[dixter1]

I had the misfortune of being on flight 2950, June 13th, 2010. Upon approach to SAN, it was clear the pilot was having trouble. The plane was going too fast, and to compensate, the pilot was turning the head of the plane down to lose altitude at high speed. This was unlike any approach I had ever experienced for San Diego.... it is a very dangerous airport in the middle of the city, just over a hill. When we got near the airport, my fears were confirmed... we were several thousand feet too high, and completely missed the airport, flying right over it. The pilot claimed he was too close to some other plane... but it was more likely because he had incorrectly approached the airport.

Basically, I think the behavior of the pilot was negligent. Upon take off the increase in altitude was extremely aggressive, and upon approach to SAN, the speed of the plane was extremely aggressive, frankly endangering everyone's life on board. I am extremely disappointed in Southwest. I do not appreciate my life being handled carelessly, even if it is only my perception that it is so. I am thankful the pilot realized his error and corrected the situation... I would be happier if it never happened.

thedixter1 a gmail

[dixter1]

I just wanted to clarify. After it was clear we were far too high, and to fast to land at SAN, the pilot took further aggressive action: sharply turning the plane upward and increasing speed aggressively. We looped around for a second, far slower pass, and landed correctly. I was scared out of my mind at this point: I felt the pilot was a newbie that had never landed at San Diego before. Frankly, the whole flight I was thinking our pilot was some hot shot fresh off a carrier, the flight seemed so aggressive compared to any others I've been on in recent memory.

I get enough of that behavior on the freeway guys: not desireable in the air.

[jimworcs]

This sounds like a "go around". When an aircraft is landing the sequence is very dependent on a number of factors, which includes the speed of the aircraft in front of you and the time it takes for the plane ahead to exit the runway. If the aircraft ahead of you lands long for example and misses the first exit of the runway, the delay in taxiing could cause the aircraft behind him to "go around". Because the aircraft is configured for landing, the "go around" procedure has a single button which automatically spools up to maximum power, adjusts the flaps, etc.. The effect is dramatic and feels uncomfortable (I have been through it a few times), but it is absolutely not unsafe.

It is equally possible that your hypothesis that the pilot had a "missed approach" is true and had to "go around" but this is also not unsafe. I think you have had an experience which has made you anxious, but I think it is highly unlikely that anything untoward or unsafe was taking place. Incidently, if it did, the airline will know about it and will check. "Go arounds" are reportable incidents and the airline will examine what happened. If the pilot was on an unstable approach, he will certainly be under scrutiny.

[mars6423]

there was a flight landing in Singapore a few days ago on JETSTAR airlines (budget) that was coming in to land but had to pull up again and go around, it was later revealed that the pilot was texting when coming in to land and didnt have the wheels down

[jimworcs]

I heard about that mars.. in fact, I was the first to post that news on pprune, but at the moment their is not any hard evidence, just rumour as to the texting incident. However, the Australia Safety Board are investigating the "go around"... which makes my point. These incidents are routinely investigated. If the pilot made an error or was reckless, he will be found out and be in big trouble.

Go arounds feel very uncomfortable and scary... but they are in fact perfectly safe.

[Jetliner]

Hold on a minute before you go accusing the pilot.

Take a look at this: Flight track log

This is the flight tracking log for your flight. When you took off, you ascended at about 2,000 +/- feet per minute. This looks to be a pretty normal take off. Keep in mind that the rate of ascent is dictated to the pilots by air traffic control. They tell them to climb to a certain altitude and either hold or keep ascending.

The landing approach was not normal, however it's consistent with being too close to another aircraft. At 11:58 and 11:59 he pulled up, then dropped about 9,000 feet. That is pretty sharp. But keep in mind that being too close to another aircraft does not always mean the plane is somewhere next to you, but rather above or below. The two planes may have been on a potential collision course, which is the fault of air traffic control. When this happens there is a system on the plane called TCAS, which means Traffic Collision Avoidance System. When two planes are headed for the same point in space the systems on both planes talk to each other, then the pilots. On one plane it will tell the pilots to pull up, and how much they need to pull up. On the other aircraft (in this case yours) it tells the pilots to descend.

What looks like happened is at 11:58 air traffic control might have seen the potential collision course and had your flight climb to avoid the collision, but TCAS had other plans, and told your flight to descend. Pilots are trained to follow TCAS over the air traffic controller. If they don't do this, it will lead to disaster. If you don't think so, then read this: DHL crash

The short version of what happened there was a DHL cargo plane and a russian passenger plane flying on a collision course. The traffic controller told the russian plane to descend, TCAS told him to climb. He chose to listen to the controller, and the two planes collided since both were descending (DHL did follow his TCAS)

In your case, your plane continued down to 1500 feet, then did the go around. Depending on where all of this occurred, you may have been close enough to the airport that you had to still fly the pattern, then pull up and overfly the airport and circle around due to other traffic in the area. It's also possible that the pilot might have decided to give it a try, but just wasn't able to line it up properly due to the 9,000 foot drop earlier.

What you have to understand is that go around happen very commonly, and just because you haven't experienced this type of descent doesn't mean it's unsafe or that the pilot put you in danger. In fact, there's actually a better chance that you are alive right now to have posted this thread because of the actions of that pilot. I can't say 100% because I wasn't on the flight deck, but #1 neither were you, and #2 the track logs tends to suggest that the pilot was giving you correct information. It may not have been complete info, but that's not uncommon either, since that would take way to long to explain.

[Gromit801]

San Diego is also a problem child airport to fly into. Recall PSA flight 182 and collided with a Cessna while it was on approach into the airport. The terrain, Santa Ana winds, and mass of light aircraft make getting in and out of there an adventure at times.

[dixter1]

So... I guess you might have to be there to "feel" it. I've flown many flights, and many into SAN. I like to think I'm perceptive. I've got two problems with what you guys said above.

1) The flight wasn't coming in around 11:58. Are you sure you have the right log? Or is that some other time-zone? We were arriving closer to 8:58.

2) There were so many strange maneuvers on the flight, that I really think the pilot was too aggressive. For example, upon take-off, the flight took a very aggressive bank to the right, while still climbing, to turn back south again.

This might be "normal", but you might think a guy that whips off the exit ramp, at the "normal" speed of 85, and properly uses his turn signal to move 4 lanes to the left, is "normal".

I don't.

I don't like to be on a plane that is clearly trying to make up for lost time (the plane arrived late) and then has some problem lining up on an approach.

I don't like to be on a plane that makes a sharp dive to account for some error, perhaps an error caused by a pilot operating so quickly that other planes have trouble reacting.

I don't like to be on an approach to an airport and see us 1000s of feet higher than where we're supposed to be.

Basically, I don't like what happened on this plane. And it is my perception that it was caused by the aggressive shoot-from-the-hip behavior of a younger pilot.

Frankly, I don't care if the "fault" can be pointed to air-traffic control. I bet there were plenty of things the pilot could have done, much more cautionary, to ensure the situation never happened.

[dixter1]

Thanks for the other comments. I'm happy to know that "go arounds" are investigated.

[dixter1]

Looked at the link provided by Jetliner. NICE. But... it kinda confirms what I was saying. Look at the same flight a week earlier. The speed was much less aggressive on the on-set, and during the flight. And the landing was far smoother. I really like that page... it puts a graph to what I was FEELING.

Thanks!

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/S...304Z/KSJC/KSAN

[Jetliner]

The track log is from the flight number you provided. I did forget to mention that the times are listed as eastern time zone (this is clearly listed on the track log.)

And I'm looking at the same flight for the 5th, and you are wrong. Granted that your flight took off at a faster speed, however you have to consider how heavy was your aircraft at takeoff vs that other flight. If it didn't have as many passengers and baggage it will accelerate faster.

Other than that, your flight climbed at a more gradual rate, and in fact took 1 minute longer to reach 30,000. Your flight had a max altitude of 39,000 feet. The other 41,000. This would be the decision of air traffic control.

The fact of the matter is that when your aircraft did it's 9,000 feet drop it still had 19,000+ feet below it. You also were at 1,500 feet when the go around happened. That's actually pretty high for the point of a go around. Usually it's while on short final, about 500 feet or less off the ground. And if a go around is done, it's not a safety issue itself. throttles forward, landing gear up, pull up and go around.

The whole underlying issue here is that you have never worked in aviation (I assume you would have pointed that out by now). I have. So you analogy of whipping off the expressway at 85 MPH is quite misguided.

Even if you fly VERY regularly the chances of you actually being in a go around are very slim. And I think you are very out of line to title your post that you almost crashed, when in fact you were nowhere near crashing, and the track log proves that. It might have been scary to you, as you said it's a perception thing, but the fact is your takeoff was not that eventful according to the numbers, and the quick drop in altitude immediately following a sudden ascent indicates that TCAS went off.

Your plane was late. All of 12 minutes. Sorry, but there is no way that any pilot is going to fly like that just because they are 12 minutes late. It wouldn't matter if they wanted to. They can only fly so fast at each stage of the flight, and that is dictated to them by air traffic control.

[The_Judge]

Technically.....if a flight arrives within 14 minutes of the scheduled time.......the DOT considers it an on-time arrival. That could have changed but last I knew, this was the case.

So, the flight wasn't late arriving, it was on-time.

[jimworcs]

Perhaps what this does highlight is the need for the captain to talk to the passengers about what has been going on, and provide reassurance. I have been on two go arounds, one in particular, very close to the ground. It is a frightening experience and many people who fly are anxious already. A bit of judicious reassurance would not go amiss.

[eAAgleguy]

Dixter, are you a pilot? Have you had any training as a pilot? What was the weight of the aircraft that day? What flap setting was used? What was the temperature? What were the winds at the altitude your complaint was made? What were the winds on the ground? How exactly do you know the difference between thousands of feet of altitude without an altimeter? You say you almost crashed...if you were "several thousand feet too high" what did you almost crash into? The pilot increased the altitude aggressively...you do realize that you have to pitch up to get away from the stuff you crash into, right? And you do realize that there are mountains all around the SJC and SAN airports, right? Personally I would appreciate the pilot looking out for me and climbing quickly away from the mountains.

Aviation is filled with humans who are capable of making mistakes. Whether it was ATC or the pilot or someone else who messed up (if someone did mess up), be happy that they didn't try to salvage the approach and end up sliding off the far end of the runway. Maybe the pilot was flying differently to get you and everyone else to SAN quicker.

Don't fly SW or don't get on a late airplane next time. If you decide not to fly SW, please don't fly AA because I don't want to have any chance of running into a passenger like you. You're the type of person who will ask if it's really safe to go like we're going to do something to risk not getting home to our family at the end of our trip (there's no eye-rolling emoticon).

Please don't try to speak intelligently about something of which you have ZERO knowledge. If you're uncomfortable with what the airplane is doing, just flex your stomach like you did when you'd get beaten up in high school.