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Friday, June 21, 2024

Too Low

This story reminded me of a flight I took to Albuquerque in 2011. Apparently low altitude was the problem:
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating a Southwest Airlines flight that descended to just 525 feet above ground as it approached Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City on Wednesday, triggering an altitude warning from air traffic control that it was getting too low.
Southwest flight 4069 was about 9 miles from the airport, over Yukon, Oklahoma, when it descended to the low altitude just after midnight on Wednesday, flight tracking information from FlightRadar24 shows. 
“Southwest 4069 low altitude alert,” a controller is heard saying in an air traffic control recording by LiveATC.net. “You good out there?”


I recognize that airport too. When I worked at Sierra, I did some modeling for that airport in 2015/16.

I remember a low-altitude flight into Albuquerque in May, 2011.  I thought that was really low, but I can see from the photo below that we must have been at least 2,000 feet above the ground.  So, not a crisis.  But still, a memory!

 
The airliner was jumping all over the place!

One tactic pilots have of dealing with turbulence is to descend to lower altitudes (where eddy sizes tend to be smaller). So, we descended, but we kept the lower altitude even as we approached the city. We passed over ABQ at a surprisingly-low altitude, making an alarmingly-low-altitude arc over the city's northern suburbs as the plane bucked and kicked. 

Here's Cottonwood Mall, on the left. The pilot seemed intent that we should fly through the mall. 


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