surreal1221

Two great questions.

We know the unwritten rule in Atlanta. Interested in the 250kt restriction heading south as well out of O'Hare.

Ajax

This is true for us here at NY as well. The missed approaches are all usually inefficient, and designed for 1 aircraft at a time. The criteria used by the flight checks to come up, and design a missed approach procedure does not account for multiple aircraft, or other potential conflicts with other airports or procedures.

Great Cornholio

+1 on this. A hold provides me with much more info than the zig zag tour. At least with a hold I have a "worst case" number to deal with. With the zig zag tour I have no info and usually the freq is too busy with other zig zags to be able to ask how long the delay will be in minutes. With the low fuel planning that has gained popularity in the past few years zig zags have a tendency to get uncomfortable quick.

I do fly to EWR a lot and just thought of this question. Lets say its a zig zag tour of the great state of jersey day. I declare min fuel. Is it the general mindset (if you can speak for others) of the EWR TRACON that a min fuel guy will get less zig zags or cut a spot or 2 in line or will the min fuel guy just not get any extra zig zags? This is the semi bad thing about Min Fuel since it leaves some grey room. Whats undue delay to you and undue delay to me may be two completely different things at that point in time.

Ajax

The zig zags are a necessary evil because gate holds, ground delays, and holding patterns are not an exact science and you will never ever get an exact 3 mile final spacing out of either of those. We need to be able to zig zag to adjust spacing to bare minimum separation in order to maximize airport/runway capacity, which in turn actually saves all of you time delays. unfortunately you can't save both time AND fuel. If we were to only use those tools for spacing then, you would see an increase in ground delay times, and unused wasted space on the finals, but hey...you'd be saving fuel.

Not possible to have the current number of scheduled arrivals and avoid zig zags no matter what you do. In the end, we have a runway that only 1 of you can occupy at the same time.

If you declare min fuel we may cut you ahead of the line depending on how critical your fuel situation is, how much traffic we have, and other factors such as weather. We tend to treat minimun fuel situations in bad weather as fuel emergencies, and cut you right to the airport ahead of everyone because of the potential go around scenario. Most of us old timers here still have the Avianca incident in our memories.

If you're not that critical, and we're really busy, we probably would cut you ahead a spot or 2 when feasible without changing things too much, to avoid having to hold behind you. We would make sure that you don't have to hold anymore, and we notify the tower so that they avoid having to send you around.

Captain Tony

FWIW, it's really not about saving fuel, it's about PLANNING fuel, ie, deciding when I have to divert (or at least declare min).

jmcmanna

I don't know the for-sure answer, but I can make an educated guess.

ORD has its own fixes for traffic going east -- EBAKE, DUFEE, MOBLE, while MDW's go over LEWKE. Westbound ORD departures also go in their own tracks over IOW, PLL, MZV, and BDF (usually a 270 heading). MDW's go on their own track south of the ORD departure tracks.

In both of these cases, everyone is pretty much separated by the tower, and there aren't really many conflicts -- so go fast.

On the other hand, ORD and MDW share all 5 southbound fixes (7 if you count EON and RBS). In the TRACON, the ORD departures climb to 15,000 before going to Chicago Center, and MDW departures climb to 12,000, remaining underneath the ORD departures. I am going to guess that the 250 kt restriction (which applies to MDW departures as well as ORD departures) is meant to make it easier for ZAU to blend all of the departures together -- they can tell some to go faster sooner to help build their spacing into what they need.

I've seen ORD have 3 departures over EARND in a row, while MDW has 2 over EARND at the same time, so the center ends up with 5 airplanes at the same fix, all within 12 or 14 miles -- so having the option to speed 1 up at a time is probably a better than having to slow guys climbing out to make the space (especially since zig-zagging isn't an option because of DENNT departures to the west and BEARZ/LOOTH arrivals to the east).

TonyWilliams

I can't believe a professional pilot would even ask this question. But, then I was completely surprised that the Delta crew who landed on the ATL taxiway actually knew they weren't on the runway and landed anyway.

Go around ! Landing has the potential for a HUGE disaster.

TonyWilliams

I can think of many missed approached that put you in conflict with arrival traffic. They were designed like only one airplane was in the air.

It would be nice if ATC were to give a heads up on what to expect for a missed, so that the flight crew can brief it. Not sure how to do that, however.

The easy answer is to redesign ALL the major airport missed approaches to the real world.

Captain Tony

Oh Tony, come on! Don't come with the unprofessional crap! It happens.

I have landed a few times without talking to tower in ATL. Almost every time it was workload related, both on my part, and the controllers part. Often, there is so much radio congestion there, Approach forgets to hand you off, and you forget to do it yourself at the marker (or nobody can get a word in edgewise... too many "windchecks" .) Other times it's a PRM and you're fat, dumb and happy since you're usually cleared to land 18 miles out there, except this time you weren't. Also there's times where they rush you due to spacing, say 200 to the marker on an ILS, and it gets real busy over the marker configuring and reading checklists, you forget to switch.

ATL Tower recognizes that this happens here, and for years, they have briefed pilots at the meet & greets that "in ATL the green light is ALWAYS on". They make it clear that if this happens, they want us to land, not go around, which actually may cause a conflict with a departure if they aren't expecting it and you don't announce it (being NORDO) since we have 5 parallel runways. If you land without clearance, you just exit the runway and contact ground. It's really not that big of a deal at a major airport.

Consider this:

ATL is departing a turboprop on 26L on a VFR day. They get a 350 heading ASAP to clear the path for an RNAV jet behind them (very typical). Arrivals are landing 26R. While departures are staggered with arrivals to provide a buffer, on a clear day, with good spacing, TOWER EXPECTS YOU TO LAND. The t-prop turns out over 26R at 400 feet (typical), and you go around at 500' because you just realized you didn't contact tower. You punch out, and the procedure is straight out to 1500, the RT to 360 to the hold. You are now right on top of the turboprop. Loss of separation occurs. Now you are surely violated if not dead.

I'll take my chances with landing on a runway that is 99.9% sure to be clear, even without landing clearance.

intrepidcv11

How much do you guys loath RJ's that can't climb 4 sh!t? I love doing 250 knots across Upstate NY w/5 hrs to go because a CRJ over COATE is maxed out on a 61 degree day...