That’s the Troutdale airport, just a few miles east and directly under one of the flight paths for Portland (PDX). I wasn’t around here when it happened but I heard a story from a guy. (Who knows about the veracity of it?)
Apparently, when they decided to get it out they stripped the plane of all the excess weight they could (Like has been said already - seats, galley stuff, etc.) They loaded a minimal amount of fuel aboard and then backed it up, so that the tail of the craft was actually hanging over a road (the one I take to work everyday!). Then they kicked it up and went on out of there.
They way the guy talks it was an amazing thing that it even stopped in time.
I know this is a little off the subject, but since the discussion is of large planes taking off in a short distance, you may be interested in this video (http://www.airandspacemagazine.com/asm/web/site/QT/hercoff.html) of a hercules C130 making an unassisted takeoff (no catapult) from the deck of the USS Forrestal. As I understand it they had about 8’ of clearance between the wingtip and the tower. That’s a pilot with nerves of steel and brains of stone.
I know this is a little off the subject, but since the discussion is of large planes taking off in a short distance, you may be interested in this video (http://www.airandspacemagazine.com/asm/web/site/QT/hercoff.html) of a hercules C130 making an unassisted takeoff (no catapult) from the deck of the USS Forrestal. As I understand it they had about 8’ of clearance between the wingtip and the tower. That’s a pilot with nerves of steel and brains of stone.
With respect to what pilot141 pointed out regarding max take-off weight: the Concorde showed up a number of times at Oshkosh and sold rides for a hundred dollars or two. The thing was they flew with maybe 20% of a full load of kerosene. That thing (I miss it already) had fighter-like thrust-to-weight ratios when lightly loaded. I’d bet nobody wanted their money back for lack of thrill points…
The expense of carefully disassembling a jet aircraft, trucking it somewhere, then reassembling & having it re-certified as airworthy must be very high.
If it’s an old plane, with a lot of miles on it, it might not even be worth doing that. Call the insurance company and tell them the plane is “totaled”.
Or just let it sit at that airport. Many airlines right now, given the market right now, have more planes than passengers to fill them, and are not flying all the planes they own.
Finally, I wonder if it might not be cheaper to build a few hundred feet more of runway at that airport, rather than trucking the plane out in parts. Especially since the airline could probably call this a charitable donation to the airport, and write it off on their taxes.
It’s probably a moot point, for a couple of reasons. First, if the runway is strong enough to hold a 747, chances are it is also long enough for one to take off. Second, many airports have only “x” feet of runway because that’s all the space they have.
First, as to the “let the airplane just sit there”, there are several reasons why this would not work. First of all, that airplane will be taking up space at that airport…and most likely a LOT more space than any other airplane. The airport is not going to let it just sit there forever…they will be charging tie-down fees or something similar for the use of their space. This could get expensive over the long haul. Also, that airplane will be a daily reminder of the buffoonery of the guys that flew it in…and their airline. Yeah, they can have someone come out and paint over the tail, but everyone will still know who it was that flew it in. No airline wants that kind of negative PR…they will suck up whatever cost necessary to get that airplane out of there.
And on the subject of getting it out of there, there have been some suggestions to just lay down a little more runway until it can fly out. Now I’m just a pilot and not an airport manager, but I do know that there is considerably more to extending a runway than just laying some asphalt. From a flying perspective, the runway would need to be re-examined by the FAA to ensure that it complies with obstacle clearance requirements. If you pave an extra 1,000 feet closer to a stand of Ponderosa pines, radio towers or just hills then the runway may not be legal to depart from. Environmental studies would have to be completed, and with a longer runway bigger airplanes might be able to use the airport, so local noise ordinances would have to be refined. The runway itself would have to be certified (ie stressed for whatever airplane is planning on taking off), and any airport markings, charts and approaches would have to be updated with the new length. This all takes a VERY long time - figure one year minimum before you can even begin bulldozing the land. And it will be VERY expensive as well - getting things certified by the FAA is comparable (but even more expensive) to getting things certified for marine use.
This brings me back to my point about the actual costs (tie-down fees) and bad PR costs of having that airplane sit there for a long period of time. Eventually these will outweigh the cost of tearing the thing apart and either writing it off or re-building it.
Here at my local airport, the biggest thing is usually the size of a DC-10, but usually like a Beechcraft 1900d.
During the airshows, we nearly always have a C-5A Galaxy. Big mother of a plane, takes off no problem.
An amazing sight I must say, it looks so slow, almost as if you could run it down on foot, but it takes off with about a third of the runway left.
Now the little F-16s(thunderbirds) when they take off, its like they go maybe a hundred feet then climb straight up at around mach 1.
I have yet to hear of a 747 land here. Did have a SR-71 do a touch and go.
No idea how our runways measure up, but a lot of our firebombers are P-3 orions and C-131s.
Large jets can require surprisingly short runways if they are lightly loaded.
Orange County airport has a 5700’ runway, which is fairly short (even the smallest General Aviation runways are usually 3000’ or more, and the large airports are upwards of 14,000 ft). And yet, aircraft like 757’s and A320’s operate out of it regularly.
Here in Edmonton, we have 737’s operating out of our municipal airport, and its runways are about 6,000 ft.
I seem to recall a large jet that accidentally landed at some General Aviation airport, and they put minimum fuel in it, removed nonessential gear, and flew it out.
fnord1966 your case of the C-5’s taking off illustrates my point perfectly. At an airshow a C-5 will have no cargo, and most likely only enough gas to get back to it’s home base. This means that it could be taking off at a weight roughly 50% of it’s maximum takeoff weight. It will be a veritable rocket ship.
And I’m pretty sure that your local airport has C-130s, not C-131s. It’s an easy mistake, though, what with the P-3s there also. Any sane man knows that those Navy guys strapped those engines on upside-down on those P-3s. Look to a C-130 Hercules to see how the engines were MEANT to be mounted!
My local airport is extending the runway by, oh, about 500 feet.
It’s taken 5 years. Adjacent land had to be bought. Trees chopped down. A creek re-routed underground through the airport grounds. Environmental impact studies. A couple of court appearances and public hearings to appease the neighbors (and the airport is actually liked by most of the locals) Pavement is finally being laid, and it’s not pavement that can support a big jet, either.
THEN there’s the problem of guys working in proximity to an active runway. All of a sudden the guys on the ground realize just how fast even small airplanes go. There’s this little class they get to sit through on airport safety. Not everyone can work with objects weighing several tons zipping by overhead at low altitudes, some guys just can’t handle it. Which usually means the folks that can handle it get to charge more for it.
You could shut the airport down while you work on the runway - but that’s going to really tick off the people who run businesses on the airport grounds or who have planes based there. That gets expensive, too, because under those circumstances there’s no money coming in, but the bills still need to be paid.
I know a couple people who have private airstrips on private land. They still have to go through inspections and crap even for their grass fields - they can’t just mow an extra 10 feet of runway one morning without risking legal problems.
I was guilty of this as well, so in the interest of completeness I suppose I should tell you that the runway at Troutdale Airport near PDX (Portland) is 5,400 x 150 feet at 35’ MSL (What’s that mean?)
and can handle 19,000 lbs. That doesn’t seem like very much weight when you talk about some planes. Does anyone know what the largest plane would be that could land there (excluding some kind of emergency landing)?
MSL means Mean Sea Level which is how altitudes are specified. 5700 ft. at that altitude is a quite respectable length.
You have to go to the airplane’s performance handbook for required runway length. Important factors for a given plane are weight, altitude, runway temperature and maybe some others that I haven’t remembered.
At Los Angeles (LAX) a 747 takes about 45 seconds to attain takeoff speed and rotate. A 737 takes about 30 sec. If you are at LAX and your 737 hasn’t taken off by 40 seconds you are allowed to become concerned.
At higher altitudes you have to attain a higher true airspeed in order to get to indicated takeoff airspeed. The indicated airspeed is what counts. As you go up in altitude the indicated airspeed gets lower and lower for the same true airspeed. Finally you reach an altitude where the maximum indicated airspeed you can get is equal to the stalling speed and that is the absolute maximum ceiling for that plane at that weight.
True, but you would be astounded at how fast all those ‘requirements’ can disappear when there is political power involved.
For example, here at Mpls-St. Paul airport, they wanted to build a 3rd main runway. Their design points it directly at the Mall of America & Interstate 494, and very close (parallel) to Highway 77. All explicitly prohibited in FAA regulations. But when this was pointed out, a ‘waiver’ from FAA clearance requirements appeared almost instantaneously. It was declared to be a ‘realignment’ of the current runways, so an Environmental Impact Study was not required, only an additional ‘environmental statement’. And it was declared that this was used for interstate transportation, so local noise ordinances didn’t apply to them. Etc. And most of this happened while construction was already underway. No doubt the FAA certifications will be done just as quickly.
Pilot141 correctly points out the documented official rules. But what happens in the real world of political influence and corruption can be quite different!
Well, not to pick on you either, but what really matters is density altitude.
And to be even more precise, we also have to consider vehicle weight, runway slope, and other factors. The calculations for T/O distance in a big jet involve a number of factors.
I wasn’t trying to be that precise - just pointing out that you don’t always need humongous runways to get jets off the ground.
