Short synopsis being one airplane landing and one taking off on parallel runways. Then the landing plane goes around and they’re both airborne near one another laterally, vertically, and fore/aft along their parallel paths. Then ATC turns the go-around plane towards the takeoff plane. Oops.
A go-around catches everyone off-guard. And ATC has a standard post- go-around clearance for each runway. But before rattling off the standard litany you need to take a moment to think: “Is that canned clearance going to work with the other traffic of the moment?”
Actually, given the runway layout at BNA, I kinda doubt the clearance given was a canned one. Typically you turn outboard runways away and any middle runways go straight. At least initially.
Humans goof at a rate greater than zero; it’s a given. The rest of the systems worked to catch this goof. I don’t have access to good stats on the last couple years’ trajectory on the reate of ATC or airline pilot errors. But I’d sure like to see some.
‘Questions about safety at the compact airport have surfaced previously.’ Let me guess: ‘We built our homes and businesses right next to this airport. It isn’t safe! Close the airport!’
Yep. Just keep encroaching, then displacing thresholds to keep planes higher over the newly encroached houses, then encroach some more and soon your runway is 75 feet wide and 150 feet long.
Kinda sorta aviation related – the Toronto Blue Jays were stuck in Phoenix when their charter plane developed a problem. Rather than wait for another plane to fly down from Vancouver, the team and the various staff opted to pile into three charter buses to take them from Phoenix to Orange County, a six-hour drive that got them to their hotel at 12:30 AM.
I was curious about what the charter plane was. Turns out, the Jays use a charter subsidiary of Air Canada called Jetz that flies specially configured A319s and A320s with all-business class seating.
But here’s the best part. Gotta love the highly technical and aviation-savvy description of the problem with the Airbus as described by Jays manager John Schneider, apparently an aviation enthusiast:
“There was an issue with the joystick, which is pretty important — apparently, it’s used for takeoffs and landings,” Schneider said.
It’s interesting that this doesn’t happen more often to sports teams. All of MLB and many / most other pro sports travel by chartered plane, yet we seldom hear about teams getting stuck or arriving late. Having worked in the charter world for over ten years, it seems like it should happen more often, statistically.
When a charter plane is suddenly deemed un-airworthy, companies have a couple of choices. They can bring in another plane or they can “off-fleet” the job to another company, which they hate to do. For some VIP trips there will be another plane standing by, but I’m doubting that’s the case for every MLB charter.
Most major league sports teams have standing arrangements with either a major airline, or like Jetz, a specialized upscale charter division of an airline.
At one time back in the e.g. 1970s a few wealthy teams owned their own jet. Upkeep and unreliability when you have just one and no backup eventually put a stop to that.
My former+1 employer did a lot of that kind of work. Not with special jets, just an ordinary 727, 757, or occasionally 767 pulled from normal service for a day or two. I flew rather a lot of those. They were fun and different, but also involved a lot more sitting around strange airports waiting for the game to end and the team to get here.
And yeah, when stuff broke down or otherwise went wrong, it got bad for all concerned real quickly. In season, sports teams have very little slack time to waste in transportation SNAFUs. Baseball least of all.
Flying out of my home airport, YYZ, Air Canada will occasionally sub in a Jetz plane for a broken mainline plane. Alas, I’ve never been lucky enough to get one.
My former employer has a subfleet of specially configured A321s which are set up with about half the cabin being typical long-haul lie-flat widebody pod seating, and most of the rest are ordinary coach seats with an extra 5" of seat pitch between rows. Finally just a smidgen of conventional coach seating, but even that has an extra inch of seat pitch compared to the main A321 fleet. Sounds great; just like air travel should be!
So what’s the problem you say? The conventional A321 holds 190 passengers. The spacious version holds 102 passengers. So assuming a full flight (good bet) 47 percent of the people expecting to get on that flight will be left behind.
Now IIRC you personally are far enough up the food chain that you routinely travel first class and will certainly get on. The proles OTOH …
The Jetz planes are configured as 70 J seats, as long as it’s subbed in for a less than full 319, 220, or smaller it’s ok. But if you are #71 on the manifest, you probably have a wait for the next flight.
TIL that, before the C-5 Galaxy, the only serious attempt at a jet-powered US military cargo/transport aircraft was back in 1951: the XC-123A. Here’s its story:
Just after World War II, we still thought gliders might be a good way to get troops and equipment on the ground during an invasion, so Chase Aircraft built two XG-20 prototypes – the largest US glider ever (no, Gimli doesn’t count!)
They quickly realized gliders were NOT the future, so Chase slapped a couple piston engines on one of them. This became the Fairchild C-123 Provider, a complement to the C-130 during the Vietnam War.
On the other glider prototype, they attached two dual-engine jet pods (four jets total) – the same kind “burnin’” on the B-36!
All of these variants had that funny-looking flat-bottomed cross-section, familiar in Vietnam photos with C-123s. This shape was mostly to accomodate the tail loading ramp, for vehicles to drive right in and out – another innovation that started with the XG-20 glider.
The C-123 was never conceived as a jet. It was always a prop plane. As you noted, for a brief time there was interest in using jet engines on prop planes as takeoff assistance boosters. Until ICE-engined airplanes became fully obsolete. The turboprop is still the best powerplant choice for low-speed STOL airplanes.
During a hiking trip in southern Arizona we stopped for an afternoon at the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tuscon. It’s a pretty amazing collection of aircraft, mostly military but also lots of civilian or dual use planes. I particularly enjoyed the seaplanes and the WWII bombers, incluing a B-24 Liberator like my uncle was a navigator in during the war. They have 3 B-52s and a huge B-36 Peacemaker.
Also nearby (but no longer open for tours) is absolutely huge boneyard of the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group.
In a sense, the XET is a full-fledged turbine-powered helicopter that can be bought fully assembled for under $100K, or in kit form for $20K or so less.
But in another important sense, it’s really mostly an elaborate grown-up toy. It’s a single-seater, the maximum time in the air is less than an hour (less than 2 hours with the optional extra fuel tank) with a practical range in the standard config of about 80 miles. Doors are optional, otherwise you sit in a doorless open-air cockpit.
Still, a turbine-powered helicopter for that price is amazing, even though it’s only 95 HP. If I had money to burn and the appropriate land space, I’d be tempted! But, reading through the liability waiver you have to sign, emphasizing that its aircraft status is “experimental”, some of the caveats are pretty daunting. In pretty much just those words, it says basically “trying to fly this experimental aircraft may cause serious injury or death, and it doesn’t conform to the same standards as certified GA aircraft”.
But if I was a rich dog, I might still buy one, and consider hovering it a few feet off the ground for a while before I took it higher!
ETA: That article was from 7 years ago, and Composite-FX is still around, now claiming to have sold hundreds of their four different models.
