Pertinent Jepp Charts:

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/a...ps7a07bbc4.jpg

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/a...psf078e0a4.jpg

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/a...ps1f34fd62.jpg

The approach charts for both R18 approaches contain the note that the procedure is NA at night, which seems to support your presumption.

A Squared:

I can only speak to the LOC procedure because it is the only one I researched. Jeppesen was correct when Amendment 2 was effective. Amendment 2A removed the blanket restriction by authorizing at night provided the PAPI is operating. Jepp failed to correctly update the chart. They may have a Jeppesen chart notam on that, I don't know.

Old topo and less old sat photo. Note the houses that were on the topo are gone in the sat photo:

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/a...ps07c2912d.jpg


http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/a...pse2043d13.jpg

In the U.S. an unrestricted VGSI must clear all obstacles 1 degree below the commissioned angle, out to 4 n.m, and with a 15 degree splay. Any restriction to the splay or distance must be published in the FAA's Airport and Facilities Directory.

This PAPI has no published restrictions.

Some local new sources have an article about the airport buying property near to the airport.

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- Drive the neighborhoods surrounding the Birmingham Shuttlesworth International Airport and on one stretch you might think you are in the countryside. Wild animals, trees and tall weeds have begun to reclaim city blocks where houses once stood. Streets and alleys have begun to crumble back into the earth. You'll see things out of place - such as a mailbox on a curb but no house.
But then turn a corner, and you are right back in the city, with single family homes and residents waiting for their turn to move.
Since 1986, the Birmingham Airport Authority has purchased thousands of houses in surrounding neighborhoods, where jet engines pollute the air and shake residents awake at night. But other households are left to deal with the noise and pollution - and also the unthinkable, a plane falling from the sky - and wonder why their houses have not been bought.
Barbara Benson, whose home off Treadwell Road was nearly struck by a falling plane on Wednesday, doesn't understand why homes around her have been acquired, but hers, which is the last house a plane flies over before landing, has never been bought.
"Why would they buy every house around us and leave us here?" Barbara Benson asked.




Barbara Benson Describes Hearing A UPS Plane Crash Near Her Birmingham Home BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- Barbara Benson describes hearing a loud boom and red flash as she was awoke from a UPS cargo plane crashing through the trees by her Airports Hills home in Birmingham, Alabama Wednesday August 14, 2013.


The property purchases the airport authority have done are part of a program known as "Part 150," which refers to the section of federal regulations which govern them.The program allows airports to buy nearby properties which, through a study and map, have been determined to be affected by airplane noise.
The airport authority submitted its study in 2005 to the Federal Aviation Administration identifying more than 600 single-family residences, two multi-family residences, three churches and a school, according to airport authority information.
At that time, the study estimated the purchases would cost $80 million spread out over several fiscal years, with federal matches covering about 95 percent of the cost.
Information publicly available on the airport's website - which airport officials said is up-to-date - shows that in phases since 2009, the airport has purchased at least 570 properties. It is unclear how many more properties are left to be purchased.
The airport authority did not provide further comment on the program.
"We are reserving comment at this time to allow NTSB to complete their investigation of Flight 1354," spokeswoman Toni Herrera-Bast said in a statement.
But for airport neighborhood residents, how the airport authority defines an affected neighborhood and how they define "affected" differ.
Tyrone Reed, who lives about a block away from Benson, said that the airport has yet to make an offer on his house, too.
"She called me at work and after she told me what happened she said, 'Now are you ready to move?'" Reed said.
Reed said that in the last three weeks, he had seen more planes flying low into the north-south runway.
"On Saturday I was sitting on the porch, and I saw one fly right over Mrs. Benson's home so low, I didn't think it was going to make it," he said.
Reed had just started his shift at ACIPCO, when UPS Flight 1354 crashed Wednesday, but his wife, Letita Reed, was awake and at home when the plane crashed. She was close enough that she heard what sounded like engines sputtering before a series of explosions, he said.
"She called me at work and after she told me what happened she said, 'Now are you ready to move?'" Reed said.
Reed said that after Wednesday, he is ready.
Since 1989, Birmingham city council woman Kim Rafferty had owned a home on 90th Street until the Airport Authority bought it from her in June. For Rafferty, relocating was an end to a decades-long struggle with the airport, but when Flight 1354 went down on Wednesday she spent three hours responding to phone calls and texts from friends and former neighbors.
According to Rafferty, the airport's acquisition of property has lacked transparency, and many homeowners never know whether their houses are slated for buyouts until they receive a letter of intent in the mail.
"It says that someone is going to come by your house and you need to work with them," she says. "Then some guy comes by to do an appraisal and about five or six months later, they make you an offer."
The airport has not been using eminent domain in recent years, Rafferty said. But homeowners are left with only once choice - accept the offer the airport gives you or be left behind as the homes around you deteriorate and are eventually demolished.
Homeowners who aren't made offers by the airport can have even worse problems, she said. While she lived in the Roebuck neighborhood, her home was burglarized three times. Many homeowners move away and rent the homes they leave behind, creating a lack of cohesion and community there, she said.
The airport's strategy, according to Rafferty, has been to create a blight barrier between itself and the surrounding neighborhoods, rather than reintegrating itself into those communities.
"In their whole history they have not done one thing to meld with the community that is around them," she said. "All they have done has been (noise) mediation or their expansion programs."
Birmingham City Hall has little control over the airport authority, other than appointing board members, and there has not been a cooperative effort to address neighborhood issues, Rafferty said.
While Rafferty has ties to those neighborhoods, Councilwoman Maxine Parker represents that district. When UPS Flight 1354 clipped power lines and treetops on Treadwell Road, Parker's campaign signs were mixed among the debris.
Once the crash investigation concludes, Parker said, she would like to host community meetings along with the Birmingham Airport Authority to hear those residents' concerns and to learn what more needs to be done to help them.
According to Parker, the city and airport need to do more to help those residents with their concerns, especially how low planes are allowed to fly over those neighborhoods.
"I had no idea that planes were going as low as they are until I talked to residents out there today," she said. "The airport needs to do something about that."
AL.com reporter Mike Smith contributed reporting for this article.
This article was edited at 10:40 to correct the neighborhood where Kim Rafferty lived. Her house was in the Roebuck neighborhood, not Airport Hills.

I wonder if runway 18 was in existence when Ms Benson bought her house.

I bet it was.

One doubts the neighbourhood would be named "Airport Hills" if there wasn't already an aerodrome somewhere nearby. :=

I wonder if runway 18 has just recently been used for larger aircraft, as Tyrone Reed indicates in the article? Someone mentioned, earlier in the thread, that runway 18 was usually used for General Aviation. Maybe the airport felt like they've cleared out enough houses, where they don't need to worry so much about noise abatement, so they are using it to land bigger aircraft. Landing on runway 18, may be like landing at a different airport for even crews very experienced at landing in Birmingham, since they come in from a different direction, and Birmingham has varied terrain, having not only hills, with coal, lime, and Iron ore, for Iron and steel production, but navigable rivers for barges to transport it, that made it a steel boom town in the first place. The Magic City, as it popped out of nowhere, except a railway crossroads, when the Bessemer process of mass producing Iron was brought there . Even though it isn't perfect, it's sounds like the buyout of homes, to clear a path, is going comparatively well (compared to clearing for a roadway, for instance). I'm surprised that the funds to buy the houses, haven't been somehow diverted for the City of Birmingham's use. They've had some financial difficulties; ya know. Sorry, I digress.

Reply to JC

I do not know if your calculation are correct, but your observation is.
I had to do several years ago the same approach at night ( 6/24 close for repair at night ) flying an ATR for a freight company.
The last 1/2 to 1 mile you litteraly buze the hill all the ways down to the RWY. It is like doing a low flyby over a downhill slope to the rwy.
Landing on 18 , is like landing at the bottom of a bowl.

The glide path is already steeper than normal = landing long will be a given, shallowing the path and you get extremely close to the ground.
if you are high on approach you will absolutely land long on a down slope rwy ( not the best scenarion for an heavy).

Seems improbable, doesn't it? Maybe the namers were psychic.

His calculations are wrong at least in one respect - he incorrectly assumes that glidepath is calculated to the runway threshold, but in fact it should be calculate to a touchdown zone - usually around 1000-1500 ft from runway threshold.

M609,

Interesting. Looking at ENDU on Google Earth it actually looks like they have cut a trail through the forest under the approach path ?

BOAC,

That is according to the elevation function on Google Earth. Not sure how accurate it is ? When you cross check it with the known point of elevation for the airport is it bang on. (+/- 0 feet).

The highest point of terrain within 1 nm of the theshold appears to be at a distance of 3527 feet (0.58nm), 256 feet to the right of the extended centerline, at 844 feet asl. Exactly 200 feet above the runway threshold elevation of 644 feet.

I now see the PAPI's are set a 3.20 degrees. Using a TCH of 48 feet, a 3.20 degree glidepath would put you at 889 feet asl. when 3527 feet from the threshold. (tan(3.20) x 3527 + 644 + 48). So it would appear that on the PAPI's and just slightly right of the centerline would clear the hill by 55 feet (not counting how far your landing gear extends, or at exactly what angle (altitude) the PAPI's change from 2 white to one white).

Unless these elevation figures from Google Earth are wrong (?) I'm very surprised such an approach could be certified for night operations with a PAPI set a 3.20 degrees ?

This is all somewhat accademic to the accident because they flew into the trees 1.0nm from the threshold then impacted the ground at an elevation of around 750 feet agl at a point around 0.8nm from the threshold.

Still it would seem to make for an interesting approach. As anyone on the forum here actually flown this approach at night ?

Carbon Bootprint (Great name, BTW), Maybe they picked out the location of the airport, because they figured, it was a good omen, that there was a neighborhood called "Airport Hills" near by!:) Of course, the airport is probably there since the '20's or '30's, and might not have been such a noisy place for the surrounding neighborhoods, since it may not have extended out so much, or had noisy jets. Of course, in the olden days, living near a noisy airport was a comfort zone, compared to working in a steel mill for many the residents. Also, I couldn't imagine a developer calling a new sub-division "Airport Hills" nowadays, but back then, you were Thoroughly Modern Milly, if your neighborhood had the word "Airport" in it. You could remind the ladies, in the Junior League, that is where you lived, and they'd be pea green with envy!

Some important points-

Sooeet's flight path analysis of Asiana 214 coincides perfectly with the FDR data released by the NTSB which makes me think that Sooeet's analysis of UPS 1354 is also correct.

The NTSB report on FedEx 1478 basically says that the TLH accident was caused by crew error attributed to all 3 crew, and that black hole conditions may have been a contributing factor, as were crew fatigue and physiological factors, but that PAPI was indicating plain bright and simple FOUR-RED, and that the reason PAPI exists is to prevent these types of accidents, but all 3 crew overlooked the PAPI cues. And a similar thing probably happened to both pilots of UPS 1354.

What's wrong with this picture? Poor crew training? Overworked crews? It looks like a systemic problem if the recent rash of large airplanes falling out of the sky is any indication. The public has a right to know.

Reading NTSB accident reports many months after the accident is fine well and good, but I want to know what happened to UPS 1354 now, to the extent possible. I see no good reason to ignore all sources of information, and I will also read the NTSB AAR on UPS 1354 when it comes out many months from now.

More information is a good thing. We are talking about very serious public safety issues here. Just ask the hundreds of people whose houses are directly under or near the approach path to runway 18 at BHM.

His calculations look fine to me. He computes from the threshold, but he uses the published 48 ft threshold crossing height.

JimField:

They owe their city a debt of gratitude for buying all the houses they did.

If the city had done nothing homes would have been hit as shown on my old topo map.

Nothing particular unusual about it, there are many airports with similar "hills" in immediate runway vicinity (for example RNO). The important point is that minimum vis for this approach is 1 mile so they would clearly see all the obstacles well in advance.

Just a suggestion. How about you stop referring to "Sooeet" in the third person like you're an unbiased third party defending them with no self interest? It is abundantly clear to everyone that you are in fact "Sooeet" and pretending otherwise makes you look immature and dishonest.

JC read 3 post above yours.

I have done that approach LOC 18 ( no vertical guidance, doing the down step fix ) couple years ago and probably my past employer flew that same ATR 2hrs prior UPS using LOC 18.


And yes it is an " interesting approach " day or night !!!!!