Half pipe installation planned for Jackson airport runway

[Tye 1on]

An Airbus A380, the largest passenger plane in the world, wows its payload of 700 passengers by executing a 5-0 truckstand grind upon its first landing in the new half-pipe runway at Jackson Hole Airport.
News&Guide Photo / Illustrated by Brady Bonehead

http://www.jacksonholenews.com/article.php?art_id=2907


Airport picks half-pipe for runway

By Thaddeus P. Rumknuckle, Jackson Hole, Wyo.
April 1, 2008

Because of two jet slide-offs at Jackson Hole Airport, officials have widened the runway and turned up the edges, half-pipe style, to prevent future excursions.

The improvements come after one pilot steered his CRJ-700 off the side of the airstrip, fearing he would not be able to stop by its end. The second jet, a United flight, went off the side because its brakes had been cross-wired, causing a radical turn when they were applied on landing.

Airport manager Verner von Brownoser said the runway design — arrived at after consultation with the Federal Aviation Administration and Grand Teton National Park, where the airstrip is located — would forever solve the problem of slide-offs.

“The halfpipestrip allows pilots, no matter what ails their planes or judgment and no matter how large their jet, to land without fear,” he said.

“Nobody will ever slide off this runway again,” von Brownoser said Monday after the first Airbus A380, with 700 passengers, landed nonstop from Paris. “The pilot of this giant craft was able to drop in at about 300 mph, launch a five method off the frontside wall, followed by a fakie three – all without looking the least bit sketchy.”

Airport officials had considered widening the runway to address the slide-offs. But conservationists’ opposition to paving more sage grouse habitat scotched that plan. Also considered was a quarter-pipe at one end of the airstrip. But while that would have kept jumbo jets from overshooting the runway, it would not have resolved the sideways problem.

“Following the discovery that United mechanics had cross-wired the brakes on that one jet, we began looking at the big picture,” von Brownoser said. “Suppose they cross-wire the ailerons next, or did the tail so it moved the wrong way. We have to be prepared, and the halfpipestrip does that.”

An added advantage will be in savings to air travelers said Mike Guru, the Dalai Lama of Jackson Hole Air Impossibilities Redefined.

“JH AIR believes airlines can now spend less on pesky maintenance issues and pass those cost reductions on to our visitors and ourselves,” he said. “We are entering an error, er, era, of cheaper, safer aviation in Jackson Hole.”

[3pin]

Nice. It's playing off of this landing, which I was a passenger on: http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/31/news...033112?cnn=yes

Pretty intense to look out your window and see all the runway lights leading away perpendicular to the plane, while sliding down the runway at about 100mph.

[Tye 1on]

Nice. It's playing off of this landing, which I was a passenger on: http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/31/news...033112?cnn=yes

Pretty intense to look out your window and see all the runway lights leading away perpendicular to the plane, while sliding down the runway at about 100mph.

No shit! Friends said looking out the window and seeing flames near the engine is pretty sobering too

[3pin]

No shit! Friends said looking out the window and seeing flames near the engine is pretty sobering too

Yup... I was sitting over the wing with that engine 10 feet away from me. That got everyone moving.

[FrankZappa]

If they had just installed the runway treadmill in the first place, none of this would've ever happened!

That'll be the true end of the Hole. It'll be completely over run by park rAtZ. I can see it now..... Hoback halfpipes, Corbet's halfpipe....RAP music. Uughhh!

[truckeelocal]

French did it first ...



Courchevel.