... and live to tell the tale?
The runway at St. Maarten's Princess Juliana International Airport is renowned for perpendicularly adjoining (almost touching) the Maho beach. All airliners landing there must come in very low across the beach to land. But this heavy was much lower than normal even for that beach.
This, OTOH, is a normal landing.
Come to think of it, there's not that much difference!
The runway, btw, is 2,180 meters (1.3 miles) long. I'm guessing that because of the Caribbean clime, the density-altitude is somewhat higher than its sea-level true altitude would suggest. And any pilot will tell you few things are more useless than runway behind you, so may as well use all you can.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
How low can you go . . .
By Donald Sensing
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2 comments:
A 7000 foot runway is more typical of airports such as LaGuardia, Midway, and Love Field which are not even comfortable for smaller aircraft. Also, the "braking action" of many such destinations are often not that good due to indifferent maintenance of the runway surface. So putting it on the "first brick" is standard practice.
Fort Sill, Okla., had a 5,000-foot runway when I was stationed there in 82-83. USAF C-5 Galaxy cargo planes, then the largest in the world, landed and took off from Sill with ease. OTOH, military heavies are designed for that and I don't think airliners are.
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