Understandable, but I’m freaked out enough by flying when everything goes normally. I hope Pence never comes within spitting distance of public office again, but I can’t help but sympathize–this would have scared the hell out of me, even if it wasn’t really a major incident.
Pence could’ve died. Imagine how terrible it would be if that tragedy somehow gave Trump enough sympathy votes to win the election. Then come January he could end up handling both foreign and domestic policy himself!
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I saw that too. I’m having a hard time understanding what is going on here. Multiple rough landings? Is one pilot responsible for all of those? If so, wow, that’s job security!
La Guardia’s runways are short. In slippery conditions it’s essential to land quite near the beginning of the runway. A late touchdown well down the runway can leave insufficient distance to stop. One of the things you sacrifice to get that early touchdown is a smooth touchdown. You’re not doing a Navy carrier landing, but you do accept clunking on sooner rather than sliding on later.
As a result, the touchdown area of all 4 LGA runway ends have been pounded minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, for umpteen years since their last (re-)construction. So the surface is real beat up and rough right there. Which further contributes to rough-feeling arrivals.
As a separate matter, a lot of campaign stops are made at small airports. Airports that, although legally sufficient for a 737, don’t see them very often. As such the careful pilot also wants to land earlier and perhaps less smoothly.
I’m not asserting the Pence charter pilot was that careful guy. He might be a goof for all I know. I’m just saying a careful guy is going to make rough(er) landings on short or slippery runways than he/she would on long dry ones.
Unrelated to this mishap there has been increasing emphasis by the FAA over the last couple years about landings in slippery conditions. It has become evident that the regulations, airline policies, and the pilot community’s understandings of landing and stopping performance in bad conditions are less than complete and correct. And that more conservatism needs to be built into the process. That’s happening now. Which I predict will produce a lot more diversions and runway closures at LGA & DCA this winter. And several other stations, but those are the ones with a high traffic volume and a high media profile. So they’ll be the ones we all read about.
Last item: A few years ago LGA and several other airports had a new feature installed: Engineered materials arrestor system - Wikipedia = EMAS. EMAS passively but quickly slows aircraft that run off the end of the runway. Had EMAS not been there, that airplane would almost certainly have ended up on fire in the middle of the Grand Central Parkway. For those not familiar, that’s an Interstate highway (I-278) with 4 lanes of dense traffic in each direction.
A few years ago Midway airport - also noted for short runways - actually DID have an airplane wind up in the middle of a roadway intersection. In the middle of rush hour, yet. Amazingly, only one person was killed.
Midway has since had arrestor beds installed.
That event Southwest Airlines Flight 1248 - Wikipedia is 11 years ago this winter. And was the first in the series of events that has led to the FAA waking up to the underappreciated overrun risk in slippery conditions
The wheels of advancing regulation grind very slowly, but very finely.
Nasty. Nasty weather.
That runway is crooked. So crooked. It’s the most crooked runway ever.
Just more of the same from establishment airports.
#MakeAmericaGlideAgain