On the morning of Jan. 26, as two Alaska Airlines flights from Seattle to Hawaii lifted off six minutes apart, the pilots each felt a slight bump and the flight attendants at the back of the cabin heard a scraping noise.
As the noses of both Boeing 737s lifted skyward on takeoff, their tails had scraped the runway.
Both planes circled back immediately and landed again at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Tail strikes happen occasionally in aviation, but two in quick succession was not normal.
Bret Peyton, Alaska’s on-duty director of operations, immediately ordered no more planes were to take off across the airline’s network. All Alaska flights not already airborne were stopped nationwide.
...
Alaska’s flight operations staff quickly realized that a software bug was sending bad takeoff weight data to its crews. They immediately figured out a workaround and normal flying resumed.
That's some pretty good heads-up thinking by the folks at flight operations.
I imagine that, back in the day, there were graphs that spat out the V-speeds based on weights and the (what was then called) throttles were pushed all the way up for every takeoff. Reduced-power is also a noise issue, but to this old former-piston driver, I'd think the safest thing to do is jam those suckers up to the stops. I sure as shit would think that any jet flying out of Midway does just that.
Reminds me of riding the jump seat out of John Wayne, it was bloody terrifying to see the pilots sigh and reduce power, with the nose will up, to comply with the noise restrictions. One pilot told me that there was a better than 50/50 shot that if someone lost an engine in the climb, fully loaded and after the reduction, they would stall it,
ReplyDeleteMKE (Milwaukee WI) has a nice viewing area at the Approach end of 19R. There is even a feed that you can listen to on your car radio. (88.5FM) You can listen to The tower on the left speaker and Ground on the right. More than once I've heard flights announce that they need a few minutes at the end to get their numbers figured. One lined up, got its takeoff clearance and said they needed to park for a few more minutes to "get the "computer straightened out" Could have been anything guess but it seems to happen more than one would think.
ReplyDeleteOf course it's the Boeing "one sensor is good enough for us" Company.
ReplyDeleteI mean, what could possibly go wrong?
A little too dramatic about John Wayne. Used to work there and flew out many times. Pilots loved to complain about this. I suppose your jumps seat ride was pre 9/11.
ReplyDeleteIf you think Midway was fun try doing Meigs
ReplyDeleteMerrill C. Meigs Field Airport (pronounced /mɛgz/, formerly ICAO: KCGX, FAA LID: CGX) was a single-runway airport in Chicago that was in operation from December 1948 until March 2003 on Northerly Island, an artificial peninsula on Lake Michigan. The airport sat adjacent to downtown Chicago, the second-largest business district in North America. Meigs Field airport was opened on December 10, 1948, and, by 1955, had become the busiest single-strip airport in the United States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meigs_Field
Multiple times in and out before 2001, and it was bloody dramatic. It’s just stupid to allow a procedure that dangerous simply because some locals complain.
ReplyDeleteJon
ReplyDeleteMiegs didn't take jets in and out of 5500 foot runways and you could always turn out over the lake to level off if you needed to. . It was a simple GA airport.
Not the same issue at all as compared to Midway with lots of obstacles and short runways in a heavily loaded jet trying to climb at 60% power for noise reduction. .
My last home base had a 4,200' runway and jets operated out of there. Maybe not really big ones, but they did.
ReplyDeleteCP88
ReplyDeleteIt’s not dangerous, been doing it for decades. Just seems so to you center pukes. Death defying, ultra cool terminal controllers think nothing of it! (grin)