’11 seconds to impact’: Expert calculates how close SFO near-miss was to disaster
That's how close a
"If you just sit there and count to 11 seconds, we're not talking about a lot," said
FlightAware, which monitors air traffic online, determined
"On a normal 3-degree glide slope, an aircraft descends 320 feet for every nautical mile flown," Trescott explained in his blog Trends Aloft. "So at 175 feet, an aircraft would be 0.55 nautical miles from the touchdown zone. The typical landing speed for an A320 is around 130 knots to 140 knots. At 140 knots, an aircraft covers 2.33 miles per minute, so it could travel 0.55 nautical miles in a little over 14 seconds. Of course, if you figure a typical airliner is perhaps 40 feet high ... then it would have been about 11 seconds to impact."
The incident has set the international flying community abuzz and rightfully so, Trescott said.
"I would say this is quite alarming and uncommon to be this close," he said. "That's relatively rare."
Another aviation expert said this could have triggered the greatest aviation disaster in history with almost 1,000 passengers on all five airplanes involved; four of the aircraft awaiting takeoff filled with fuel.
Trescott, who has also discussed the
Pilots receive NOTAMS -- notices to pilots -- regularly alerting them to closed runways or other changes in normal flight procedures, and
SFO spokesman
The
"We may have investigators in the
One passenger on board the
Jones spoke to this news organization late Wednesday and recounted his return flight from
"It was an uneventful flight until the landing when we descended and were pretty close to touching down, when the jet engines labored loudly and we went into a steep climb," Jones said. "I recognized something wasn't quite right and looked around and saw (funny) looks on other passengers' faces."
He said the pilot eventually came onto the intercom and "nonchalantly" told passengers they had hit a "little more traffic than they anticipated."
Jones only found out the real story after reading a
"I think air travel generally is pretty safe," Jones said. "But this has inspired me to spend a night to update my will."
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