Flying in Dramatic Style

Recently, I have had the rare opportunity to travel frequently. In addition to the trip to Virginia we took as a family in April, I made four trips to the Bay Area over the course of three weeks thanks to a case in which I became entangled very late in the game. I had the opportunity to sample an interesting variety of travel options: different airports, airlines, ground transportation and travel times. Of the many conclusions I could draw, here’s the one I confirmed first: for all of its convenience for being our local airport, I detest landing at the Burbank Airport (officially known as the Bob Hope Airport).

I have probably now taken more flights into and out of Burbank than any other airport. I have had more rough landings than anywhere else, as well. Two such landings were hard enough to result in overhead bins flying open; the first of those events caused my daughter to fear flying for several years (she has only now reached the point of tolerating airplane flights). I assumed my odd landing experiences were merely a consequence of the fact that I have taken more flights through there, or because I fly Southwest a lot, but my research suggests that there may be reasons why landing at Burbank really is a white knuckle ride.

The Burbank Airport is not a large place. The terminal is relatively small, and one comes to discover that the airfield itself is not particularly expansive. Jammed into a densely populated urban area, none of the approaches to the runways include empty green space. The typical landing pattern is to approach from the west across the vast expanse of buildings, freeways and roads that is the entire San Fernando Valley. The long, slow approach is often complicated by buffeting winds that come from the north, which on bad days form the famed (and feared) Santa Ana winds. On final approach, the aircraft swoops over a series of low industrial buildings, a street, and suddenly, there is the runway. Just as suddenly, the airplane should be on the ground, reverse thrusters and gear brakes on full. The Southwest pilots will often yank the airplane directly into the gate (perpendicular to and immediately adjacent to the runway) as it is still on rollout from the landing. Whee!

Even worse are the landings from the north, which bring the airplane in very close alongside a hill and over more industrial buildings on a steep glide path. This typically leads to a very hard landing and rollout, particularly for the Southwest pilots, who try to stop their airplanes before they overshoot the taxiway to the terminal to the left, effectively shortening the runway by 1000 feet or so. To put this in perspective, here is an overhead view (north to the top) of the airfield. The Southwest terminal is to the right; the United/American terminal is in the lower part of the image.

Why do I feel increasingly anxious about landing at Burbank? Why is it so often as exciting and bumpy as an amusement park roller coaster? Why are landings at other airports such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, or even small regional airports like Oakland and San Jose, so much more relaxed?

It’s not an illusion: size matters.

Here are some images of LAX, the San Francisco Airport, the San Jose Airport, and the Oakland Airport. All of them are on the same level of magnification as the Burbank image above. Notice a difference? They are all substantially larger than the Burbank airfield. FAA data backs this up. While the main runways at San Francisco and San Jose are each at least 11,000 feet, Oakland's runway is 10,000 feet, and LAX has runways of 13,000, 12,000, 10,000 and 8,900 feet, the Burbank Airport’s main landing runway is only 5,800 feet. The north-south runway is only marginally better at just under 6,900 feet. It is no wonder, then, that a Southwest jet ran off the end of the runway in a heavy rainstorm in March 2000, coming to rest mere feet from a gas station across the street from the airport.

So the next time you fly into our fair region, try not to think about how your pilot has half the distance to bring your airplane out of the sky and to a halt that he would have at almost any other major airport. If they bring the plane down hard, there is a reason.

(Cool site discovered during the composition of this entry: www.airnav.com)