equipment, so they'll design obstacle clearance around the least precise standards. Descending over the ocean or flat land means you can get on a comfortable 3 degree descent all the way to the runway - with obstacles you may need to do different segments at different rates. You'll have a higher descent rate when you pop out below the clouds and transition to finishing the landing visually. All of this means the approaches landing to runway 27 will stop giving you guidance at a higher altitude and expect you to be able to see the runway from further out. The best you can get to runway 27 leaves you at 600 feet (that's with fancy equipment, if you're not properly equipped it's closer to 700). Runway 9 would get you down to 200. That would have caused a problem yesterday because SAN had clouds down to 300-500 feet most of the afternoon. You literally can't land to runway 27 with that weather, it needs to be runway 9.

That probably doesn't happen a lot in San Diego (the low clouds - wind from the west necessitating a switch to runway 27 probably happens a lot) but it is something ATC would have planned for. I assume they continued to land on runway 9 all day (because they had to) and let departures take off in the opposite direction. Telling the tower you can't take off with a tail wind is a very normal thing and ATC will understand and respect it. You were likely just the first flight to request it after the wind shift and they probably wanted to continue departing from runway 9 as long as they could.

SpiceJet’s making the news with a flight crew’s nonstandard cup holder:

Years ago I used to be in ATS in Canada... We had a dog and named it NORDO.

46% of men think they could land a commercial flight if both pilots were incapacitated:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/trave...-it-land-plane