RNP demo at DCA

G Farris wrote:
In article ,
lid says...


DCA or JFK?




My (admittedly uninformed) comment was motivated by the fact that LGA also has
a 13/31, of the same length, I believe, as their 04/22, so I wonder how often
JFK will be using the ILS to 13L (below minima for the visual portion of the
Canarsie approach) and LGA will be using ILS to 04 - seems like they would
both be landing on 13 under those conditions, but again there could be any
number of reasons I'm not specifically aware of that would make this conflict a
real hassle for them.

I don't recall the exact reasons why LGA prefers to use 4 over 13, but I
believe it has to do with noise. When they hand 22 or 4, they can
usually depart 31. But, when they land 13 then they use 4 for
departures. I think this makes the PONY mad. ;-)

The DCA issue is a bit of a funny one, because we need to develop all sorts of
wizardry in order to comply with our own, self-imposed restrictions. If it's
such a bad idea, or such a present danger to the sitting government to have
planes flying low over the Capital, then it would seem that was just a bad
place to put a major airport! Nevertheless, the demo is impressive, and even
with all the inertia Tim describes in getting the airlines' fleets equipped,
it's still a promising development. Airlines in the US may not be in much of a
porition to rejuvenate their fleets as they are in much of the rest of the
world, but sooner or later it will become necessary, and the way will be found.
The further along we are with this stuff when that begins to happen, the closer
we will be to a really useful modernization - it's been a long time coming.


I have serious doubt that the U.S. airlines will ever retrofit their
legacy glass aircraft. Boeing wants a king's ransom to do that. The
757/767 fleet manager at American said, "No way, it would cost as over
$100 million."