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Author Topic: UA 799 August 14 ORD to EWR  (Read 3833 times)

Offline Pthwaite

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UA 799 August 14 ORD to EWR
« on: August 15, 2012, 07:40:41 AM »
I was on UA 799 last night from ORD to EWR.  The crew piped the ATC radio through the headsets, and I listened to the last 45 minutes of the flight. 

As we were in the approach, something felt odd about the way we were lining up.  I am not a pilot, but I fly into newark a lot, and it felt like we were too close to manhattan, and making too many turns at the last minute, when we were really, really low.  I started to get a little nervous.

As we're making a low, low sweeping turn, the tower came on the radio and said something like "799, you are very low and 2.5 miles out.  Can you see the airport?".  The pilot replied "No".  Then either the pilot informed the tower that we were going to go around and try again, or the tower told the pilot to go around. I don't really remember because my heart was going about 150 BPM at that point.

Anyway, I looked this morning at our flight path - http://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAL799 - looks like we got very low and slow (400 ft, 148kts) before pulling out. 

Just curious if anyone has a recording of this from last night.  It was a pretty intense experience and I'd like to listen to it again.

The pilots later complained to the tower / approach about that approach being unsafe, and ATC replied that "a lot of other planes have made it without a problem." 

Finally, regardless of whether it was pilot error or unsafe approach that caused this, I'd like to commend the atc and crew for keeping it together and getting us on the ground safely 20 minutes later.

Pat




Offline ralawrencejr

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Re: UA 799 August 14 ORD to EWR
« Reply #1 on: August 15, 2012, 11:36:49 AM »
From the Flight Aware track it appears he was flying the new Stadium Visual Runway 29. Not sure how you could pick out Lincoln Park at night unless you had SLIMR programmed in. They have him the ILS 22 after the go around.

Offline Hollis

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Re: UA 799 August 14 ORD to EWR
« Reply #2 on: August 15, 2012, 01:17:12 PM »
 check the audio clips re:UAL799

Offline Pthwaite

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Re: UA 799 August 14 ORD to EWR
« Reply #3 on: August 15, 2012, 04:51:30 PM »
Hollis - Thank you for posting! 

A couple observations...  There was probably about :30 seconds or less in real time that I knew something wasn't right until they pulled up and were clear of the issue. That felt like about 4 minutes while I was sitting there.

Especially on listening to this again, I have a huge amount of respect for the ability that air traffic control and flight crews have to process so much information, make quick decisions and communicate effectively. 

ralawrencejr: the pilot requested 22 after the go around, and said that the request was because the 29 approach was unsafe in these conditions.  That's when atc responded that a lot of other planes had done it without a problem (paraphrasing a lot here).

Only other note is that on the second try approach asked pilot something like - how'd that circle go for you?, pilot responds saying, not great we went around, approach says, we saw that, we were watching you...