Chelsea NYC (once home of transsexual prostitutes and now richest zip code in USA) or Where?
From context, I’d assume Chelsea, MA. Just across an inlet of the Boston Harbor from the north edge of Boston Logan International. If you leave the airfield on either the Chelsea Street or Meridian Street bridges, you’re in Chelsea, like it or not.
Since LSLGuy seems to be an active airline pilot, he probably has ample occasion to [del]get lost[/del] explore the region immediately adjacent to the aerodrome.
ETA: OTOH, I didn’t actually know that about Chelsea, NY. So, I guess, ignorance I didn’t even know I had, fought. Yay?
Got it in one. Chelsea MA has the cheapish hotels within a 20ish minute drive of the terminal that my employer prefers. A long walk in the neighborhoods surrounding our hotels is a standard crewmember recreation / exercise regime. In some cities that’s great fun; in others it’s suicidal. Chelsea is older working class, but not criminal class.
The original connection was **j666 **(the OP) was talking about air traffic at Boston Logan and then mentioned the crazy road patterns in Boston at large. To which I replied in effect “yeah, seen that in Chelsea.”
Oh, I didn’t know you were from here.
I miss the spaghetti plan; at least there you know you don’t have a hope without a compass and three generations of genetic programming.
Can you ask the guys in the tower what happened on Easter, around quarter to three or to four? (I can’t remember which now.)
Not as terrifying as all of them suddenly dropping to the ground!
That’s just a manifestation of quantum plane physics. Paired planes and anti-planes randomly pop into existence, most of which immediately mutually annihilate each other before you notice (which is what you might expect when planes get entangled). At airports having pairs of parallel runways (as Logan appears to have), you can develop a large-scale Casimir effect between them, which might have been the cause of OP’s observations. The (largely as-yet-unexplained) quantum planar symmetry violation shortly after the Big Bang left an excess of planes in the universe without matching anti-planes, which is the state of affairs we see today.
Ah, now I understand our abhorrence of parallel paved surfaces!
But the plane in question was over the Blue Hills at the time - no two parallel lines in sight.
(Brackets mine)
CNN’s report on that story here.
I especially like the part I bolded . The captain is responsible for all lives. Not just the human ones. Lovely!
[and now the horribly cynical]
The Devil on my shoulder interrupts to suggest that if it was an airline from the USA the captain would have proceeded with the flight in order to save extra fuel costs and not inconvenience the passengers. That’s maybe unfair, I know… it just seems American firms are so devout in worshiping at the altar of the Invisible Hand—so conscious of protecting a robust bottom-line at any cost—that it would have nudged the captain in a less humane direction.
[/and now the horribly cynical]
What I choose to do has very little to do with what our bean counters might prefer. Every company, even Air Canada, wants their workers to be efficient and also to not inconvenience passengers. And gives their pilots the freedom to apply judgment along with policy to the facts at hand.
It’s a damn good bet neither Air Canada, nor e.g. Lufthansa, nor e.g. United have anything in their policy manuals directly addressing enroute failure of cargo heating while carrying live animals. We certainly would never load live animals in an airplane with known malfunctioning cargo heat.
Whether any given pilot would choose to press on and hope the dog is hardy enough or choose to divert is essentially luck of the draw. I seriously doubt the choice of airline had anything to do with it.
What’s not addressed is how many passengers were sorely inconvenienced by that 75 minute delay. Which could easily have snowballed into 3 or 8 or more hours. Out of the couple hundred people on the flight it’s a statistical certainty that a few missed connections and then missed once in a lifetime events such as weddings, parent’s deathbed last words, etc. And the longer the ground delay, the greater the number of people affected.
It’s an interesting question whether those several people would have voted to miss their important events to “save” the dog from no danger, just some discomfort. As the article spun it, the dog was doomed unless they diverted. Makes for a great human interest (canine interest?) story. Reality is / was probably more subtle.
The way the press is spinning this (with no small help from Air Canada’s PR department) Air Canada got lots more than $20K of good publicity from the decision to divert. So even management is happy. Despite spending some unplanned money on this flight.
It must be the anti-planes that make dangerous contrails.
Just chiming in to mention that your local weather is not the only weather that can affect local traffic patterns. A severe storm system at a busy airport could have knock-on effects at other airports as flights get diverted or delayed.
Which way were they going?
When the wind is strong out of the northeast Logan lands on runway 4R which means aircraft pass over the Blue Hills Reservation, Milton, and West Quincy going northeast at about 1500-2000 feet above the ground. That would typically be about where they’re extending landing gear and already have half flaps out. You might see aircraft converging from roughly due south to roughly due west towards a point more or less over the reservation then proceeding as described above descending towards Logan.
When the wind is strong out of the southwest Logan takes off in the opposite direction on runway 22R. Typically we immediately turn east over the bay to avoid spraying Milton and Quincy with noise. If there was significant weather out over the bay folks may well go straight out from the runway a few miles before heading out over the water or turning west. If you saw airplanes climbing out that was probably what’s going on.
Usually the wind in Boston is not so strong as to dictate runway use. In which case Logan configures itself for absolute minimum noise impact on the expensive parts of town, maximum noise impact over the bay, and medium noise impact over the proles. Under that scenario the Blue Hills area will never see an airplane except as a small silent blot at a good distance.
For the sake of accuracy–if only in my personal recollection from some 30 years ago–the locus of transexual prostitution was the docks at the extreme south of Chelsea, the border of the now-gentrified/residential/chi-chi Meat Packing District (insert joke here).
A friend was one of the first to rent opposite the docks on 14th St. and we had ample opportunity to observe negotiations.
You can see the airspace over Logan from where I was and no storm system was visible. However, one of the sites provides did indicate that the prevailing winds shifted significantly for a very short period around the time of the Mysterious Event.
Maybe. Hell, I’m not a meteorologist, what am I saying?
Ah, from the viewpoint of 24N, they were traveling almost due West, apparently slightly north of 128 (93N / 95S), at a stable altitude. They banked right very sharply to the west of the Blue Hills, over Dedham or Hyde Park, not Milton / Quincy. They appeared atypical low, especially for such a cloudless day (high ceiling, right?); I estimated the altitude, based on the size of the plane as indicated by the number and size of the windows*, at “Whoa, that’s really low!”
I lost sight of the plane behind some trees and by the time we turned on to 128N it was gone, so it must have landed at Logan. I think.
It looked like they were navigating by sight and mistook I-95 for I-24, and had to turn sharply. Except I’m pretty sure they have beacons and things so that doesn’t happen, right?
Please tell me I’m right …
Anyhow, thanks for indulging my speculations.
- Not that I thought that through at the time.