I’m working at the B of A building in downtown Phoenix today. Earlier in the week I was on the south side of the 21st floor which provides us with continuous entertainment from whistles in the train yard and planes approaching Sky Harbor airport from the West on a path not far south of downtown. Today I’m in a room on the northeast corner. Much to my suprise I see a Southwest airlines 373 north of the building heading east and making a steep turn to the right toward the airpoirt. After the turn the plane was at an angle to the north runway. At the last minute the plane made a steep left turn to line up and straitened out probably not more than 10-15 seconds from touchdown. I’m not sure if I could estimate distance and altitude but while it looked close to me I’m sure people in Bankone building got a really good show as that building is even closer to where the plane turned.
Weird. The normal approach is very long and straight from the West. The airport is setup with the parallel east-west runways on the north and south sides of the terminals which puts them far enough apart so planes can make parallel approaches and still have separation. WTF? I’m not sure anyone could give a factual answer so I didn’t put it in GQ. Did the pilot screw up? Were the controllers bored and having a little fun? I didn’t have my binoculars in my bag but I couldn’t see any SWAT or fire trucks speeding up to the plane after it turned off the runway.
Here is the Google map of where I’m located. The hybrid map actually shows Wahsington street intersecting the building in the center of the map. If you zoom out youll see the airport to the east and be able to tell what convoluted path it had to take.
I wonder what the airspace looks like there? Presumably flight at low levels directly over Phoenix is restricted, so maybe he came from the NW and got a ‘join base’ call late?
The plane coming in was at a spot that the controllers could fit it into an opening in the inbound traffic stream. Turns 10-15 seconds out from touchdown aren’t all that uncommon anyway, and what looks like an overly agressive turn from the ground doesn’t feel all that bad from inside the aircraft. If a turn is properly coordinated, the passengers only feel a downward force (normal to the “floor” of the cabin), and commercial planes can bank rather agressively without uninformed passengers knowing just how tight the turn is/was.
If you watch ATC tracks (I can’t find the site right now), you often see odd “arrival angles” and the plane then turns into the approach path.
-Butler (an aviation addict, though I’m not a pilot myself)
I have a miniscule amount of stick time so I know about coordinated turns and how it feels but that turn was much lower to the ground than I can recall seeing. I know there was no danger but the folks looking out the left side windows probably got the bejeebers scared out of them.
Traffic doesn’t seem to be the issue as I didn’t recall seeing any heavy traffic just before or any just after. It it was an emergency I would have figured they’d turn to final well ahead of time for the straightest approach. If they came in from an odd angle why would there be the incredibly tight right turn when I first saw the plane. I’m certain someone scewed up.
hmm, a big four engine plane on the ramp at sky harbor. It’s a little too far to tell if it’s a 747, triple 7 or an Airbus but it dwarfs the typical 737/757/A320/MD80 size planes you see at Sky Harbor. Just sitting on the ramp not going anywhere but not parked at the gate. He’s either very smart or very dumb…
Oh criminy, I just see this weird stuff with the plane on approach then just now I open up MSNBC.com to see the headline “Agony Anew” and a photo of a smoking crater in lower Manhattan. It was an article about the released audio tapes the FDNY released today but I think I dislocated my heart before I realized that.
Sky Harbor is odd in that it is totally surrounded by developed land instead of being on the outskirts of a city as many major airports are. The normal approach from the West is a bit more industrial than residental but there is no possible approach that is unpopulated. If it had been an approach from the northwest with the sharp final turn that might have made a little more sense even though it was over the many large buildings in downtown Phoenix but the plane was already in a steep turn when I first saw it.
The guy turned 10 or 15 seconds before landing? That’s nothing! Check out this landing at Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong, famous among pilots for being the toughest landing in the world!
It’s closed now, but this was the airport where the plane would fly in between the apt buildings and make a make a harsh turn at a few hundred feet before flying into mountain in order to land.
Funny but I almost included “it was nothing like a landing at Kai Tak but…” in my OP. Phoenix is an extremely flat valley. The valley is so flat we have severe problems with flooding when it rains and we get maybe fifteen inches in an entire year. There is no reason for any manuvering on normal approaches. The only terrain remomtely near the airport is a small mountain in Tempe barely taller than the new control tower. The final turn was at best a few hundred feet AGL. I’m in the 21st floor of a building at the same approximate elevation as the airport. The floors appear to be maybe twelve feet each so I might be as high as 250 feet. From my POV the plane was well below the horizon when he made his final turn.
That four engine plane is still on the ramp. He’s watching me.
Padeye, I work right up the road from you on Central. and I think I know the day you are talking about…was it Monday or Tuesday when we had that huge storm in central Phoenix? About 3 or 4 p.m. If so I know they grounded a bunch of planes waiting for the storm to pass, and kept several others in the air circling. I saw a couple planes make some funky landings before the tower called the cessation of arrivals and departures. I wonder if that was the same day…?
The event I described was this morning so weather is an absolute non-factor. I just glanced up and thought "holy fleurking schnitt! that is not supposed to be there. "
I wasn’t watching planes that day but on the second this month my wife and I got caught in the thunderstorm that night. We at at the Central and Camelback Applebees and it started to rain when we got out food. By the time we left there was at least ten inches of running water in the parking lot. The terrain is so flat there is no way to drain the water away fast enough. A few years ago I was in an apartment complex that flooded when the drains got overwhelmed. Every single downstairs apartment had some water damage and a fellow doper had standing water all the way to the back room.
Say, this is my last day downtown and I’m off to Florida next week but let’s try to do lunch next time I’m working in town.
Thank goodness I work on the other side of the building I work in lest I see something like that. I’ve never seen flights go near downtown Phoenix or the Central corridor. That does strike me as an odd approach. I’m sure the folks in the Hyatt got a really interesting view!
