Air Traffic Monitoring > Aviation Audio Clips
Mooney lands gear-up at Syracuse, NY
KSYR-pjr:
"Mooney lands gear-up at Syracuse, NY," or "Why it is important for IFR pilots to be proficient at holding patterns:"
Synopsis:
A serene VFR day at Syracuse, NY, earlier this week. A VFR Mooney (similar to that pictured in the link) checks in with Syracuse approach and is told to land straight in on runway 28. Behind him two commercial airliners are being vectored for approach and another VFR GA aircraft, a Piper, is coming in from the north.
Approach alerts the Mooney to departing helicopter traffic and doesn't receive a response, then attempts to raise him a few more times before taking action. Unbeknown to the controller, the Mooney lost his electrical system at that moment, went NORDO (meaning NO RADio, or lost communications), and more importantly could not lower his gear. He continued inbound (presumably at some point being controlled by the tower's light gun, perhaps?) and then swung around to south to land on rwy 33. I am uncertain if the Mooney actually flew in circles for a few moments as the controller implied in this clip or simply broke off his approach to rwy 28 to land rwy 33, which is also called "circling" in aviation-speak.
Confusion momentarily erupted as the approach controller was unable to ascertain whether the intersection of both runways was blocked, so he had to put both airliners and the other GA aircraft into holding patterns while airport operations inspected the accident scene and the runways.
The clip concludes with a ground-based pilot commenting on the Mooney's ability to hit the centerline.
Clip Information:
The clip has been edited for gaps in communications and non-essential communications, so it is NOT real-time. Even with the edits it is over 8 minutes long. I had to lower the bitrate to get the audio file under the 5 MB limitation here but the quality is still pretty good for a voice-only audio file.
Airport Diagram:
Note that my depiction of the Mooney's approach is estimated but it should give you a general idea of the direction of landing, where he touched down, and where he came to rest (the star on the diagram) in relation to the runway intersection.
koni:
Nice catch! :-) Thanks for posting
davolijj:
It always amazes me how much a situation like this can increase a controller's workload. The South Arrival controller was literally working 2 airplanes (plus the NORDO Mooney), the North controller had 1 VFR, and both controllers had plenty to do on and off the frequency. Now just imagine this happening at a busier place like LGA, ATL, or ORD, with a dozen aircraft to put into holding.
PJ, I was in SYR all last week and left Wednesday morning. I see there's no preliminary NTSB report, when did this incident happen?
Hollis:
This happened on 8/14/07 @ 2215Z.
Pilot was the only one on board.
KSYR-pjr:
--- Quote from: davolijj on August 17, 2007, 12:44:14 PM ---PJ, I was in SYR all last week and left Wednesday morning. I see there's no preliminary NTSB report, when did this incident happen?
--- End quote ---
Yep, Hollis has it correct. Happened last Tuesday evening. I first read of this incident through the local news website, but they didn't list the time of the incident. Consequently I had to email a friend who works at a competing local TV station to see if he could get the time before I started digging through the archives.
Edit: Speaking of workload, it is interesting to note in the clip how the controller's voice raises a bit as the incident unfolds, which seems to indicate a higher workload.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version