FLYCHICAGA
"We takeoff and land with tailwinds about 50% of the time."
Do you work for Southwest by chance? That is a figure that I have never heard from anyone.
"What I believe came into the factors here was that they landed a bit long and did not have use of the thrust reversers. But I am not going to speculate."
You just did speculate. By the way, since when have thrust reversers ever been used to certify an aircrafts ability to stop? I am sure someone will correct me, but isn't stopping distance based on brakes and spoilers without the use of reverse thrust. At least Boeing and Douglas uses that criteria.
" People look at it as if it is dangerous, however nothing is farther from the truth."
I don't know if people consider it dangerous or not, however it is looked at as extremely critical by knowledgeable people. There is a reason that operations were shifted to O'hare many years ago. I don't know if MDW is the most critical airport to fly large aircraft out of, but it is certainly one of the top 3 in the USA. The newer transport aircraft handle MDW very easily on landing if it is a nice dry pleasant day. Landing in the winter on ice and snow with gusting winds is another story. Landing one of the older generation transports like the 727-200 or 707 is quite frankly not the same thing. I still consider the hot summer day takeoff at max gross the critical maneuver out of MDW, there is simply nowhere to go if everything does not work properly. MDW is an airport that is completely unforgiving unless everything is working perfectly. Fortunately for most of our newer pilots that have only flown the newer generation aircraft, they are extremely reliable.
Last edited by dudly; 13th Sep 2003 at 04:18.