TonyWilliams

I'm sure somebody will correct me, but the SkW "official" turns were 28 minutes for 50 seater, 31 min for 70 seats, and 33 min for 76 seats.

TonyWilliams

My company operates both the CRJ-900, and B737 series -300, -700, -700NG, -800NG.

All the Boeings have various engine settings of (I think) 22k, 24k, 26k. The CRJ-900 just has the one 14k setting fixed. On paper, the CRJ will outrun the Boeings quoted, but I think on a seat mile basis, they beat the CRJ on fuel burn.

Not sure why you're cruising at such a fast speed. I think the official Bombardier number is M.77 for LRC, which is about what is typical for Boeing. Not much difference. Both planes can go M.82, I think. Yes, the CRJ can go a bit faster, to M.85, but there are speed hits for RVSM that equal Boeing.

In climb, there may be a nod toward the 737 (not in a -300, for sure). Edit: Almost forgot to say, both the CRJ series and the B737-NG series are certified to FL410. No difference there. Much like the early CRJ's (100-200), the early B737's, can't do FL410 (ok, somebody will get all excited and let us know how the early CRJ's are "certified" to FL410... thanks in advance).

Hey, the 737 was designed in the early 1960's, and patched up for almost 5 decades. The CRJ is a relative new comer, so it should do many things better.

For all the haters out there, I'm not comparing a CRJ-100 / -200 to anything. That plane is a PIG !

Captain Tony

I think those numbers refer to outstations, and I'm at ASA, so I don't even know if they mean anything to us.

Captain Tony

That's totally asinine. With the "speed" ATL ops moves NOTHING should be scheduled less than 1:00 on the ground!

johnso29

I thought so too!

Ajax

I see a lot of good questions. I'm at work (posting from the union office pc while on a short break). I'll get to them when I get home tonite.

jmcmanna

If you are 500' above or below a VFR King Air, you *are* separated - we only need 500' between a VFR and IFR, even in class B (heavies and 757s are the exception). If a controller issues that traffic, you can ask for a vector around or away from him and the controller is supposed to make an effort to do that. You're right, in class E, we don't *have* to even do that, but I don't know any controllers who would let you run right at another target, same altitude, and not try to get you away from it.

It sounds like TCAS and the FAA's minimums don't agree. My personal feeling is that if I called the traffic, and they're both level at least 500' apart, I do nothing unless a pilot asks for a turn away from them. The reason is that early in my career, I was asked by a pilot why I was turning his airplane when the other guy was level 500' above him.

So, if someone wants a turn away, I will give it to them. If they say nothing, I let them run because it's safe and legal for me to do so.

Emb170man

Gotcha, makesa lot of sense. I think the problem is that my TCAS only sees aircraft, it does not distinguish between IFR and VFR. Therefore if the seperation is below 1,000ft alarms start ringing, and unfortunatly, I have to comply (even if I see that he is level at 16,500 on the screen).

Ajax

1-Arrival rates are determined by several factors, with the main one being the weather. Strong winds will lower arrival rates because of extra compression on final means we need extra spacing buffer on final to account for that. Low ceilings means visual separation may not be possible, and we running bare minimum IFR separation without the ability to use visual to prevent a compression error is too risky. Other reasons are runway configurations, runway closures on secondary (overflow) runways, departure demand, special activities (VIP movement, law enforcement operations in progress, etc). I've even seen controller staffing (or lack of) be a factor for a lower rate, although the FAA will go to extremes to avoid citing that as a reason (even if its true).

2-Even if technically the required minimun IFR separation is the same, once the ceilings/visibility drops, and we (and the tower) lose the ability to use visual separation, we need a bigger buffer on final to avoid compression "deals".

3-Many controllers are reluctant to issue a visual unless you're already straight in on final behind the traffic at a compatible distance and speed.When a controller issues a "follow that traffic, cleared visual approach rwy 22L" clearance, he is passing to you the burden of separation between your aircraft, and the one you're following, but is giving you control to manouver the aircraft as you see fit to maintain separation, and make an approach to the runway behind that traffic. The problem with this is that not every pilot will react exactly the same way, and while some will stay nice and tight behind the traffic, others give themselves and extra buffer, and may delay a turn from base to final, or make a very wide turn. If there is not much going on it doesn't matter much, but if its very busy, that may impact the traffic I have behind you.

Also, anyone and their uncle can run a visual approach final, as the need for good timing, precision vectors and speed control is lessened, since we're passing that to you. It is considered "harder" or more "skilled" to run a nice tight, even spaced IFR final, and thus this is how we run the final when we're training new controllers. Not saying we would never run visuals, because we do, but running visual approaches all the time is a crutch, and when the proverbial sh*t hits the fan, and the wx goes down, you better be able to handle it. To give you a comparison you can relate...would you train your pilots to always depend on autopilot, and autolandings?

4- Although I don't know the exact number, a great % of JFK traffic is heavy jets/b757's that require wake turbulence separation. EWR and LGA have less heavy jet traffic so its not unusual to see our finals tighter than JFK's. Having said that I'm going to repost something here that I posted on another forum while I was trying to answer a similar question, but using CLT instead of JFK.

The original question was " why does CLT run 5 mile spacing on final to landing only runways. While LGA, ORD, etc run 3 miles."

My reply was:

"I don't know the CLT operation, so I wont coment on their specifics, but I think I know where he's going with that questioning, and I'll try to answer with what happens here @ N90, and in particular my area (EWR)

Not all controllers are created equal, just like not all pilots are created equal. Some controllers are just....good for lack of any fancy words, and can run a very tight final. Others may not be that sharp, and run extra spacing for "safety". There are other factors to add to those 2 categories. There are controllers that tend to be a bit more aggressive, and there are some that, even if they have the "skills" to run a very tight final, they prefer to be conservative, and build in a little extra spacing buffer.

It all comes down to local culture. In my area, the "aggressive" controller tends to be more the norm than the exception (but we do have exceptions), and thus our finals tend to be pretty tight most of the time. It is engrained in the sector culture to run traffic this way and trainees are trained in this matter, supervisors encourage it, etc. In other places, the predominant type is the other, and thus people are trained to run bigger buffers.

I've visited several other facilities, and also noticed what he's talking about. I've seen other places run 5 mile final on everything, and do like 6 or 7 behind heavy's."

5-Windshear reduces the arrival rates because the potential for go arounds is higher. Every go around becomes .....an extra arrival.

6-The EWR downwind is super wide because departures out of EWR, TEB, MMU, and CDW need a climbout corridor to be able to get on top of the arrivals. The boundary line goes from MMU to CDW to TEB, so that is why you normally get vectored to stay on the outside, and make the wide turn. In addition, when its busy, the downwind can, and often extend all the way to SAX and is not uncommon to turn base over 4N1 (Greenwood lake airport).


As for the other question regarding departures staying @ 17000 for long distances. The Liberty sector (the area that takes all the departures from all the airports and gets traffic over all the different fixes in trail for ZNY) only "owns" up to 17000. Above them is ZNY, and they have inbound JFK arrivals descending to FL 190, so until Liberty hands you off to the center, and they have you cleared of any inbounds, you're going to be stuck below them. Doesn't happen all the time, but some airports (like HPN) have greater distances to fly, and will be leveled at 17000 for longer. Just the nature of the airspace.

Starscream

Wow! Thoroughly interesting read! Thanks for taking the time to answer those questions! I do appreciate it. Again, your side of the operation has always fascinated me, especially since my Tracon visit.

Yeah, compression, I keep hearing that word. J.K. gave me a bit of an explanation on this, but I'm still not sure understand what it is and what causes it. Is it essentially caused just by strong winds making aircraft on downwind fly super fast over the ground while aircraft on final go super slow? Groundspeed difference? Is that it? Are slow groundspeeds on the approach the culprit then? And are AARs spit out by a computer at flow control, or is there any human input? Can an individual facility (i.e. ZDC, N90, LGA ATCT, etc), influence these numbers?

Is this even an issue when winds aren't doing anything out of the ordinary? JFK doesn't seem to have too many problems with delays caused by ceilings, but LGA seems to go into delays even with, say a 2,000ft CIG. I could never figure out why. And when you say "use visual separation" does that refer to the tower controller visually monitoring arrivals?

Regarding your insight on visual approaches, I totally understand. You're working with some of the tightest airspace in the world, and can ill-afford having someone grossly overshoot final, or have them put themselves 8 miles behind the guy they're following before turning base. Just like how some controllers are sharper than others, the same can be said for pilots. Likewise, we tend to practice IFR procedure in VFR wx when approaching a training event, though without mucking up the operation (like slowing to approach speed 15 miles out!).

Well, yeah, what I was getting at was why, going into JFK, we sometimes get slowed, and vectored out, and then when on the final and switched over to tower they say, "you're 7 miles behind an RJ, cleared to land." I understand if we have that kind of spacing behind a 777, but another RJ?? And not even during a staggered approach with another close parallel. Not saying that sort of thing happens often, but it never happens at LGA. If you're following another RJ at LGA, you're going to be 3 miles behind him as he's touching down. I guess this might be an instance where a controller might be over-cautious at times!

Or a diversion! But yup, that woulda been my guess. Also why super low IFR weather near mins would understandably cause a low AAR -- go-around likelihood increases. What I wasn't following was why a 1,000-1,500ft ceiling would cause a drop in AAR. I just figured that as long as you had 3sm spacing at the threshold (or whatever the applicable min spacing is given the aircraft categories), everything was good, regardless of the reported ceiling/visibility.

Makes perfect sense. When landing 22L, can you run simultaneous visual approaches with 22R if departure demand allows? I know you can do it sparingly for 4L/4R, but don't recall it ever being done for the 22's. Also, it seems like no matter how far north the 22L downwind goes, it seems the base follows a very fine track, almost like a 150ish heading towards TEB. I'm presuming you can't have a long (20NM) final to 22L and that the final has to start over TEB? I know another airport is right there, I woulda just thought that you could have the airspace north of TEB as well, as a EWR arrival would be well above any TEB traffic.

Another silly question: I understand LGA ILS13 all but shuts down TEB, but what kind of impact (if any) does that operation (along with JFK ILS13L) have on EWR?

Thanks again so much for the info (sorry for all the whacky questions)!