I had a request for a diary about the best and worst airports.
Like most things, the answer depends on what criteria you're using. Am I going in there as a pilot or as a passenger? What am I flying? Is it daytime or nighttime? Summer or winter? Today I'll keep it from a pilot's point of view.
My company flies a very tough route structure. From my understanding, the passenger carriers tend to restrict their international pilots to flying one theater. For example, a pilot who flies Europe won't fly the Pacific. Correct me if I'm wrong on that. With the slew of recent mergers that may have changed.
I'm technically qualified to operate anywhere: Asia, Europe, Middle East, Caribbean, South America. I've done a fair bit of flying in Europe and seen a little bit of South America, Central America and the Middle East. The only times I've been to Asia were with the military.
This will be purely based on my own experiences (it's all about me!). I don't have a lot of general aviation experience so I'll stick with the places I've flown airliners in and out of.
No, I haven't been to the old Hong Kong airport or that one down in Saint Martin. There's plenty of footage of Kai Tak Aiport available on youtube for your viewing pleasure.
That's OK. You can still get yourself into plenty of trouble elsewhere. Even the US offers plenty of challenges.
When operating in or out of an airport there are several threats that need to be looked at. These may be threats to my safety, my license or both.
Some of the threats encountered may be:
Terrain - Reno, Bogota, Roanoke, Birmingham
Runway Length - Burbank, Huntington
General aviation traffic - Anywhere in the LA basin.
Low visibility - Europe in the winter.
Thunderstorms - Anywhere east of the Rockies in the summer. South/Central America.
Extreme Cold - Winnipeg in January.
Extreme Heat - Winnipeg in August.
High Traffic - LAX, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, New York, Boston, Europe
Confusing Taxiways - Chicago, Newark
Noise sensitive areas - John Wayne (Santa Ana), Most of Europe
Restricted airspace - Washington National
Non Tower Operations (usually at night) - Tallahassee, Casper, Mirabel
International Operations - Everywhere but here.
Every airport is unique and the same airport on two different days may be a totally different challenge based on time of day, weather, runway closures or equipment outages.
We take a look at the airport while flight planning prior to departure and we take
another look before starting our descent, usually 150 miles or so from the airport.
I have found South America to be one of the most challenging places to fly. While Europe is a good place to get yourself violated, South America is a good place to get yourself killed. There is high terrain everywhere and near the equator you'll find some monster thunderstorms. Navigational aids can be pretty sparse, although this isn't as big a deal in the days of GPS.
The air traffic controllers down there for the most part don't really care what you do. If you ask to do something stupid they may very let you.
They all speak English, but some only know the canned phrases like "cleared for takeoff". Ask for anything out of the ordinary and you may be met with radio silence.
Coming out of Valencia, Venezuela we'd be talking to a military controller. We could tell they mostly just wanted to get us out of their hair. They'd point us at Colombian airspace and stop talking to us.
Let's take a look at Bogota.
It sits at 8,300 feet about sea level, surrounded by mountains in the 10,000-12,000 foot range. It's in a bowl, with only a couple ways in or out. All the traffic funnels in from the west and out the same way. It's also a very busy airport, so we have at least four of our major threats: terrain, traffic, international, noise sensitive and possibly thunderstorms. The controllers here are the exception to the rule and are pretty sharp.
In the picture you'll see the city to the east of the airport with the mountains in the background. Lose an engine on takeoff and you'll give the people in the city a nice airshow as you skim the rooftops.
Bogota from the approach to RWY 13L
The high altitude means that your true airspeed, and thus your groundspeed on approach are going to be very high. The approach is going to come at you faster than you're used to and you're going to use a lot of real estate getting the plane stopped.
Takeoff performance is critical due to the high altitude and terrain. Lose an engine on takeoff and you are in a world of hurt. I've practiced it in the simulator and it's a real eye opener. An engine failure in the 757 or A300 normally isn't a big deal. In Bogota it's a very big deal.
This was our engine failure procedure for Bogota. This procedure is specific to our airline. If it was the real deal, the controllers would have absolutely no idea what we were doing and we'd be too busy to play 20 questions with them.
Engine failure procedure
Like any airport, the more often you go there the more familiar you'll be with all the local quirks. Unfortunately I flew South America just enough to forget everything in between visits.
So much for South America. Let's look at Europe.
Europe poses a different set of challenges. It's very congested airspace. To control traffic flow you're normally given a "slot time" and expected to takeoff within so many minutes of that time.
While everyone is governed by ICAO rules, each country in Europe has its specific rules on top of that. You need to know the local quirks for at least the country you're departing and the one you're arriving at. Our European ops might have us traversing 3-4 countries in one night. A typical night for me was: start out in Basel Switzerland, go through our main hub in Paris, drop in at Copenhagen and finally end up in Stockholm.
Summer weather in Europe is pretty good but winter is downright nasty. Snow, ice, freezing rain, low ceilings, fog, you name it. I can recall a week of flying in December where every landing we did was a Category II or III low visibility approach.
Most European airports are noise sensitive to at least some degree. Within Europe I'd say that Germany is especially noise sensitive. They don't want you flying straight and level with gear and flaps hanging and the engines spooled up. They'd rather you fly a constant descent at low power and configure the aircraft fairly late for the approach (keeps the engines at low power). They'd also rather you not use any more than idle reverse thrust when stopping. Your brakes will take a beating.
Here's an example of a very noise sensitive airport - Cologne/Bonn. A lot of these places have actual noise sensors located around the airport. Trip one and the company is going to get hit with a hefty fine and you'll have some 'splainin to do.
Noise restrictions for Cologne/Bonn
As the Germans like nothing more than making rules and enforcing them, you'd best bring your "A Game" if you're going to Munich or Frankfurt. They'll be happy to let you know if you're not going with the program.
Here's a pretty typical arrival to a busy European airport. Munich in this case. I found this very confusing the first couple times I flew it until I figured out what the controllers were doing with it.
Munich arrival procedure for RWY 26L
It's really just a big rectangular "box pattern". What's odd about it is, you never which point they'll initially send you to. It all depends on how much traffic there is and where they want you. Your initial clearance might be "Proceed direct to Delta Mike 467", which is down on the bottom of the box somewhere in the middle. Then they might decide to have you cut the corner and go to DM458 (top middle) instead of flying all the way around the box. The first time they did it to me you could probably hear the gears grinding as my sleep deprived brain tried to figure it out.
The European controllers overall tend to be pretty good. Oddly enough I found the ones in the UK to be most difficult to understand because the accents were sometimes so thick. The German and Scandinavian controllers generally spoke perfect English.
I found that knowing what to expect was a huge help. If you did your homework and had a good idea where the controller might send you, then it didn't come as a surprise.
In summary, Europe is very busy and there are a lot of rules. Follow the rules and you'll be OK.
Flying in the US poses it's own set of challenges. It's a big country with a lot of different terrain and very different weather patterns. Our major airports are very busy and some were not very well laid out. O'Hare comes to mind.
Not even Frankfurt can prepare you for the nightmare that is Chicago O'Hare. All the major US airports are tough but O'Hare has to be one of the worst. There are runways and taxiways going off in all different directions. If ever there was a runway incursion waiting to happen it's ORD. Let's suppose you just landed on Runway 32L and you need to get to the South Cargo Ramp which is way down on the bottom of the chart.
As soon as you exit the runway you'd better be up on Ground Control and you'd better be prepared to start writing. The controller is going to sound like an auctioneer as he rattles off a string of taxi instructions. Hopefully you get it right the first time because they don't like having to repeat themselves. You're playing in the big leagues here.
O'Hare Taxi Chart. Abandon all hope.
O'Hare isn't the only bad one. LAX has a challenging arrival with a lot of airspeed and altitude restrictions. At night, for noise abatement, they may have people departing to the west
and arriving from the west as well (to stay over the water).
Newark and Kennedy are also bad. We don't use LaGuardia but I'm sure it's bad too. There are three major airports all close to each other and fighting over the same airspace. Throw some weather into the mix and it gets ugly.
Maybe the big airports aren't your style. That's OK, there's plenty of fun to be had at the little out of the way places. Huntington Tri-State is one of my favorites. To build this airport they pretty much cut the top off a mountain and stuck the runway on top of it. This makes for some interesting visuals on final approach, particularly for RWY 30 because there was no place to put an approach lighting system.
Note that the picture doesn't really do it justice. The runway is sitting up on a very noticeable plateau.
Huntington RWY 30. Not bad in the daytime but challenging at night. Guess when I get to land there.
Several threats here. Terrain is a major one. Weather can be a problem: thunderstorms in the summer, ice in the winter and fog the rest of the year. It's pretty common to have to divert on a morning where there's fog. It's a pretty short runway so try not to float the landing and get on the brakes right away. Critters are a problem here as well. More than once they've had to come out and chase a deer or a coyote off the runway so we could take off.
Burbank is another fun one. I think it's the shortest runway we operated the Airbus 300 from. Probably the closest I'll ever get to an aircraft carrier.
Burbank has several threats: terrain, busy airspace, lots of general aviation traffic in the daytime and one rather short runway. For reasons of noise and terrain they would normally bring us in to RWY 8 in the morning. All 5,802 feet of it. For a wide-body jet that's pretty tight quarters.
Approach to RWY 8 at Burbank
What could possibly go wrong?
Check out those gas prices!
This 737 crew came in too high and too fast, landed 2800 feet down the runway (legal but not smart) and didn't get stopped in time. Fortunately nobody was killed.
Maybe they wanted takeout?
I'm sure the late night talk shows had fun with this picture.
Let's look at one more. Washington
Reagan National. If they asked me (they haven't) I'd say bulldoze this affront to aviation and build a high-speed rail line out to Dulles.
If you look at this picture you'll see that there's no way to bring you straight in or to straight out.
The arrival involves following the river and making a turn at the last minute to line up with the runway. The departure is the same thing in reverse. As soon as you lift off you need to make a turn to follow the river.
Washington National
Several threats here. Busy traffic, short runways, noise sensitive and
very restricted airspace.
Visual Approach to RWY 19. Stay over the river. Stay over the river. Stay over the river (you get the idea).
Now when I say restricted airspace I mean
restricted. As in "maybe get shot down" restricted. I don't want to meet any F-16s over DC. My formation flying skills are probably rusty.
At the very least you'll probably get the dreaded "Call this number after you land" message from Approach Control. That's the one where you get to stand in front of the long table with a bunch of very serious looking people seated behind it.
I feel like I'm playing "You bet your license!" every time I go in there.
Keep in mind that any airport on any given day can be a challenge if something nonstandard is going on.
Perhaps the long runway is closed for construction and you have to use the short one that you normally wouldn't use. Maybe the Instrument Landing System is down and you'll have to do a GPS approach. One day it's all puppies and butterflies and the next day it's thunderstorms and high winds.
Case in point. Last year a UPS A300 was doing a routine Louisville to Birmingham leg in the early morning. The preferred runway at Birmingham is 6/24. It's 12,000 feet long and has all the good stuff like an ILS approach and the full lighting system. The approaches bring you up the valley so it's no big deal.
BHM Airport. Note the position of the runways relative to the terrain. UPS 1354 was coming in from the North.
Unfortunately 6/24 was closed for maintenance that morning. This put them on RWY 18, which is much shorter (7000 feet), requires a GPS approach, and doesn't have much of a lighting system.
BHM Runway 18. I've never landed on this runway at night but I imagine it's a "black hole".
Oh, it has one other thing - terrain.
Remember - It's never routine.
Remember when I said it was a routine flight? It's
never routine. Be careful out there.