In the last episode of Entourage the boys depart in large private jets on parallel runways in unison. It made for a nice visual effect but I can’t image that happening in real life. Does it?
There are two parts to an approach, the arrival and the approach itself. On a nice day when aircraft are doing visual approaches the final leg of the approach that is common to all aircraft landing on that runway may only be 3 miles long, i.e., a straight leg from 3 miles off the end of the runway to touch down. If there’s a bit of cloud around and instrument approaches are in use the final will be around 10 miles long. There may be lots of standard arrival routes to the one approach though and aircraft will take different routes due to either arriving from different airports or being radar vectored by ATC in order to keep everyone separated. You are most likely seeing aircraft before they’ve become established on the final leg of the approach.
GPS navigation doesn’t have as much of an effect on lateral offsets close to the aerodrome because the ground based navigation aids are accurate at close ranges anyway. Where you see the effects of GPS increasing navigation accuracy is in the cruise when you can be well over a hundred miles from the nearest ground navaid. When tracking on a VOR, an error of one degree translates to being 2 miles of track at 120 miles from the VOR, by comparison, when using GPS the track error is more often measured in metres rather than miles and it doesn’t matter how far from the airport you are.
MikeF, aircraft do take-off and land from parallel runways but they are staggered so they’re not flying directly beside each other.
At LAX on a clear evening, just after sunset, you can often see the landing lights of the plane lined up for the runway. I have counted as many as 9 planes all in a row, each one a bit higher than the last.
Richard - I thought so. In this shot they were wing tip to wing tip, or so it looked.
A related question: What about aircraft that are cruising in the major corridors side by side?
On a recent trip back from the UK I looked out the window and saw another jet some distance (probably a half mile or so) directly off our starboard beam, pacing us.
They stayed in that position for a few hundred miles. We were somewhere over the north Atlantic at the time.
Is this common? Intentional?
Do the pilots exchange pleasantries?
The other jet would’ve been at a different altitude to yours, either at least 1000’ higher or lower and more likely 2000’. It is common enough I suppose, not intentional just happenstance, in fact if the jets are going to the same destination it is undesirable because they need to be spaced out for the approach controllers to handle at the other end. Jets in this situation going to the same place would likely be given some sort of speed instructions to ensure they are nicely spaced as they enter the approach controller’s airspace. The pilots probably wouldn’t talk to each other unless they happen to know each other personally and/or work for the same company.
One impressive sight I remember from the Empire State Building at night was three strings of airplanes going down to land at the different air fields around Manhattan.
This happens quite often in Atlanta, which has (I think) 5 parallel runways.
I can’t recall which highway (From a map it appears to be 75) that displays it so well, but it takes you perpendicular to the runways. There is one point (and I’m sure better places to see it) where the sky looks like a “U” in lights. White lights to the right coming in, and red lights to the left going out. Pretty cool to see at night.
ATL’s runway diagram on Wikipedia shows 5 runways that appear to me as all parallel. I would have expected suffixes of L/x/C/y/R, but they’re officially 26L/R, 27L/R and 28. (For westbound activity.)
When there were several midair near-collisions in the 1990s, I remember one of David Letterman’s Top Ten reasons to keep flying was, “Enjoy the in-flight movie on the plane next to yours!”
Heh. Here it is: http://www.anvari.org/shortjoke/Aviation/1243_top-ten-new-advertising-slogans-for-delta-airlines-from-david-letterman-10.html
I think I’ve seen a dozen or more. ‘String of pearls’ always came to mind.