Class B Traffic

[Txbyker]

It was LIFR all over South Texas this morning.  Went up and did some IFR approaches.  Check out this progression of air carriers coming in over my approach to final on their way to IAH.  I have never seen them so dense.  They must have been circling out west waiting to come in.

Russ

[1964-M20E]

Back in Nov. I flew just north of DFW about 5 mile inside the outer ring.  talk about wild.  We were at 11500 just out the Bravo there was big iron all over the place.  ADSB was going crazy and you could see them everywhere.  Though I was in a scene form WWII during a bomb run to Germany.

[jlunseth]

There is a Wings class here in Minneapolis where they take pilots through the Farmington Center facility.  Farmington is just south of Minneapolis.  It handles traffic between Denver Center and Chicago, and south to Kansas City.  One of the interesting things they teach is that the traffic limit going east and west is driven primarily by the limited ability to land planes at Newark and JFK.  Here in Minneapolis we have parallel primaries and can land in the vicinity of 90 planes an hour.  Newark and JFK are half that.  Because of that, ATC has to build a conga line that goes all the way out to the west coast at busy times.  You can watch it on the screen as planes are brought into the line by all the Centers.  Denver passes responsibility for the line to Minneapolis, which passes to Chicago, and so on, to create the spacing needed to land at Newark and JFK.

[Bob - S50]

21 hours ago, Txbyker said:

It was LIFR all over South Texas this morning.  Went up and did some IFR approaches.  Check out this progression of air carriers coming in over my approach to final on their way to IAH.  I have never seen them so dense.  They must have been circling out west waiting to come in.

Russ

That actually looks pretty normal for most of the Class B airports at peak arrival times.  Arrivals last about an hour, then it tapers off for about an hour while they service planes, deplane, enplane and get ready to launch.  Then the departures get busy for about an hour but it doesn't look as busy because they are going different directions instead of all lining up with a runway.

[Yetti]

And why are there peak/push times at airports is it just too hard to space things out a bit more?

[Wayne Cease]

28 minutes ago, Yetti said:

And why are there peak/push times at airports is it just too hard to space things out a bit more?

Passengers don't want to fly at 3 am just to space things out.  Plus with hub-and-spoke passengers come into the hub and then back out again, and they prefer to no have too long a lay-over.

And then there's Memphis, which has peaks due to FedEx moving packages.

 

[jaylw314]

1 hour ago, Yetti said:

And why are there peak/push times at airports is it just too hard to space things out a bit more?

And all those business travelers want the 7 AM and 5 PM flights.

It's always entertaining in the terminal at LAX, you can see at least 8-10 aircraft on approach to the parallel runways.  Just kind of looks like they're all hovering there.

Edited February 27, 2018 by jaylw314

[Mooneymite]

Peak/push is a phenomenon associated with the hub-and-spoke airline system.  Everyone has to arrive in the same block to make their connections in the next departure block.

Non-hub airlines (an endangered species!) like SWA aren't afflicted with the inhale/exhale of traffic flow nearly so dramatically.

[Mooneymite]

That picture of the IAH arrivals reminds me of the WORST tongue lashing of a pilot by a controller I have ever heard.  I wish I had gotten the tape of it.

I don't know who the pilot was (he mostly deserved it), but I bet he will never live it down.

When the approach controller finished, no one wanted to key their mic for a long time!  

[BKlott]

10 hours ago, Yetti said:

And why are there peak/push times at airports is it just too hard to space things out a bit more?

Airline deregulation.

[Browncbr1]

1500-1000ft vertical separation? I imagine you could have gone through some big wake.