PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - How do you land in the "nearest suitable runway:?
Old 28th December 2011 | 08:52
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aviatorhi
 
Joined: Apr 2008
Posts: 461
Likes: 1
From: A tropical island.
I'll give a reply that's more on topic as well, let's go with the following scenario:

Say you're over the Pacific and need to land at the nearest suitable airport...

You push whatever set of keys your particular FMS/GPS/Whatever needs pushed to display the nearest airports and the following comes up...

PLPA
PLCH
PCIS
PHKO
PHNL

The first three being about 300-500 nm away the latter two being about 1000.

Outside of being on fire, not having enough fuel or the airplane literally wanting to fall out of the sky I would steer well away from the first three.

Going into PLPA or PCIS will ground the airplane there for, probably, at least a few months (it's literally that hard to get fuel out there). Neither are typically used as "ETOPS suitable airports" (for many reasons), but will show up when pushing the nearest button.

PLCH... if you're flying pax, this is by and far one of the last places I'd want to show up with 150 unplanned guests.

Oh, and if you've never been to PLPA you'll easily have more bird strikes in one day than most pilots have in a career.

All this being said, I agree with I-2021, "it depends".
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