# The Great Ongoing Aviation Thread (general and other) (Part 1)
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [October 23, 2011, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499 "2011-10-23T02:17:01Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 300
### Author:  [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2024, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/5983 "2024-04-22T02:56:29Z")
Another runway incursion in New York:
> **[JFK ATC Error: Four Planes Cross Runway As Another Takes Off](https://onemileatatime.com/news/jfk-atc-error/)**
>
> One air traffic controller at New York JFK cleared a plane to take off, while another cleared four planes to cross the same runway.
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2024, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/5984 "2024-04-22T03:52:23Z")
I hadn’t heard of this one before.
> **[A pilot’s fateful, career-altering flight under Michigan’s Mackinac Bridge](https://www.yahoo.com/news/pilot-fateful-career-altering-flight-161426997.html)**
>
> It’ll be 65 years this week since an Air Force pilot pulled off the ultimate stunt — flying under the Mackinac Bridge. But he paid the price for it.
> The Strategic Air Command removed Lappo from flying duty and imposed a $300 fine to be paid off in monthly $50 increments. His salary was also cut from $860 to $660 per month.
>
> That December, the SAC affirmed its ruling. Lappo would never fly for the Air Force again.
>
> While he was grounded, his military career wasn’t over. A [2017 profile](https://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/2017/04/michigan_air_force_pilot_flew.html) by MLive says Lappo served in the Air Force for another 18 years before retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 1972.
>
> He lived out the second half of his life in Alaska. He didn’t have a B-47 bomber, but Lappo had smaller planes that he used to cruise the skies once again.
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### Author:  [@Al128](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Al128)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2024, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/5985 "2024-04-22T07:36:47Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#):
>
> Just today I learned of another exception to this rule. The Cessna 408 SkyCourier is a high-wing twin, roughly equivalent to a Twin Otter. It was only introduced two years ago
Designed and built faster than the Cybertruck!
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2024, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/5986 "2024-04-22T13:02:43Z")
> [@PastTense](#):
>
> Another runway incursion in New York:
Youch. They do it right every couple of minutes 12 hours a day for years, then an oops.
The recommendation that one controller / freq handle all aspects of a runway is the usual case. But there are airports where the total traffic flow makes that impractical. Of which JFK is one of many.
And of course that change just moves the place where two flows controlled by two different controllers merge. But better to have conflicts between two aircraft at taxi speeds than one at taxi speed and one at takeoff or landing speed.
The right answer of course is to build a new airport with a more goof-proof design and vastly more capacity to replace overcrowded and goof-prone JFK. And do the same to another 5 or 10 overcrowded understaffed hub airports around the country. All of which achieved their current hodgepodge configuration by historical accretion, not by top-down design from current best practice first principals.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2024, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/5987 "2024-04-22T13:19:50Z")
In aviation-adjacent news, **[Oakland International Airport - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_International_Airport)** (“OAK”) in northern California’s Bay Area has decided to rename itself. Or rather the government agency that owns it is about to rename it.
The new name will be "San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport”. Quite a mouthful.
They claim that travelers, especially foreigners, don’t know that Oakland is near San Francisco or near the Bay Area, so they fail to book flights to Oakland and pay too much to go to nearby SFO even if their ground destination is in the East Bay area. They also claim that airlines are reluctant to run lucrative long haul international flights into OAK for the same reason. It’s a chicken and egg problem that OAK management hopes to break apart with their shiny new name.
Meanwhile the government agency across the eponymous bay who owns **[San Francisco International Airport - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_International_Airport)** (“SFO”) claim that they have trademarked the term “San Francisco” and nobody else can use it in their airport name. So they’re suing to block this decision.
The legal wrangling will be fun, but I’m really looking forward to the passenger confusion as folks intending to travel to one “San Francisco” airport inadvertently book travel to the other. Or worse yet, book it at one airport and show up at the other for departure. Oops.
The fact the main goal is to increase Asian (IOW mostly not native English speakers, and/or totally English-free folks) travel through OAK says the customer confusion factor will be large.
Such fun!
As a point of comparison, there are three "San Jose"s in the major airline system. SJC / KSJC = San Jose California, SJO / MROC = San José Costa Rica, and SJD / MMSD = San José Del Cabo Mexico. The latter is more commonly referred to outside of aviation as “Cabo San Lucas”, but that’s the name of the resort area 10-20 miles away from the airport, not the actual airport or town name.
Shit happens from time to time with people arriving in the wrong San Jose / José.
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### Author:  [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2024, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/5988 "2024-04-22T13:22:57Z")
That’s nuts. The name of the town I was born in later changed it name to its most famous tourist attraction…so technically all my birth documents are “fraudulent”! I genuinely have a slight moment of worry every time I have to fill out a document with my place of birth.
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### Author:  [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2024, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/5989 "2024-04-22T13:39:38Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> In aviation-adjacent news, **[Oakland International Airport - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_International_Airport)** (“OAK”) in northern California’s Bay Area has decided to rename itself. Or rather the government agency that owns it is about to rename it.
It’s always fun when airports rename themselves. My favorite is the airport located at the edge of Burbank, California. From [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Burbank_Airport#History):
> The airport has been named **United Airport** (1930–1934), **Union Air Terminal** (1934–1940), **Lockheed Air Terminal** (1940–1967), **Hollywood–Burbank Airport** (1967–1978), **Burbank–Glendale–Pasadena Airport** (1978–2003), and **Bob Hope Airport** after comedian Bob Hope (since 2003 as the legal name). In 2017, it was rebranded as **Hollywood Burbank Airport** due to the lack of recognition of Bob Hope Airport’s geographic region.
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### Author:  [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2024, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/5990 "2024-04-22T13:43:23Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> I’m really looking forward to the passenger confusion as folks intending to travel to one “San Francisco” airport inadvertently book travel to the other. Or worse yet, book it at one airport and show up at the other for departure. Oops.
Same thing happens in Paris. Every time one of my Stateside friends wants to go through there, I forcefully insist that they triple check the airport.
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### Author:  [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2024, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/5991 "2024-04-22T14:20:59Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> The legal wrangling will be fun, but I’m really looking forward to the passenger confusion as folks intending to travel to one “San Francisco” airport inadvertently book travel to the other. Or worse yet, book it at one airport and show up at the other for departure. Oops.
Do you know the tale of Erwin Kreuz?
> **[Erwin Kreuz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Kreuz)**
>
> Erwin Kreuz (1927 – 2010) was a West German tourist to the United States who achieved international celebrity status in the late 1970s for mistaking the city of Bangor, Maine for San Francisco. The incident continues to be told in various media as a prominent example of an airline traveler not reaching their intended destination.
> Kreuz left East Germany as a young soldier in 1945 and settled in Bavaria. A brewery worker from Adelsried, a village near Augsburg, Kreuz spoke no English, had taken ...
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2024, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/5992 "2024-04-22T14:41:48Z")
I had not known of him. Thank you.
At least he had his passport. AFAIK back before 9/11 it was not required for airlines to check passenger passports to board international flights. And of course before the widespread adoption of bar-coded boarding passes, scanners at the jetbridge door, etc., it was pretty easy for someone to inadvertently end up on a different flight than they intended to board. If the plane wasn’t going to be full, the extra passenger may not be noticed; any seat duplication would be chalked up to the unreliable manual admin procedures of the time: “Just sit in any open seat, Sir.”
I’ve told the story before of once taking some guy who wanted to go to Des Moines instead to Cancun. Of course being a pre-9/11 American he had no passport. The Mexican authorities were not amused and he spent our 3-hour turnaround time in a holding cell at their immigration area. Then they escorted him back onto our jet and we brought him back to the hub. Of course by now it was far too late in the evening to catch any outbound connecting flight to DSM. The airline washed its hands of his goof, so he had to find a hotel at the hub on his own and try again tomorrow. Oops.
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### Author:  [@mnemosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mnemosyne)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2024, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/5993 "2024-04-22T14:59:00Z")
Sydney Nova Scotia (NS) vs Sydney Australia (NSW) have been confused for each other more than once, with travellers more often making the error of landing in Canada. The weather in January (indeed , most of the year) is very, very different!
> **[A Tale Of Two Sydneys: How Many People Have Mistakenly Flown To The Wrong City?](https://simpleflying.com/sydney-nova-scotia-wrong-city/)**
>
> In an unfortunate case of "mistaken identity," multiple travelers have accidentally ended up in Sydney, Nova Scotia (Canada) over the years...
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [April 22, 2024, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/5994 "2024-04-22T15:03:42Z")
In the '80s or '90s I read about a guy who wanted to fly to Oakland, CA and ended up on a flight to New Zealand.
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### Author:  [@MonkeysBrother](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MonkeysBrother)
#### Post date: [April 23, 2024, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/5995 "2024-04-23T05:04:59Z")
I didn’t want to hijack the Loop da loop thread, so I’ve come over here to ask about rolls. There’s talk on that thread of Tex Johnson rolling a 707. I know that the general public calls any roll a “barrel roll.” But back when I was still flying little airplanes, I was taught (and read) that there are basically three kinds of rolls. Aileron rolls are positive G maneuvers with minimal heading change. Barrel rolls are essentially loops superimposed on a roll and include a 90° heading change at the inverted part of the maneuver. Barrel rolls can be positive G. And slow rolls are rolls around the long axis of the plane, with no pitch change. Slow rolls, despite the name, can be fast or slow, but they are not positive G maneuvers.
I always thought Tex Johnson’s display was an aileron roll. Certainly, when you watch Bob Hoover in action in his Shrike, he’s flying what I’d call aileron rolls. Has the terminology just changed and what used to be aileron rolls are now barrel rolls?
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### Author:  [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)
#### Post date: [April 23, 2024, 9:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/5996 "2024-04-23T09:34:47Z")
Your understanding of the terminology is correct. A barrel roll doesn’t have to have a 90° heading change though, it really depends on the relative roll rate vs pitch rate. The faster you roll, the tighter the “barrel” and the less heading change you will have.
When it comes to aircraft with slow rates of roll it’s not always possible to easily distinguish a pure aileron roll from a tight barrel roll, particularly as an aileron roll will typically still have enough rudder to prevent adverse yaw on entry and exit and there can be a significant pitch change between entry and exit.
Im not sure what Tex himself called it, but he was pretty sloppy with terminology when he called it a “1g manoeuvre”, as it is not possible for a roll that is purely positive g to also be limited to just 1g (unless you choose to ignore the initial pitch up and subsequent recovery), so I wouldn’t even take his word for what type of roll it was or was intended to be.
All that said, the video of it looks most like an aileron roll as you’ve suggested.
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### Author:  [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)
#### Post date: [April 23, 2024, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/5997 "2024-04-23T11:58:01Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> it was pretty easy for someone to inadvertently end up on a different flight than they intended to board
A friend of mine managed to (quite recently, maybe 10 years ago) end up on a flight to Brazil by mistake. I can’t recall which airport it was (I presume Schiphol, en route to Heathrow) , but he arrived at an airport hub, having drunk a fair bit, and exhausted from a long flight from Southern Africa, and just followed the herd of of passengers moving towards their connecting flight.
Imagine his surprise when he woke up somewhere over the Atlantic…
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [April 23, 2024, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/5998 "2024-04-23T20:09:08Z")
Of course sometimes this happens:
> **[Pilot Cancels Flight To Hawaii Twice Because He 'Wasn't Really Feeling It' —...](https://www.yourtango.com/self/pilot-cancels-flight-hawaii-twice-because-wasnt-really-feeling-it)**
>
> The incident highlights the gratitude felt by passengers for the pilot's cautious approach.
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### Author:  [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)
#### Post date: [April 23, 2024, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/5999 "2024-04-23T21:03:26Z")
> [@Cervaise](#):
>
> Same thing happens in Paris. Every time one of my Stateside friends wants to go through there, I forcefully insist that they triple check the airport.
When I was in Ireland last summer I think I was the only person in the group apart from the tour guide who was even aware that Belfast has more than one commercial airport. When I pointed that out it led to lots of people double checking their flights. In their defense, while most people aren’t too surprised that big cities like New York and London have multiple airports, you don’t really expect there to be two airports in a smaller city like Belfast.
Regarding OAK, IMO the reason lots of people don’t book flights there is because most travel booking sites don’t treat OAK as a San Francisco area airport. If I go to Expedia or Kayak and just type “New York” without specifying which airport, I’ll get flights to LaGuardia, JFK, and Newark. But if you do the same for San Francisco you only get flights to SFO. If you want to see flights to OAK as well you have to specifically search for flights to OAK, or check the “also search nearby airports” box. I don’t think simply changing the airport’s name will change that. IIRC the reason is because IATA assigns New York (and other multi-airport cities) one single code for “New York – all airports” in addition to the codes for the individual airports. Yet IATA treats San Francisco and Oakland as two completely separate, unrelated cities (even though just like OAK, EWR is technically in a completely different city, on the other side of a body of water from New York).
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### Author:  [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)
#### Post date: [April 23, 2024, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/6000 "2024-04-23T23:15:04Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> Of course sometimes this happens:
There must be more to the story.
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### Author:  [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2024, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/6001 "2024-04-24T00:26:34Z")
> **[Douglas C-54 plane with 2 people on board crashes into river outside...](https://apnews.com/article/alaska-plane-crash-fairbanks-5a19fc01efdb055c1b538dffaeff5d06)**
>
> A plane crashed into the Tanana River outside Fairbanks, Alaska. Authorities say two people were on board, and no survivors have been found.
I was thinking Douglas-isn’t that moderately old. It is older than I thought: they were produced from 1942–1947, so about 80 years old. Isn’t this too old a plane to still be in use?
> **[Douglas C-54 Skymaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_C-54_Skymaster)**
>
> The Douglas C-54 Skymaster is a four-engined transport aircraft used by the United States Army Air Forces in World War II and the Korean War. Like the Douglas C-47 Skytrain derived from the DC-3, the C-54 Skymaster was derived from a civilian airliner, the Douglas DC-4. Besides transport of cargo, the C-54 also carried presidents, prime ministers, and military staff. Dozens of variants of the C-54 were employed in a wide variety of non-combat roles such as air-sea rescue, scientific and military ...
Apparently used for delivering heating oil to the villages? Here is a good thread:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/flightradar24/comments/1cbbxas/a\_dc4\_has\_just\_crashed\_in\_fairbanks/](https://www.reddit.com/r/flightradar24/comments/1cbbxas/a_dc4_has_just_crashed_in_fairbanks/)
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### Author:  [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2024, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/6002 "2024-04-24T00:44:48Z")
According to the reddit thread these may be same people (different aircraft)?
> **[Uncovering the 22 myths of the Douglas DC-4 fuel aircraft still flying Alaska](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjxbbI5U2rk%2F)**
>
> Crave Life Episode 45An unexpected encounter with the men behind Alaska Air Fuel operation flying one of the last DC4's in service worldwide.This aircraft ac...
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