New American Digest Is On Final Approach

You can never have too many backups.

Posted by ahem at June 15, 2017 12:05 PM

Looks like a good place for this, then:

Night Landing in Los Angeles

Gerald, I think I might even have found this clip here, originally.

Posted by Monty James at June 15, 2017 1:09 PM

Thanks. I can use t hat.

Posted by vanderleun at June 15, 2017 3:58 PM

I've mentioned this here before, but in my meat-space life, I am a Captain at a major national airline. Allow me to inject some inside baseball to that video.....

* The procedures we fly--the departures (which we call SIDs--Standard Instrument Departure), the arrivals (STARs--Standard Terminal Arrival), and the approaches (which take you to the landing runway)--are constantly changing. Sometimes the changes are major and sometimes they're minor. The video begins with an "arrival" called the SADDE6. We now fly the SADDE7, which has only minor changes from the SADDE6.

* The turn right after coming over the beach is over the Santa Monica VOR (a type of navigational aid), and almost always to a air-traffic-control-directed heading of 070°.

* The camera doesn't do this, but right before the downtown L.A. label, if I turn my head to the left I can see the Hollywood sign, and then later on downwind, right after passing the downtown area, and again on the left is Dodger Stadium.

* The video touches on one of the scariest parts of my professional day: If you look at the google map image of LAX, on both the north and south sides of the airport, you can see two parallel taxiways, just north and south of the terminals. In between those parallel taxiways is a roadway (which is where the plane holds position to allow the fire trucks to pass). I'm pretty sure that a fireman wouldn't run into my plane, but the guys who drive the baggage carts, catering trucks, etc don't inspire my confidence. Those guys drive around airplanes all day, every day, and I think that some of them get inured to the idea that that other vehicle crossing in front of them is a 737/747/757/767/777. Years ago, I once saw a fuel truck (!) with a fender-bender crease in the tank. Who drives a fuel truck like it isn't made of glass?

* And here is my final point: I suspect that some airline pilot got a new Go-Pro, and mounted it to the dash to take this beautifully-done video and then post it to YouTube. Why he would do this is more than I know. I get it that the view from my "office window" is a special sight and one that someone might want to share. I get it that someone without access to the view I routinely have might be interested in seeing it. But taking that video and sharing it on YouTube is a potentially career-ending move.

Imagine yourself on the surgeon's table, and your surgeon, or the anesthesiologist, or one of the nurses is fiddling with their cell phone looking at Facebook. That cell phone is at the very minimum, a potential distraction from the important work that they're being paid to pay attention to. The FAA sees that Go-Pro on the dash in the same light. Those guys driving those catering trucks are supposed to yield to airplanes, but if one of them ran through an intersection and into my plane, and I had a Go-Pro on the dash, it would be all my fault.

Posted by azlibertarian at June 15, 2017 7:44 PM

Bones.
I feel things in my bones but I had no idea techies could see them.

Posted by Dan Patterson at June 16, 2017 4:05 AM

Forgive me, it's Gerard, not Gerald. Me stupid.

Posted by Monty James at June 16, 2017 9:03 AM
AMERICAN DIGEST :HOME

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