Too Close for Comfort
If you’ve ever flown into San Francisco, you might have gotten a little warning announcement from your captain about seeing another plane out the windows.
You see, San Francisco has two parallel runways that are 750 ft apart, which I believe is the minimum distance allowed between runways. As you’re landing, it sometimes appears as if another airplane is coming right at you, and it makes some people nervous. You might get nervous if you saw something like this or this, too. Maybe this will put it in a little better perspective.
I flew into St Petersburg Russia in 1989 before the new airport had been built. There was one runway. Our plane landed, got to the end of the runway, turned around and began to taxi back toward the terminal. As another plane could be seen coming in to land. THAT was scary.
The flight crew’s assurance that the runway was wide enough to accommodate two planes somehow didn’t help.
Posted by Will on 02/15 at 06:19 PM