Originally Posted by
733driver
I disagree. Yes, it's quite short but no too short.
R24 LDA 4100 feet.
R06 LDA 4432 feet.
Typical landing mass for a Latitude with two pilots and three pax and about 2000lbs of fuel would be about 20000 to 22500 lbs. 5000lbs below max structural landing mass.
R06 at 0A9 airport has a GPS approach (LNAV only). The minima are high but the weather was just about perfect.
Not sure why they landed on 24. Probably came from the east?
LDR for the conditions above: 2400 feet, unfactored, Vref 99 knots. If there is one thing the Latitude is good at it's short fields.
FAR landing field length would be less than 4000 feet. So even if part 135, no issues. On either runway.
Actual, unfactored LDR at max landing mass (if tankering for example) is still less than 2800 feet. Ref 108 knots.
All data is A/T off.
There is more to the story. Either they were way too fast and/or touched down way too late or they had a brake failure or something else happened
We will find out, I hope
Thanks for the information. I'm not familiar with the performance of the Cessna C680 Latitude, but the LDR figures you cited seem to be those for sea level standard day conditions. The elevation of the runway at Elizabethton, OA9, is about 1560 ft. MSL, and it could be reasonably anticipated that the outside air temperature at the time of the landing would have been in the 85-90° Fahrenheit range. My rough guesstimate of the LDR at those conditions would have been around 3800 ft. That would've been pretty tight. Anyway, I'm probably incorrect here, but did your LDR figures take into account the field elevation and air temperature?
On another note, would it have been possible that they landed at the wrong airport? Tri Cities Airport (KTRI) is about 13 miles NW of OA9, with a runway length of about 8,000 feet. The runway headings are similar, with the runway orientation at OA9 being 060/240 and the orientation at KTRI's main runway being 050/230. It's happened before, so I guess that it is a possibility. As something else to consider concerning this theory, KTRI is about 12 road miles from the Bristol Race track, and OA9 is about 14 road miles from the Race track.
Cheers,
Grog