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http://www.airnav.com/airport/KPDX
Runway 3/21

That's a 5,000 foot runway: https://www.airnav.com/airport/KHHR. That's quite long actually - for comparison, LaGuardia in NYC only has 7,000 foot runways. 5kft isn't enough for a hundred-person passenger jet (well maybe, if you're light) but lots of private jets are just fine.

Most of the numbers that are immediately available are max takeoff weight (MTOW), you'd have to go into the POH to get the numbers for lower weights. The bigger private jets may need to not take off with full fuel, but they won't normally do that anyway except in rare circumstances - you'd generally only carry enough fuel for the flight and legal reserve, plus a generous safety margin on top, since it costs fuel and speed to carry excess fuel. You'd want full fuel if you were going somewhere far away but that's only a factor if your destination was makeable safely with full fuel, but not makeable without - otherwise you have to land somewhere in the middle anyway and it doesn't matter how much fuel you have as long as you can make it midway (and you'd probably not carry too much extra beyond midway fuel for the above reasons).

Cause either planes have windows in the floor or they take off upside down now.

You do realize that the pilots have a really good reason to be able to see the ground from where they sit in an airplane, right? Like, to be able to land, to be able to identify landmarks below them, etc. While instrument approaches are really convenient, unfortunately they tend to slow down the rate at which an airport can handle incoming aircraft, It is much faster to clear an aircraft for "the visual approach", which means they have to 1) see the airport, and 2) see ground reference points that may be part of the approach. For example, Mill Visual 28 approach is based on several visual landmarks.

I just done see how a plane at a 45 degree angle or higher at takeoff

Aircraft are not at a 45 degree angle or higher while taking off. During flight they will be at an even lower angle.

According to AirNav, La Guardia handles around 1013 aircraft operations a day; that's 1013 takeoffs and landings per day. Compare to JFK, which handles 1232 aircraft operations a day with twice as many runways, or Newark, with 1098 aircraft operations a day.

The airport might suck and may or may not be inconvenient, but it is handling far more traffic than can be diverted to another existing airport. You could expand another existing airport to handle the excess traffic--but where? Teterboro? Caldwell in Essex County? Long Island Mac Arthur?

And the entire industry is moving away from long haul flights to shorter regional hops, meaning traffic operations are only going to increase. So assuming you can just divert all the flights to JFK and Newark isn't going to work; split the number of flights between the two and now you have two airports handling about the same amount of traffic as LAX, with 1741 flights/day. So even if we assume those airports can handle the increase in traffic, that pretty much will max out both airports and prevent future expansion.

Hong Kong International took nearly a decade to construct, in a regulatory environment which makes it easy to steamroll in large infrastructure projects. So constructing a new airport near Rikers Island is not going to happen over a weekend.

And if you did go the Hong Kong route, you may be better off spending the money, moving everything off Rikers Island, and expanding the airport by paving Rikers and adding two additional runways, modernizing La Guardia, and extending the subway system to run out to the terminals there.

According to AirNav, La Guardia handles around 1013 aircraft operations a day; that's 1013 takeoffs and landings per day. Compare to JFK, which handles 1232 aircraft operations a day with twice as many runways, or Newark, with 1098 aircraft operations a day.

The airport might suck and may or may not be inconvenient, but it is handling far more traffic than can be diverted to another existing airport. You could expand another existing airport to handle the excess traffic--but where? Teterboro? Caldwell in Essex County? Long Island Mac Arthur?

And the entire industry is moving away from long haul flights to shorter regional hops, meaning traffic operations are only going to increase. So assuming you can just divert all the flights to JFK and Newark isn't going to work; split the number of flights between the two and now you have two airports handling about the same amount of traffic as LAX, with 1741 flights/day. So even if we assume those airports can handle the increase in traffic, that pretty much will max out both airports and prevent future expansion.

Hong Kong International took nearly a decade to construct, in a regulatory environment which makes it easy to steamroll in large infrastructure projects. So constructing a new airport near Rikers Island is not going to happen over a weekend.

And if you did go the Hong Kong route, you may be better off spending the money, moving everything off Rikers Island, and expanding the airport by paving Rikers and adding two additional runways, modernizing La Guardia, and extending the subway system to run out to the terminals there.

According to AirNav, La Guardia handles around 1013 aircraft operations a day; that's 1013 takeoffs and landings per day. Compare to JFK, which handles 1232 aircraft operations a day with twice as many runways, or Newark, with 1098 aircraft operations a day.

The airport might suck and may or may not be inconvenient, but it is handling far more traffic than can be diverted to another existing airport. You could expand another existing airport to handle the excess traffic--but where? Teterboro? Caldwell in Essex County? Long Island Mac Arthur?

And the entire industry is moving away from long haul flights to shorter regional hops, meaning traffic operations are only going to increase. So assuming you can just divert all the flights to JFK and Newark isn't going to work; split the number of flights between the two and now you have two airports handling about the same amount of traffic as LAX, with 1741 flights/day. So even if we assume those airports can handle the increase in traffic, that pretty much will max out both airports and prevent future expansion.

Hong Kong International took nearly a decade to construct, in a regulatory environment which makes it easy to steamroll in large infrastructure projects. So constructing a new airport near Rikers Island is not going to happen over a weekend.

And if you did go the Hong Kong route, you may be better off spending the money, moving everything off Rikers Island, and expanding the airport by paving Rikers and adding two additional runways, modernizing La Guardia, and extending the subway system to run out to the terminals there.

According to AirNav, La Guardia handles around 1013 aircraft operations a day; that's 1013 takeoffs and landings per day. Compare to JFK, which handles 1232 aircraft operations a day with twice as many runways, or Newark, with 1098 aircraft operations a day.

The airport might suck and may or may not be inconvenient, but it is handling far more traffic than can be diverted to another existing airport. You could expand another existing airport to handle the excess traffic--but where? Teterboro? Caldwell in Essex County? Long Island Mac Arthur?

And the entire industry is moving away from long haul flights to shorter regional hops, meaning traffic operations are only going to increase. So assuming you can just divert all the flights to JFK and Newark isn't going to work; split the number of flights between the two and now you have two airports handling about the same amount of traffic as LAX, with 1741 flights/day. So even if we assume those airports can handle the increase in traffic, that pretty much will max out both airports and prevent future expansion.

Hong Kong International took nearly a decade to construct, in a regulatory environment which makes it easy to steamroll in large infrastructure projects. So constructing a new airport near Rikers Island is not going to happen over a weekend.

And if you did go the Hong Kong route, you may be better off spending the money, moving everything off Rikers Island, and expanding the airport by paving Rikers and adding two additional runways, modernizing La Guardia, and extending the subway system to run out to the terminals there.

30 years and airports will be underwater? I'm willing to believe man has an effect on the climate, but alarmist crap like this doesn't help your cause. Did John Kerry start working for the dot?

I can see some airports being under water in 30 years if time suddenly fast-forwarded. Take SFO for example: the runway is just above sea level. YVR is another coastal airport in the same situation. If we fast-forwarded 30 years, the runways could end up under water during extreme high tides -- ASSUMING NO DIKES OR BACKFILLING IS DONE IN THE MEANTIME.

Considering the fact that most airports lay new tarmac in that amount of time, all they'd have to do is make it a bit thicker next time and this is no longer an issue.

So yeah; it's reasonable until you factor in the fact that other things change over time too.

SFO is at 4 meters; YVR is at 4.3 meters. Maximum tides at both locations are about 2.1 meters. Meaning in the next 30 years we'd need to see about 2 meters of sea-level rise. That would be about 6.6 meters per century. Given we're looking at about 3.3mm per year, it would take about 2000 years to put those airports below high tide levels. I think the 30 year estimate isn't quite there...

30 years and airports will be underwater? I'm willing to believe man has an effect on the climate, but alarmist crap like this doesn't help your cause. Did John Kerry start working for the dot?

I can see some airports being under water in 30 years if time suddenly fast-forwarded. Take SFO for example: the runway is just above sea level. YVR is another coastal airport in the same situation. If we fast-forwarded 30 years, the runways could end up under water during extreme high tides -- ASSUMING NO DIKES OR BACKFILLING IS DONE IN THE MEANTIME.

Considering the fact that most airports lay new tarmac in that amount of time, all they'd have to do is make it a bit thicker next time and this is no longer an issue.

So yeah; it's reasonable until you factor in the fact that other things change over time too.

SFO is at 4 meters; YVR is at 4.3 meters. Maximum tides at both locations are about 2.1 meters. Meaning in the next 30 years we'd need to see about 2 meters of sea-level rise. That would be about 6.6 meters per century. Given we're looking at about 3.3mm per year, it would take about 2000 years to put those airports below high tide levels. I think the 30 year estimate isn't quite there...

Sure Boca Chica has the latitude, but I think the Navy's still using it.

No, but it *does* grant the right to travel. ... only accessible by air (or dog team, *if* it's winter and you've got two weeks to get where you're going). Therefore, in effect, by denying access to the airlines without a search, you have essentially denied the right of travel without forfeiting your right to be free from searches ...

(1) I'm pretty sure the "right to travel" was written at least a couple of days before a couple of bicycle shop owners dragged their spruce-and-muslin contraption out to a North Carolina beach... Got horse? Feet?

(2) I fly all the time, without involving an 'airline' or TSA. It's not a great deal harder to get a pilot's license than a driver's license, and the rental costs per hour (per Hobbs, or 'engine,' hour, not per hour that you have the aircraft, though depending on the FBO there may be minimums) are comparable to flying commercially. PABE serves Bethel and supports GA operations...

The standard instrument arrival (STAR) and standard instrument departure (SID) routes can be viewed at the bottom of this page for Miami International http://www.airnav.com/airport/KMIA I have no idea how up to date they are, but you can bet there won't be any drones getting in the way, or heads are gonna roll.

Yeah, but the test was in a Cessna Caravan. That's hardly an "average" Cessna; it's a 14-passenger, 8750 pound (that's just shy of 4000 kilograms for everyone outside of the U.S.), 675 H.P. kerosene burner. It's a jet that has a prop attached to the pointy end :)

According to airnav.com, Jet-A at Lancaster, CA is $3.92 per gallon. The Caravan burns approximately 55 gallons per hour (there's a lot more to it in reality, but that's a close enough approximation for now). Soooo...:

$3.92 x 55 = $215.60/hour
$215.60 x 24 = $5174.40/day
$5174.40 x 365 = $1,888,656/year

So, just shy of $2M per year, not including the airplane itself, the pilot costs, or maintenance (which any airplane owner will tell you makes fuel costs look trivial, although the PT6-A engine is relatively bulletproof).

There is really no need for this alarmism.

I am a general aviation pilot with about 800 hours and nothing you saw is the slightest bit out of the ordinary. The "3-5 miles" is the lateral separation for two aircraft in cruise flight at the same altitude. As long as you're separated vertically by at least 1,000' (which the first aircraft pic clearly was - probably 3000' above you, in fact), there is no lateral separation requirement at all. Many times, I'll fly directly under or over a commercial jet, which is fine since the controller knows we're at different altitudes.

Your second picture pretty clearly shows you on approach to an airport - SLC. Salt Lake City has parallel runways (see http://www.airnav.com/airport/SLC) and under certain conditions, to improve airport capacity, simultaneous parallel approaches are allowed. That is, two aircraft simultaneously landing on parallel runways. This is perfectly safe because the aircraft aren't just randomly cruising around; they're being held to extremely tight lateral guidance by the runways' Instrument Landing Systems (ILS) so they don't conflict.

And, finally, at any time, during any phase of flight -- as long as you're not in a cloud -- a controller can always have the following conversation with a pilot:

ATC: You have traffic, 11 o'clock, 4 miles, 8,000 feet, moving northbound. Report him in sight.
Pilot: Traffic in sight.
ATC: Roger, maintain visual separation with that traffic.

Now the two airplanes can get closer than the 5 mile limit; the pilot has reported the other airplane is in sight and is doing "see and avoid" -- basically, the same way you avoid hitting other cars when you're driving.

I hope this has been informative enough for you to, please, stop posting alarmist blog entries saying "Oh my god, look at that plane, it's way too close!" Really, these are all quite normal operations.

Read my post again, and then the one immediately below yours from someone that has done exactly what I described over O'Hare. I was directed to use a perpendicular runway as a point of reference, but even if it is not there, the concept is the same: the area directly above an airport is a transit corridor, but the transiting aircraft must approach and depart the area in a way that remains clear of the traffic that is landing and taking off.

Read the other fellow's post you reference, and then read my post again. Here's his subject:

I would transit MDW at 500 AGL quite frequently

MDW is not ORD. At most airports you can transition directly over the airfield, but ORD is not like most airports because of the sheer amount of traffic and the number of active runways. They have four tower frequencies listed. I have flown around Chicago and the only time I was cleared through was during the middle of a clear night for a touch-and-go.

I'm not intimately familiar with O'Hare's operating rules under IFR, but low overcast can significantly reduce airport capacity.

Do you know why it reduces capacity? Increased separation requirements due to lack of visibility. Remember that in Bravo airspace ATC must maintain sepration between both VFR and IFR traffic and requires a clearance to enter. I've flown near other Bravo airports that are less restrictive due to less traffic / single or parallel active runways, but again, they are not O'Hare.

Have you flown much around crowded Bravo airports?

Last time I checked, jet airplane gas was $.30 per gallon at the airports.

You are off by about an order of magnitude. Prices vary according to location, but even the lowest prices are comparable to regular unleaded. For a list of "great deals", see:

http://airnav.com/fuel/greatdeals/

And to think one of our proper interstellar spaceports (Greater Green River Intergalactic Spaceport) up in Wyoming is only 5800 feet long.

http://www.airnav.com/airport/48U

And then you have exemptions like LAX, where all 4 runways point the same direction. (currently, 069/249 magnetic) that break the +/- 5 degree rule. There are actually 4 parallel runways and not 2 sets of parallel runways pointing slightly different directions. Current standards for naming only go up to 3 parallel runways (Left/Center/Right) An example is Chicago Midway. For LAX, they just gave up and called one set 7/25 and the other 6/24.

http://www.airnav.com/airport/klax

and dont forget the Greater Green River Intergalactic Spaceport. :)

I used to live in Pleasanton, California and would fly out of Livermore into the former Castle Airforce Base in Atwater, CA which was home to 93rd Bombardment Wing's B-52s for almost 30 years (Castle Airport). It's now officially 11,802 by 150, in reality the runway is 13,000 by 300 but they striped it down to reduce maintenance costs. It's an uncontrolled field but it does get some use for flight testing and training and the FBO there does do heavy maintenance so I have shared the pattern with a 737 once and a DC-10 another time. The big empty B-52 hangers are open to walk through - it's interesting looking at the "wash stand" for B-52s. When the Air Force was still there (up through 1997) they used to host the Golden West EAA Fly-Ins - for that they would split the runway in two and use each end at the same time. There's a few 100 acres of paved tarmac and they do routinely close off part of it for road rallys and other driving schools. There's a nice museum on field (Castle Air Museum) and the FBO will shuttle you there for free, the walk is about 1/2 mile. The museum itself runs a few bucks but is worth it.

I did my first 30 hours or so of flying lessons with the USAF aero club at the former Kelly AFB, TX (http://www.airnav.com/airport/KSKF), 11550 x 300'. The club had a strict limit on allowed crosswinds, being something like 8 kts for junior pilots. I tried to argue that by angling across that huge runway I could always get the crosswind component below 8 kts, but they wouldn't hear of it.

You could take off into a breeze on a cold day, climb to pattern altitude, and land without having to make a single turn.

You didn't want to land on the numbers and have to taxi 2 miles in the hot summer heat...

Down here in Louisiana, Chennault Industrial Airpark, a former bomber base, has a 10,701' x 200' runway and is an emergency landing strip for the Shuttle. It already has Boeing and Airbus building planes there; I'd be quite surprised if it doesn't end up as a low-rent alternative to a Florida or Houston-based facility for small-scale spaceflight.

That said, I'm a bit doubtful of the economic impact of spaceflight. As mentioned earlier, to profit you'd be talking charging arms, legs and firstborn kids. It's not like commercial airflight, where freight is a big money-maker. Unless we start shipping stuff from the Moon or Mars, that won't be a factor in spaceflight.

It looks like a phased antenna array. The darker parts that look like a fence are actually shadows. It's located on the grounds of the Elmendorf Air Force Base. Perhaps it is the High Altitude Monitoring Station (HLMS)?

Can anyone think of an airport that has a GPS approach pattern but no ILS?

Hundreds, if not thousands. Large commerical airports have full ILS on most, if not all[1], of their runways and offer precision approaches[2] on them. Most also have Category II or III ILS approaches on some runways, for when visibility is very bad. (Cat IIIC approaches are the holy grail, Ceiling 0, Visibility 0, RVR 0 landings. There are very few Cat IIIC runways in the world right now. I digress.)

But ILS is expensive to maintain and monitor -- and you have to monitor it. A glideslope that isn't right kills people. So, most GA airports have at most one runway that offers full ILS, many don't have any ILS approaches at all.

GPS approaches, however, don't need hardware at the runways. You just publish a path, and install a reciever at the tower to alert you if something's wrong with GPS. Of course, GPS approaches are currently non-precision. The Local Area Augmentation System for GPS promises to change that. It does involve more equipment at the airport, but you don't need equipment at each runway, and monitoring is much simpler (set up a couple of LAAS GPS boxen about, and have them scream loudly if the report a position that differs from true by a certain amount.)

Many current GPS systems have WAAS -- this is built for aircraft enroute, not landing, so it can't be used for precision approaches. Scope out your local airports on AirNav and you'll see that many tiny airports have GPS approaches for all of their runways -- and an increasing number have only GPS approaches. Other approaches need more (and more expensive) hardware at the airport.

1) Runway 4R at ORD, for example, doesn't have a glideslope, only a localizer. ORD doesn't land planes on 4R for a variety of reasons, so installing and maintaining the full ILS isn't worth the cost. The localizer is there for back-course use, typically in missed ILS approaches on 22L.

2) Precision means you have glideslope information, thus, can land in IFR conditions. Non precision approaches are VFR only.

I'm surprised if nobody has asked this question yet -- there seem to be a lot of rural geeks -- but are this class of planes appropriate for commuting?

I live 60 miles from my work, an hour and a half or more each way in Dallas traffic. But my office just happens to be right off the north end of Addison Airport, and I've got eight acres of very flat land that could probably be converted into a short landing strip.

We're going to need a new car soon... why not buy a plane instead? Is this even remotely worth considering? Or will the cost of jet fuel make it just an expensive hobby? And am I just the sort of wannabe Top Gun that the "real" pilots would just as soon stay on the ground?

What about the Green River Intergalactic Spaceport in Wyoming?

With solar like this, I'm not sure why nuclear would need to be brought into the picture.

A quick web search led me to the information that Galena, AK is at about 64.73N. While that is below the Arctic Circle by a couple of degrees, it is not the greatest place on the planet to be planning to heat with solar power.

at airnav.com you can browse by state, search by city, etc...

Of course on a cold day, near sea level, on a paved surface, with 18kts of headwind and no tall obstacles at the end of the runway (powerlines... *shudder*) one might be able to take off in: (flipping to the performance tables in my C172N POH) 556ft!

Also check out AirNav for information about airfields near you, including FBO's on the field, fuel prices (although typically way out of date), etc.

Call me ignorant, but what exactly is SDF

Standiford Field, aka Louisville International Airport.

You could also go down and ride in a replica Wright 'B' flier at the Dayton/Wright Brothers airport. (Near I75-I675 split) Can't miss it, they drew the faces of the brothers on the side of the building!
For $600, (donation to upkeep/rent/etc) they will strap you in the 2nd seat, taxi to one end of the run way, and fly to the other end, and taxi back.
It is 60% original, as the FCC will not allow a fully wooden aircraft to be certified.
They do fly it on rare occasions from their airport to the WPAFB ~30 miles north, and load it into a C-5 (or some other huge plane) for special shows. It was wild seeing this thing rock back and forth as I was driving I-675, seeing is believing!

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration defines the term UNICOM as the radio handle of the managing authority of an airport, usually the airport's Fixed Base Operator (FBO), the airport's local "service station." That use goes back to the earliest days of aviaton radio in the 1920s.

At O'Hare airport UNICOM is on the 122.95 frequency.

Fighting over the first use of the term UNICOM is like fighting over who owns "home page."

...Marriott Marquis Theatre, NYC for October 25th. Ye know, the theatre badly needs some Huffman compression for that day...

Assuming he didn't exaggerate his time door to door, he could easilly do this under two hours.

PDX (Portland International) to BOI (Gowen Field, Boise) is 298.2 nautical miles. Even my slow ass Beech Sundowner can make that trip in under two hours (true airspeed 110 knots, ground speed wind dependent). If he lives relatively close to the airport, and the office at the other end is relatively near, and he flies in a reasonably fast plane, he should have no trouble in getting door to door in a couple of hours.

Of course, bad weather and other factors can cause delays, or force the flight to be cancelled altogether. This is especially true with General Aviation aircraft, which fly at lower altitudes and are more vulnerable to weather en route than higher-flying commuter or corporate jets.