This is the aircraft which crashed at Birmingham, pictured at Louisville back in 2010. Photo: RampBoss – OPShots Contributor //
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Landing on Runway 18 at Birmingham Shuttlesworth International Airport can be tricky for pilots, particularly ones flying big jets like the UPS cargo carrier that crashed this week, killing two people.
With a large hill and trees at one end, the runway lacks the electronics for a full instrument landing. That forces pilots to make key judgments about altitude while aiming a descending aircraft at a runway that’s 5,000 feet shorter than the airport’s main runway, which was closed for maintenance work at the time of the crash.
Some pilots simply avoid landing on 18 when possible, an expert said.
“When I heard they were using Runway 18, it caught my attention because of that hill,” Ross Aimer, a veteran commercial pilot, said Friday. “It’s sad, but it didn’t surprise me.”
Aimer, a retired United Airlines captain, is now chief executive of Aero Consulting Experts, a firm based in Los Angeles.
via Runway where UPS plane crashed known as tricky – Yahoo! Finance.
