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-Dan |
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History is a better indication here than a statement of "lot more efficient". Practical wins out over theoretical. What is the actual history of "well executed"? :) |
My initial impressions were a little of the blame blanket falls on us the pilots. Pilots do have to accept some of the responsibility, example... big thunderstorm dead ahead, AKA super saturated Ripon/Fisk traffic and choosing to proceed. I've watched a few of the youtube videos of the arrivals from the cockpit and have been forced reexamine my thoughts. Several points here. The notam and the spacing in that notam which has been the standard for years was half mile spacing. They changed it as they have the right to do and we as pilots must try to comply as safely possible. On flight radar 24 I saw everyone out at the lakes, Ripon, Fisk and the many others inbound as I was sitting along approach end of 36 so you know ATC had it on theirs! A hazardous situation was unfolding before there eyes and they kept turning airplanes back. Others have done number crunching of airplanes per minute per runway and I feel I agree with those results. I did some math to see how many airplanes could safely be inbound to Fisk. Using the required half mile spacing, (and my numbers account only for the low... 1800/90kts approach)... 10 miles from Ripon to Fisk accounts for 20 aircraft. It's appears to be roughly a flight distance of about 16 miles around green lake so there could be about 32 aircraft holding there. Rush lake is about 10 flying miles around which would be another 20 aircraft. That's 72 aircraft not counting those already passed Fisk towards the airport or those flying the high approach. It seems that 99.9% of the time this would work fine. This was the .1% when it didn't. Looking at FR24 there appeared to be 2 or 3 times as many aircraft out there.
Understandably those pilots were stressed to the max, frustrated and aggravated at having been turned back out many times. If I had been inbound still 50 miles out and witnessed the cluster on my ADSB, I would have landed elsewhere until things cleared a bit. No other way to look at it, voluntarily flying on into that chaos is simply a risky choice. I don't know what the answers are but I know what they are NOT. Any type of reservations system wouldn't work. Don't ask me why, I just don't like the sound of it! To me this is like saying "We as pilots can't figure this out so big brother you regulate it for us." A second Ripon out there someplace for super busy times has some merit. Separate aircraft by high wing/low wing... Experimental vs certified... even or odd number tail numbers. It would have cut the congestion at Ripon and the lakes in roughly half. Of course, this only solves half the problem. Still have to get everyone sequenced in for landing on the same three runways. Mass arrivals..... hmmm..... I like Dan Hortons thoughts.... not during expected peak arrival times. I especially like his suggestion of making any mass arrivals "part of the show." Any mass arrivals starting Monday morning as soon as the field opens. An hour or two of this might get most of them in. And hey..... We'd all love landing with a thousand people looking on admiring our supreme airmanship skills. May God help the poor guys ego that might not get it right and half the world watching, (folks on the line and of course you tube). ;-) Somewhere in this thread there's mention of military planes doing flybys before their landings. We all saw TopGun.... Negative Ghostrider, the patten is full. When they grant a flyby ATC should first check the scope and see whats going on at Ripon/Fisk and only then any request granted accordingly. ATC's increased spacing created some of the problems here. When you are in trail and looking at the guy in front of you at a comfortable distance that's about 1/2 maybe 3/4 of a mile. Seems to work pretty good. Any more and the guy ahead becomes pretty hard to see. Last, if inbound and monitoring Fisk approach and looking at a mess on ADSB, as many did hold a ways out, or land elsewhere until it's safe. |
Given the choice between a reservation system or what we witnessed on that Sunday...... I'll take a VFR reservation system any day if I plan to fly in.
Given the numbers EAA put out last night, 10,000+ airplanes arrived at some point during the week and over 600,000 attendees, the show size is getting into another category. If there was a shortage of volunteers and workers in 2018, including apparently ATC folks, it's not going to get any better next year. |
Thrashing,.... is the term
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As an aside,... driving home from Osh,.. I actually experienced ?zipper? merge instead of everyone try to merge at last moment,.... it was darn near a thrill. We actually moved through the choke point MUCH more quickly than we would have if folks tried to crash merge at the last moment. ( unfortunately the zipper merge only happened a once,.many other slowdowns occurred) Maybe something to learn there. |
When I was still attending (admittedly, a decade ago), the controllers were fighting to get a chance to work OSH. It was a badge honor, driving competition and waiting lists like some of you experience trying to get a hangar on a public airport. Unless things have radially changed, the only reason for a controller shortage is failure to allocate.
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Probably a sacrilegious thought here, but maybe take a page from AOPA and split the big show into smaller regional events spread through out the year? It just can't keep getting bigger and bigger without having more of these safety issues with arrivals. I know this will probably never happen....
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This takes me back to undergraduate engineering:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queueing_theory Way, way back! I think CB..err...Mr. Clark may have some academic resources at his disposal! :D Senior project(s)? |
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