Tanker Clown
KC-10 IP
- Joined
- May 22, 2004
- Posts
- 1,653
I believe that, on the outside, the focus appears to be not entirely focused on safety. It will be interesting to see if that apparent culture is a contributing factor in these missed inspections.
Here's a major gripe of mine regarding KOAK - maybe a Southwest guy can explain this.
Rwy 29 is 10,000' with water at or near both ends of the runway. Each of the past 4 times I've been in OAK, various Southwest aircraft request intersection "U" for departure in order to get out ahead of other aircraft. Why would you voluntarily give away 3000' of good runway to save a minute or two.
Using intersection "U" -
Is it safe? Probably
Is it legal? Probably
If you had a high speed abort and went off the end, where do you think the scrutiny or the media and the feds would fall - especially considering you voluntarily shortened the pavement by 30% to save time???
If the minimum wasn't the minimum, it wouldn't be the minimum. Perhaps SWA should only fly out of KEDW since they have around 16K of runway. Maybe they should only go to AMA and it's 14K or so. I gotta be honest...your argument is pretty dumb. Why did the airfield designers even create a U intersection?
I'm sure they have the stopping margin for the intersection take off.