Not a bad working theory, at least.
It looks as though the plane went off the end of the runway. That seems so odd for a wheels-up landing. I would think that metal sliding on a runway would have sufficient friction to stop in a reasonable distance.
Am I wrong? If a runway is long enough to land a 737 with wheels and brakes, can it still be too short to stop a plane sliding on its engines and fuselage?
It’s also possible that the pilots landed farther from the threshhold than they normally would have. Are either of those things that have been worked out in advance, and that commercial pilots are trained on?
If I Googled it correctly it looks like the airport is surrounded by a cement block wall. You can see an access gate near the approach lights
it’s a 9,000 ft runway plus another 1000 ft from the chevrons to the perimeter wall and that’s true for both ends of the runway.
Well, metal on asphalt has terrible grip. Riding on your rims doesn’t work very well vs. tires, for example. Granted the surface area is very different in those situations, but something hard like metal doesn’t grip very well.
After all, if metal gripped well, skid plate racing wouldn’t exist. The whole point is you make the rear of the car not work any more by welding steel plates there. It’s almost an organized motorsport.
Flaps and slats don’t look to be extended, either. So in addition to metal on asphalt being pretty slippery, they must have been landing at a much higher speed than normal. And distance goes with the square of speed.
Meanwhile, near-incursion incident at LAX on Friday
Charter still not at full stop at the hold point as departing flight on runway was already taking off. News article includes link to the livestream.
Ref the Korean 737 accident there’s a dedicated thread developing:
Yeah. something close to that happens with some regularity there.
Here’s the FAA KLAX airfield diagram as a pdf. It’ll make more sense if you rotate it clockwise 90 degrees so north is up.
The northern pair of runways (24L & R) are very close together. And in contrast to nearly every modern airline airport, there is no parallel taxiway between the two runways because there isn’t room for one. Takeoffs are done on the inner 24L while landings are done on the outer 24R. When clearing 24R on any of the curving “high speed” exit taxiways, the stop point is much closer than you expect and is before the next transverse pavement from your POV (the runway), not after it (if you’re expecting a parallel taxiway, some more space, then the other runway.
It’s a well-known trap at LAX. If your employer goes to LAX regularly you’ll know about it. Even then it’s easy to have talked about that risk an hour earlier in cruise during the arrival briefing but by the time you’re peeling off the runway, and perhaps still going a bit fast, that fact could easily have slipped your mind.
The other two runways at LAX (the “south complex”) do have a parallel taxiway between, but again the runways are unusually close together and the cross taxiway geometry can lead to the same mistake on that runway pair. I’ve nearly done it myself. You’re turning off and slowing and POW! here come the hold stripes before you’re expecting them. Stomp!
Now 99% of the occasions where somebody landing intrudes into the takeoff runway at any airport are not exciting because there’s not somebody roaring down that same runway at that same moment. They still result in paperwork, violations, etc. But not scary video.
Is that the part where the tower tells the pilots they have a phone number they need to call?
I imagine that is near the bottom of things a pilot ever wants to hear (barring an actual accident).
Yeah. It’s the equivalent of the highway patrolman on your bumper with his Christmas tree all lit up.
Sometimes that phone call ends right there in a talk w the controller supervisor. Sometimes there’s just genuine doubt about who did what that needs to be cleared up. Or it becomes obvious the problem was on ATC’s side, not the pilots. But while you’re dialing the phone that’s sure not the outcome to assume or expect.
So the number they give the pilot is the number of that controller’s office, and you’ll be talking to him/her first? Or will he/she brief a supervisor, who talks to the pilot? (I originally wrote “you” instead of “the pilot,” but I’m sure @LSLGuy has never had to make one of these calls.)
What happens if the call isn’t made in a timely fashion?
If it’s not one of the simple situations you’ve described, how does the process proceed, and when do the FAA, the airline, and/or the union get involved? (Not that you would know first-hand, of course.)
That surprises me a bit. When you turn left off of 24R, and hold at the stop bars for 24L, are you still blocking 24R (the runway you just left), or can another plane land behind you while you’re stopped between the two runways?
I seem to recall AOPA’s legal advice is: You are not required to make the phone call to ATC. But that probably assume private pilots, not professionals or airline operations.
If it was me, operating as an airline or charter pilot, I would probably call my chief pilot before I called the ATC phone number.
Either way, circumventing the requested ATC phone call certainly won’t end the issue, and could make it worse. The pilot has the option of submitting an ASAP Report / NASA form and can also lawyer-up if things escalate from there.
The one time I was asked to call ATC they actually just wanted to thank me for helping with an emergency involving another plane. But I was momentarily taken aback by the request and wondered if I had done something wrong.
Yeah. The phone number goes to some level of supervisor on duty at the control tower or radar control facility. That person will have already talked to the affected controller either right then or at that person’s next break. Or if it was a really big deal, just after the controller was relieved off the position.
Given that we can’t call while flying, the call may not happen for hours, in which case whoever you talk to may be from the next shift and they’re just relying on whatever incident reporting form ATC uses for their own understanding of the situation they’re trying to ask you about.
Other than that, the rest of the call proceeds about like a traffic stop. You’re talking to Officer Friendly who’s gathering facts. Some of which may be helpful to you, some not. Meanwhile Officer Friendly may be of dubious veracity or questionable motives. Most ATC folks are great. Most cops in many departments too. What about this person? Better guess right.
There are varying schools of thought on how soon to lawyer up, but the usual advice is ASAP, especially if you’re pretty sure you screwed up. Provide the ATC rep your contact info, certificate number, and stop right there. Let your employer and your union, and their lawyers and FAA interface folks earn their keep.
If you snug up properly close to the hold short lines for the inner runway your tail will be out of the way of landing airplanes. At least for a smallish widebody. I know it works with 777-200s; I’ve seen it. I can’t recall taking off or watching a landing ahead with a larger plane there, but that was not a runway pair I used with any regularity over the years.
I can’t say for sure that there aren’t airplanes too long to hold between the runways. What I could readily find in the way of airport notes doesn’t mention any length restrictions on those taxiways. LAX has many other size restrictions on various taxiways, as do many other older landlocked airports.
Ballparking it …
The runways themselves are on the order of 600-700 feet apart on center. If we assume 650’, then the edges are 500 feet apart since the runways are 150 feet wide. But the hold short lines which define runway occupancy are a further WAG 100 feet inwards, shrinking the 500 feet to more like 300 feet between hold short markings. Which is longer than the longest current airplane. To the extent you’re sitting there angled to the runways, that’ll make your net length measured perpendicularly smaller.
That makes more sense. I was initially thinking that, with no taxiway between, you’d be blocking 24R until cleared to cross 24L, which would have been a clusterfuck in the making.
I just checked the diagram for SeaTac. It has runways 16L and 16C (which used to be the only two runways) with no taxiway between them. I wonder if they have the same issue with pilots exiting 16C and being surprised by the stop bars before 16L. There is a parallel taxiway to the other side of 16C, and I think there always has been, so pilots don’t have to leave one runway directly into the other.
SeaTac has its own list of gotchas. Of which that is one. The outboards, 16C & 16L are the normal landing runways with 16L doing the takeoffs.
And yes, upon clearing 16C after landing the very next pavement you could possibly cross is 16L. Oops on you if that wasn’t part of the plan.
So SeaTac and LAX both have parallel runways. Takeoffs are on the runway closer to the terminal, and landing aircraft (after clearing the runway) have to cross the other active runway to get to the terminal.
Is that standard practice at all airports with parallel runways? I suppose it makes sense to do it that way. Controllers can hold the departing aircraft while others are crossing downfield.
Yep, that’s the standard technique. There’s some room for local variation if there are are taxiways around the ends of the inner runway or if the inner runway is a bunch shorter or somehow more takeoff obstructed than the outer.
There would be the same crossing problem if they did it the other way, taking off on the outboard and landing on the inboard. It would just mean executing the crossing during departure taxi-out before takeoff rather than during arrival taxi-in after landing. Unless there are end-around taxiways. Which ATC loves, but add materially to taxi time which annoys airline schedulers and fuel cost bean counters.
I thought the takeoffs and landings were decided by wind direction and not where a runway is. The runways are built with prevailing winds in mind but is also why (sometimes) there is a runway on a diagonal to the others in case the wind direction changes enough.
For example:
Yeah, they’d have departing aircraft crossing the threshhold of the inboard runway in between landing planes. Seems like there’s less margin for error doing it that way. If the crossing aircraft is delayed for some reason, the controllers can’t just tell the next arriving aircraft to wait while they get things sorted out.
Thanks for indulging my digression.