Pilot Refuses to Land

this is a really scary Trend that I've noticed that started in the last couple years and I never noticed it before something very similar to this happened to me just a few weeks ago check out this audio Tower Delta 45 heavy is that uh Z Delta 45 heavy Kennedy Tower you're following a citation there'll be a heavy boing Triple 7 departure between you and that traffic caution wake turbulence wind 280 at 17 Gus 21 Runway 31 left cleared the land 31 left clear land up 4 5 Delta 45 heavy reduced to Final Approach Speed final 4 Air India one Z2 heavy Kennedy Tower Runway 31 left line up and weight traffic's on a 5 mile final Runway 31 left line up and weight Air India one Z2 heavy I'm guessing with all of that you should know where I'm going to go with this so we have a Delta 767 here on a 5 mile final for Runway 31 left and at the end of all of that they got told to slow down to the Final Approach speed Delta heavy reduced the Final Approach speed what that means is that when we're coming in on an approach we might be going in this case let's say 200 knots and you're coming at 200 knots but your landing speed is going to be 150 knots just making up numbers here I don't fly the 767 but those might be the rough numbers that you're working with when air traffic control says slow to your Final Approach speed or slow down to your slowest practical or some version of that what they're trying to do is create some separation between you and the plane in front of you and so you might be at 200 knots and then you know okay hey we need to really slow this up so then you'll slow down and let's say in this particular case again I don't know but his ref speed for landing was going to be 150 knots they'll slow it down to 150 knots so that way they can give the amount of space or the most amount of space possible for air traffic control what's happening is a controller here is actually trying to get the space in order to allow this Triple 7 to take off before this Delta 767 comes into land the problem is is that there are some variables when you're dealing with Landing traffic and departing traffic and trying to squeeze those things in you saw that video I talked about with FedEx and uh Southwest and that happened in Austin what you have is when you have Landing traffic coming in behind each other everybody knows hey you need to get off the Runway pretty quickly or air traffic control can tell you hey expedite Off The Runway you have somebody on a Four Mile final and Pilots will try to help each other out by getting off the Runway quickly however when you have a landing traffic that's Landing you can't obviously line up the other guy to take off until the other plane is landed so you have a little bit more juggling that you have to do Watch What Happens Next jet share 869 you have uh Mike Charlie jet share 869 right Mike Charlie no delay off please and then uh taxi November and left Quebec now when the controllers asking that do you have Mike Charlie he's trying to get that pilot to get off the Runway as soon as possible he's hoping that they were going to get off sooner but he's encouraging them in a way by subtly hinting Get Off The Runway by do you have Mike Charlie that's the way that controllers will tend to do that now all of this is happening here in JFK which is a very dense and complicated airspace and before we get more into this video I just want to tell you that I have the utmost respect for these controllers because JFK newk LaGuardia that airspace is got a lot of traffic coming into it and they are honestly some of the best controllers that I've dealt with anywhere in the world so this is in no means to bash all of these controllers and I've dealt with a lot of controllers all over the world they are very fast and very efficient but in this case it doesn't really work out well in my opinion so the plane that controller wants to get off the runways a citation which is a small Business Jet and he's asking him to exit the runway here at Mike Charlie now this is a pretty long Runway but it's important to know that 31 left has a displaced threshold which means this area is not allowed for Pilots to land on it and when I pulled it up on my chart I can see here that to get off the Runway at Mike Charlie is actually only 5,439 ft which is a very reasonable distance for a plane to land in that's not like he's rolling it out all the way to the end and when you're flying in corporate cuz I used to do that a lot of times you want to make that landing and that roll out as smooth as possible if you're flying other things let's say Freight you don't really care how aggressive the break is if it's more efficient or or better you might have a higher break setting but when you're flying corporate and you have people that paid a lot of money you'll usually want to roll it out but 55500 feet that's not an excessive roll out that's plenty of time for a jet of this size to get off the Runway quickly 5,000 for me would would be pretty tight but for them that's that's a reasonable amount of time but what you have to keep in mind is all this is happening while Delta is barreling in on them and they're on a fem final now when I hear five miles I think roughly 2 minutes because they're going to be doing roughly 3 miles a minute at 180 knots so they're going to be there in about 2 minutes so in order for this to all work out this Air India plane has to get off the Runway and be safely away from the runway before these Delta Pilots come in and land they can't be one lifting off and one touching down because something could go wrong and most Pilots aren't going to feel comfortable getting themselves pinned into that corner because the plane that's Landing is going to have a lot more speed and momentum than the one that's just getting off the ground in some cases you don't want to be a pilot in this situation where you're roughly 50 ft from the ground and all of a sudden you see the plane in front of you have a engine explode and now there's Parts all over the runway and it's not going to be a safe place for you to land now you have to do a go round they're in the air maybe they're on fire because what's going to happen is when you do a go round your nose is going to go up and you're going to have a hard time seeing in front of you so now you have your nose going up you're very close to another plane that's going up in the air it's just going to be an uncomfortable situations so you you don't want to be that close and at the end of the day you have to go with what you're comfortable with that's the number one rule if you're feeling in your gut this doesn't feel right or hey I I don't feel like this is going to be safe then you as a pilot have to say hey no this is no good we we got to get out of here so Watch What Happens bar India one Z2 heavy win 270 at 17 Runway 31 left clear for takeoff traffic two and a half mile final left check J 869 left on the back monitor ground Point ner you want Delta 45 to go around Delta 45 heavy you said you're going around hey affirmative Delta 45 heavy Roger go around turn left heading 220 and climb and maintain 2000 turn left heading 220 climb maintain 2,000 to 458 American 45 heavy you have a reason for the Miss approach out the 45 heavy area there was no way that was going to work with in front of us there first I want to talk about the difference of this situ ation and the one I talked about earlier that I did the video on with FedEx and Southwest that happened in Austin that Austin video it sounded like to me that Southwest got on the runway and they just took forever to get on the roll I've talked about in the past when you hear people start talking at a faster rate usually they're moving at a faster rate sometimes that can be stress related sometimes it could be hey they're trying to move quickly they know that Delta's right behind them ARA India knows that Delta is coming up to land and they want to get out of the way for them that just a courtesy that all Pilots are they're trying to be efficient with what they're doing they want the efficiency from Air Traffic Control and so that guy's talking quickly I think because he's trying to move quickly to get everything done and get off the Runway that's what I hear as I'm listening to the audio off now here's the problem this Triple 7 is going to India that's a long flight and so a Triple 7 that's full of jet fuel like that is going to need a lot of Runway let's say a mile and a half half a Runway and they're at a dead stop and then you have a plane behind them that is moving it let's say 3 mil a minute or maybe they've slowed down so it's 2 and a half miles a minute they are going to be there very quickly and that Air India plane has to go from a dead stop because they can't get clear for takeoff until that citation gets off the Runway so they're going to need a mile and a half roughly of Runway and then this other plane that's coming in Delta is going to be there in roughly a minute that is a very tight thing to do and this is all happening in the daytime so what that allows is for the pilots that are in in the Delta Pilots they can see the plane that's down there and they can see where they're at in the relation to their takeoff most Pilots are going to know when they're coming in like hey he's at the very beginning of the runway or he's at the very end of the runway he's at the middle of the runway wherever it's at and they know kind of where that would put them as far as for their stage of takeoff if they're towards the middle of the runway and you're still 100 200 ft back you know they're going to be Off The Runway before you get down there but if they're at the middle of the runway and you're at 50 ft you're thinking oh this is going to be very tight and that can be a problem so that's why this Delta crew decided it was too tight and it was time to do this go round Del the 45 heav area there's no way that was going to work with their front us there now my story was a little different that happened a few weeks ago mine was at night and I'll get to that in a minute but these Delta Pilots making the decision to do the go run I'm sure made a lot of the passengers nervous because they maybe have never experienced a go run before for but this this pilot uh that's flying for Delta sounds very cool calm collected saying hey that wasn't going to work for us so we decided to do a go around so if the passengers could hear how calm he was they would probably relax a little bit assuming that they didn't know there was another plane on the runway but they would relax a little bit because he's just making what he thinks is the smartest safest decision which is 100% the right decision here if he doesn't feel that it's safe there's no reason to try to force it there's nothing to prove unless he's running out of gas he's on fire there's no reason to get on the ground right away so he made the decision to do that go around now listen to the response from Air Traffic Control to that Delta 45 heavy I do this every day sir it would have worked it would have been tight but it would have worked you can contact New York on 127 28.12 2812 and that's 4 we needed to go around now giving credit where credit is due that pilot isn't being upset he's not being rude he's being being a professional which is what you're supposed to be if you're an airline pilot he's not saying he's not arguing and doing all that other stuff that you see little kids do when they get on the radio he's just saying hey that was too tight I wasn't comfortable with it and it's my plane it's my safety and I chose to do a go round the controller saying well it would have been tight but it would have worked his opinion I'm sorry doesn't matter because the pilots have to feel comfortable that they can safely get in there and land the aircraft and because that controller saying oh it would have worked because I can see it would have worked it being really really tight and him feeling comfortable with it in this case doesn't matter because the pilot has to see this is going to work for me and my airplane and my safety and my crew and you have to be able to justify in a court of law if something does go wrong if a India does blow the engine and aborts or takeoff or whatever and now you're committed or who knows all the parameters but if something happens and somebody dies or somebody gets hurt those pilots in the court of law have to go and defend what they decided to do so the controller clearing you to land doesn't mean that you have to do that and he made the decision I'm not comfortable with this let's bug out and do this again now what I think happened is the controller thought the citation would probably be moving quicker and get off the Runway quicker he would have allowed Air India to get onto the runway quicker and out of the way but for whatever reason that didn't happen and he could have slowed down Delta a lot earlier in the communication but he decided to give all these other instructions before telling Delta to slow down Delta 45 heavy Kennedy Tower you're following a citation there'll be a heavy FL Triple 7 departure between you and that traffic caution wake turbulence wind 280 at 17 Gus 21 Runway 31 left cleared the land now if this had been a Regional Jet let's say a crj700 like I used to fly it it would have been a totally different scenario as soon as that guy rolled off or we were in position he could have said hey clear for takeoff that little jet is going to need less time to spool up the engines and go our engines were smaller they are able to spool up faster it's a lighter plane you can get off the ground quicker all of those things can happen faster on a Triple 7 they're big enormous engines and those engines take a while to spool up so even though they gives them the clearance it takes a while even if you put the engines all the way up it takes a while before they start motoring up and getting this plane moving and this plane is going to need a lot more Runway than let's say A crj you can take that crj and fly it like a race car a trip 7 is not going to fly like that now you can tell this controller is a bit irritated by the way he's saying that it would have fit I do this every day sir it would have worked it would have been tight but it would have worked but at the end of the day it's a judgment call and so this pilot made their call Air Traffic Control made their call of what they thought that it was going to work and the pilot said no and this trend of trying to slide PL traffic in to make it all work I've seen it happen a lot with Landing traffic that's really different because you can tell them hey you got somebody 4 miles behind you please expedite Off The Runway and it's a little bit easier to gauge speed with the takeoff that's something that I noticed more recently than before where they're trying to fit stuff in where it's not going to work and then this go round happened so here's my story that happened a few weeks ago that's very similar to this but I was flying a-8 at night and we were coming in very heavy and it had been a long night but we are coming in and we hear Air Traffic Control tell American to get up on the runway and that they had traffic on a 3M final the problem is at night it's a lot harder to tell if the plane in front of you is moving because all you have is a few little lights and it's hard to tell where they're at in relation to the runway have they taken off are they in the air it's a lot harder to tell everything so as we continue our approach in we're realizing like oh man we're coming in fast that guy's on the runway this is getting kind of tight but we couldn't quite tell if they were off the ground or were they at the end of the rway or they in the air because we're still coming down towards the runway by the time we started to realize like oh wow we're all pinched up basically like what was happening with this this plane it was it was it was a decision call I was the one flying actually and I just said hey're we're just going to land they just got off the Runway and the reason why is that in my mind it was going to be safer because we were a very heavy one we were going a lot faster than that plane was going so what would have happened is we would have overtaken them as they're climbing up we're going up they may be climbing up faster because they're a lot lighter than we are it would have just been a higher risk situation so I have to make this Split Second call of like okay uh we're just going to land and it was very uncomfortable and way more uncomfortable than it needed to be it was like 1: in the morning they could have waited 30 seconds or they could have told us hurry up or they could have had him wait one more minute and take off after us especially in the middle of the night now the other side of that is you'll see sometimes when I go to a let's say China China will be holding short of the runway there's not a plane in sight they're like 15 miles from the runway and we're like Hey we're we're ready to go and they're like Landing traffic and we can see on our radar screen like they are forever away so we sit there for minutes not not seconds minutes as they come in and land and we're thinking dude that was completely unnecessary so you have two sides of it you'll have some airports in the US where they are just have so much experience they feel comfortable filling in that gap for the takeoff and the landing which in some cases I appreciate because there's 50 planes waiting but at 1: in the morning that was the only plane there so it seemed like unreasonable we were following another guy so we thought that's who we were following and then they decid they were going to slide somebody in well they slid two people in and they fit them out and we're coming in at I want to say like 170 knots we we were pretty heavy so it's like we're going faster than normal and they're trying to slide in another plane and I think they went a little bit slow even though the controller did tell them to hurry up because we were coming in it was just not a good situation so they're they're risking potentially us having to do a go around like exactly like what Delta did by trying to save them one or two minutes it's going to cost us 15 or maybe 20 plus some reports because then with the go around we're saying hey you snacked Us in too tight now that guy has to do a report and explain what happened and we don't have to as a Pilots it's it's our discretion our Airlines is not going to be upset with us if we're making a judgment call in my situation my judgment call was it's going to be safer to land then potentially overtake this guy with our weight and speed so that was the decision that that I made this guy at the daytime had a much better gauge of the distance of what was going on so they made the decision called to do the go round so it creates an extra paperwork for for air traffic control so the moral the story is if you make me wait multiple minutes I'm not happy and if you make me wait 30 seconds I'm also not happy so basically Pilots are never happy unless we get exactly what we want every single time I look forward to hearing from you until then keep the blue side up

Channel: 74 Gear

Views: 606,926

Keywords: pilot, airline pilot, 747 pilot, 74 gear, pilot Kelsey

Id: sXY2gFn6cI0

Length: 17min 49sec (1069 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 14 2024