Newcastle Airport

[tyne]

Hi my first posting here..

As a regular PAX in and out of NCL, and as someone who lives on the approach, I wonder if I could ask a few questions.

I live on the coast at Tynemouth. There seem to be three distinct routes up the coast to where aircraft turn left - in land.

Two heading North, and one heading East out to sea. Is anyone able to tell me how this system works please?

Aslo I occasionally see planes travelling the opposite way on these routes - South or West opposite the flow of traffic. Why would this be so?

As aircraft fly over the Tyne and Tynemouth, how low and fast are they? It is often quite easy to see airline logos on the tail while over Tyneside.

I was once told that there was a plan if an aircraft had to ditch that it would be directed to do so close to one of Tyneside's beaches? Is this true? Surely every emergency has it's own specific response?

Finally, has there ever been a crash at or approaching NCL. I know of a Tornado a few years back.

These are just questions I've been mulling over for years and when I happened upon your group I thought I would ask.

Thank you.

Tyne....

[reverserunlocked]

Hello Tyne, as a fellow North-Easterner and PPLer type, I'll try to answer a few of your questions.

The direction that you see aicraft landing and departing in will be dependent on the prevailing wind. Whichever runway is facing best into wind at the time will be used for departing and arriving traffic.

As you'll probably be aware, any kind of tailwind (ie landing with the wind up your chuff) will give you a higher landing speed, longer landing roll and generally increase the chances of you hiking through some fields back to the terminal after you've run off the end.

The 'traffic flow' that you mention will be the standard arrival pattern for NCL. Aircraft arriving from different directions will be vectored by ATC along that arrival pattern until they intercept the ILS, or take a visual approach.

In terms of speed and height, it's difficult to gauge without having seen it myself. A landing 737 say will be travelling at around 125-150 knots on final approach depending on gross weight, and a few miles out will be at around 1,500 - 1,000 ft. Certainly on the departure, you'd aim to climb as quickly as possible but you're restricted to 250 knots below 10,000ft.

In a ditching scenario it's the responsibility of the commander to choose a suitable site. In the case of a ditching you're usually pretty low on options either way and you'll take whatever you can get. Plus going for a beach may endanger more life on the ground than would be otherwise necessary. I'd go for shallow water personally.

Hope that helps.

RU

[expedite_climb]

Hiya,

All above true, would add that the controllers may vector aircraft differently due many reasons, weather, other traffic, altitude or speed of a/c.

I always enjoy turning in over tynemouth, feels like Im coming home even though i dont live there any more ! Memories of the mini golf on the cliffs in the winter, aaaaaaaaahhhhhh yes.

Typically over the coast there the jets you see will be 170-210 knots and 2500-3500 feet.

Enjoy the snow.........

[witchdoctor]

Most of your questions should be answered with a visit to the ais website. newcastle airport (www.ais.org.uk/aes/pubs/aip/html/egnt.htm)

Curses! You'll have to register to login (it's all free and publicly available so don't be shy). I think you should be able to go straight to the airfield info after login though.

Hopefully you should now be able to access the published instrument approach plates to each of the runway directions. I appreciate you are not necessarily a pilot, but I think the plates are fairly self-explanatory and you should be able to figure out where thay are in relation to yourself.

Most approaches in will probably be to the ILS/DME (if you're watching approaches at Tynemouth it will be for runway 25), but I suspect most of these approaches will be under radar direction from Newcastle Air Trafic Control and so will follow the most convenient routing as has been said above, rather than the directions published on the plates as these are for a slightly more complicated and time-consuming procedural approach without radar vectoring. It's this I think you're most likely to see.

Alternatively, in very good visibility, ATC may offer the larger commercial aircraft the option of a visual approach, which although it will be roughly similar to the instrument approaches, to a viewer on the ground it may appear that the aircraft are taking a different route to normal. Most smaller non-commercial aircraft tend to fly visual approaches anyway.

Maybe you'll see me chugging overhead one day too.:D

(Edited 'cos I'm a techno numpty!) :O

[tyne]

Thank you for your replies. The link answered my questions.

Nice to think the people flying above us think of things like the old crazy golf course. on the sea front.

My new info will certainly make my next BA trip two and from LHR next month a bit more interesting.

Cheers again!

Tyne.