Malcolm Weir wrote:
On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 11:10:24 +1030, (Aidan Stanger)
wrote:
wrote:
The runways are offset so there is scope for an early turn.
AFAICS this is not the case for the Heathrow plans.
International Procedures have to be adhered and this is taken into account
when designing the airfield.
There are procedures that should prevent any incedent from occurring.
However, if something goes wrong then Air Traffic Control would have
little time to react, and I consider that to be a problem.
ATC already have "little time to react" in many cases, and it's got
nothing to do with the number of runways.
But how often is it a "fail to danger" situation with a complex
solution?
Did you see the BBC docufake "The Day Britain Stopped"? Their plane
crash scenario is not very realistic under the present situation, but if
a third runway were to be constructed then the risk would increase by
several orders of magnitude.
This is pure nonsense, a simple "fear tactic".
Do you always regard the highlighting of possible risks as a "fear
tactic"? Having already spotted two major errors in the programme, I
doubted the reason for the plane crash because I thought it would be
obvious that (with only 2 runways) the thing to do would be to send the
aircraft that had failed to land round the other way. When they
mentioned that there had been a similar incident a few years ago that
resulted in a near miss, I looked on the net to see if that was true,
and found it was. I don't have the URL to hand, but try asking Google
for "UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch - Aircraft Incident Report
No: 5/98"
(Not to mention that
ridiculous and unfounded hyperbole with that "several orders of
magnitude", a statistic that's based on, errr, nothing).
I admit I don't know the figures, but when the standard missed approach
procedure is to go round on the side where aircraft aren't taking off,
do you really think that the number of potentially dangerous movements
for mixed approaches WOULDN'T increase by several orders of magnitude if
aircraft were taking off on both sides?
Los Angeles International Airport has FOUR parallel runways. It ain't
a big deal, despite what the doom-sayers claim.
Are they offset so there is scope for an early turn?
Do aircraft land on the middle runways while others take off at the edge
runways?
How many near misses have there been?