So true. When I visited two years ago, I went back the next day, and STILL missed a few planes (and kinda rushed through several others). It’s an astounding collection.
Another article on the Newark close call:
If you scroll down there’s a paragraph heading which says, “Planes fly low when landing.”
Unassailable logic, I suppose, but thank you Captain Obvious
AT least we now understand why they landed on 29: the winds were out of limits for the normal runways. An alternative would have been to land at JFK which has long runways aligned that same way, but if so, all the inbound large planes should have done the same thing. Which would have been a logistical nightmare for UAL which has no facilities at JFK.
I wonder if any of the Flightaware mavens will put together an excerpt of all the Rwy 29 landings in, say, the 2 hours before and after the mishap. There might be a bunch of other sporty arrivals, or this one might be an extreme outlier and nobody else had their feathers ruffled even a bit.
I’m sure we’ve all been in a car when someone yells this at the driver in an emergency: “truck”, “Truck”, " watch out for the TRUCK!!!". You don’t usually think of pilots saying this.
I’ve made this approach a few times, but always a bit higher than the plane shown. If it looked like a vehicle might intersect my approach path, I went around.
The voiceover says “a collision no one saw coming,” right as we can all see the collision coming.
There is some recent news out about this crash: probably pilot suicide:
[standard rant]
- Always nice to illustrate an article about a Boeing 737 with a pic of an Airbus A350. At least it’s a file photo of the correct airline.
It is a testament to airliner safety nowadays that two of the few major disasters over the last few years — one in China, the other in India — were pilot mass murder-suicides.
(I could soften this with “possible” or “likely,” but no — they were both pilot mass murder/suicides, full stop).
Forgive my ignorance, but why are tours of AMARG no longer offered?
In other words, these days, to crash an airliner, you really have to work at it!
By the way, the Air India final report is set to be released in about a month…but it’s dismaying how the Indian press, and — worse — the Indian investigation board have been so eager to “disprove” the murder-suicide reality. I just don’t get how nationalistic pride is such a motivator for something like this, and in this way. It’s pathetic.
We saw this with the Ethiopian 737 MAX crash too. When the government owns the airline, it embarrasses the government, and most importantly, the strong man in charge of that government.
In the Ethiopian case, their military owns the FAA-equivalent civilian regulator, and the NTSB-equivalent investigative agency, and the airline. A trifecta of cover-up ensued.
India is a bit better than that. We’ll see if they cover themselves in glory or BS & rotten tomatoes here.
Separate from the above, but reinforcing it, some societies have much stronger suicide taboos than others. The West is slowly coming around to the POV that suicide is,in and of itself, not a big deal. Now for sure, everybody agrees that murdering the other couple hundred people is a beastly crime. But having a suicide as the instigating event of that crime sits very badly in some cultures.
All true, and well said - thanks.
Aparently they stopped during COVID, and have never started up again.
Pilot bellies in, takes off in his other plane, makes several stops around northern California, picks up a passenger, drops the passenger off, and takes off again. Officials have not been able to contact the pilot.
Somebody gonna have some 'splainin to do to both police & FAA. Once they catch up to him.
Can’t wait to hear the details on this one.
That sounds unpleasant.
A Delta Airlines worker is dead after a vehicle crashed into a jet bridge on the tarmac at Orlando International Airport.
The worker died when a “tug” aircraft-towing vehicle hit a passenger boarding bridge connected to Delta Flight 2593 around 10:55 p.m. Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration said
In the 17 years of my sentence in ARFF, the number of tug-related accidents was astonishing. Dozens and dozens. Obviously most were fairly minor but there were a substantial number that were surprisingly high on the “uh oh” scale.
Certainly the worst one was a tug coming out of one of the bag rooms where the driver hit a bollard at speed (well, the speed a baggage tug can achieve). Ejected over the front, head first into a wall. Depressed skull fracture and a host of other injuries. I’ve seen people thrown from 80 mph rollovers on an interstate highway with fewer injuries. I couldn’t tell you what his long-term quality of life was (I know he survived to discharge), but man he was in a world of trouble when we arrived.
The tug had zero damage. Same with the bollard.