AvTalk Episode 309: Tower, how’d that happen?

AvTalk - Aviation Podcast

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4.8 • 911 Ratings

🗓️ 28 February 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On this week’s episode of AvTalk, a tale of 3 go arounds. We first visit Chicago, where a Southwest pilot made the quick decision to go around as an unauthorized aircraft crossed the runway. Then we visit San Francisco where an Asiana Airlines A350 descended too low as it approached SFO and went around. And then we end up in Washington DC, where sometimes a go around is just a go around.
Also on this week’s episode, more than two dozen aviation industry groups are banding together to call for increased and regular funding of the FAA. ANA makes a surprise and surprising aircraft order. Russia’s government is passing a law to legalize the production of counterfeit aircraft parts. And it might be possible to spend 11 hours in a 737 MAX this summer thanks to Iberojet.
Helpful links for this week’s episode

* Midway go around ADS-B data + ATC audio
* Asiana low altitude alert and go around
* Industry group letter on FAA funding
* BBC article regarding a death on board

Thank you for listening!
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Please click here for a transcript of this week’s episode.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to episode 309 of AvTalk.
0:13.0	I am Ian Petchnik here, as always with Jason Rabinowitz.
0:17.6	And Ian, does it feel like this month has been the longest year of your life so
0:22.4	far? Sure does. All right, that's episode 309. Thanks for listening. So I put together
0:32.9	an internal weekly brief and I usually try to give them kind of a pithy title just so I can keep my sanity a little bit. And this week was a forward looking one where I said, hopefully it's just a regular week this week.
0:51.8	Spoiler. It's only Wednesday. And it's not been the case. There is big
0:56.3	30 rock energy in this podcast today. We are definitely only Wednesday limited. Ian, it's only
1:02.5	Wednesday. Yeah. So let's get into it. All right. Take it from the top. We'll work our
1:08.8	way down and we'll have some good things, some fun things. There are some good things. There are some good things. And there's some weird stuff that we really got to figure out if we're taking a trip to fly because that's, we'll get there. We'll get to it. In Chicago, no less, on the morning of Tuesday, so yesterday, the 25th of February, a flexjet
1:30.1	Challenger 350 crossed the runway in front of a Southwest Airlines 737 that was in the process
1:37.9	of landing.
1:39.0	The Southwest 737 initiated a go-around from a very low altitude, low enough that it was within the
1:46.5	margin of error of ADSB altitude data, which is 25 feet. So somewhere between 0 and 25 feet
1:54.6	is how close the 737 is not.
1:56.4	It seems like it was closer to zero than closer to 25 looking at that video.
2:00.8	There was no smoke from the tires, but you could almost feel them touching down.
2:06.3	I said closer to zero. Definitely not zero. But it was, I think, as close as anyone wants to get.
2:13.1	Any closer, it would have been a touch and go. So let's break down what happened. And how do we know it happened? I think it's an interesting twist I want to talk about a little bit. Sure. So Midway has often been described as the busiest square mile in the world. And at one point, Midway Airport in Chicago was, in fact,
2:35.9	the busiest airport in the world and held that title for many, many years until O'Hare opened
2:42.3	and all the traffic left, and that's a whole other history in and of itself. But Midway has
2:48.4	since recovered and become basically, you could call it Southwest Airport,
2:54.1	and everyone would forgive you for calling it that. But it does do a brisk business jet business.
	...

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