An Air Force passenger jet carrying Michelle Obama to Andrews Air Force Base early Monday evening had to abort its landing and circle the field because it was following too closely on the tail of a giant military cargo plane arriving ahead of it, the Federal Aviation Administration said on Tuesday.The FAA has to be run by morons, clowns and cowards if they regard this as anything other than routine.
Shit like this happens all the time. A given airplane may take longer to clear the runway than the controller anticipated. The following airplane may be a few knots faster or might have shaved the corner of a turn. S-turns and going around are routine maneuvers. But no, some goddamn pressmonkey who knows jack shit about flying an airplane freaked out and now this is some big-ass story that the FAA is going into full-blown "cover our asses" mode, rather than push back and tell the truth that go-arounds are not unusual (which at least the NY Times acknowledged, but MSNBC didn't).
Back before 9-11, when I had to pick someone up at an airport, I would take a portable aircraft radio with me. I'd listen in to approach and the tower; when the flight I was waiting for was cleared to land, I'd mosey out of the coffee shop, through security and go meet my party.
So one day, I was listening to the tower at Cleveland and a Continental 737 was told to go around. It did, it was sequenced back into the approach stream and, once more, it had to go around. The pilot said: "CO XXX, ya gotta be kidding me, going around."
Going around is not an emergency. It is not a safety concern. This is a motherfucking non-story.
The reporter who first wrote the story and the editor who approved it (if any) should be taken to an airport, where pilots should be permitted to throw cups of coffee and Jepp books at them. FAA management should be flogged with microphone cables.
I don't want to read the story, but I imagine it might have a line about "the ground controller" telling them to "abort" the approach.
ReplyDeleteThanks for clearing that up, sweetie.
ReplyDeleteI wondered WTF when I read it myself as I couldn't figure out how close it had to have been not to have just been SOP.
S
Slow news day, perhaps?
ReplyDeleteWithout FLOTUS it is a non story, with FLOTUS it is ZOMG!! Celebrity makes all the difference for our news.
ReplyDeleteThe worst part was the conflation of this non-story with ATC's sleepy controller problem.
ReplyDeleteI have had it with these motherfucking non-stories on these motherfucking planes!
( The latest suspension: Cleveland center controller broadcast a few minutes of a Samuel L Jackson movie with a stuck mike. )
John Mica of the Confederate Party has had a major hard on for NATCA, the controller's union, for years. I have thought since all this began that he asked someone to dig up some dirt on NATCA, because as you've said, this shit has been going on for years. Well whaddayaknow?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/22/us-usa-air-controllers-idUSTRE73L3LZ20110422