Saturday, October 20, 2007

Approach Paths- Too Low?

After the recent collision of a dual engine plane with an apartment complex inBritish Columbia some residents are asking if the approach and departure paths are too low. My answer to them is are you fucking kidding me?

Many people don't understand what actually goes on in the aviation world, but let me paint you a picture. Airports are generally built far away from cities because of noise restrictions put into effect by the FAA. However, as soon as the airport is built there are people that have to work there so houses start popping up. Then businesses decide they want to be able to do their own flights out of these airports so office buildings show up. Then you get grocery stores start popping up and fast food restaurants and car rental places and just about everything you can think of. So you end up having an airport surrounded by a city.

And then you get people saying "There's a couple of times there's a plane flying right above our buildings," Well the airport didn't find a 50 acre spot of land in the middle of a city and say hey let's build here so we can get flights in the air and have them just barely clear that building there. Hell O'Hare used to have nothing around it.

1 comment:

skifan88 said...

This post is very interesting after an NTSB officer came and spoke to Purdue students who are majoring in Aviation Technology. He talked about how a low approach path killed a young girl who started the solo portion of her flight training. On her descent into the airport she crashed into a semi truck because her approach was very low over the highway. Your post stresses the importance of insuring not to get too low when attempting to land.