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Re: How to do an "S turn"...
October 30, 2010
5:52 pm
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Chuck Slusarczyk Jr.

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The Saturday evening arrival bank is usually a tight knit affair and as such, you don't want to lose your place in line lest you have to break it off and try the approach again!  One way of dealing with too much speed or getting too tightly spaced by the tower is to perform "S turns" while on final.  Usually a single deviation off the localizer and back will do the trick, but I've seen it done more than once!

Today, I caught this Continental 737 doing one of these approaches to keep it safely separated between the Chautauqua E-145 and the Colgan Dash 8 Q-400 behind.  As usual, the maneuver was performed successfully and no one had to break off their approaches.

Not great shots, but kinda fun to see!

October 30, 2010
6:06 pm
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Mark Plumley
Garfield Heights

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Indeed this is classic and pretty normal procedure. It is still fun to watch. Love it when they are doing that and also do a sidestep last second. I have seen that a few times.

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October 30, 2010
6:08 pm
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Corey Betke
Cleveland, OH

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Cool, thanks for sharing.  Kinda looks like he was stuffed in a gap and was sent across for spacing, luckily there was a slower Dash 8 behind him.

October 30, 2010
7:09 pm
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New Flyer C40LF
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Ive seen that before a few years back at CLE. Ive never spotted any planes S-turn'in come'in into ATL but i have seen then side step from one runway to the other at the last second. Giving a near mile separation between one pair of runways to the other, its impressive watch'in an MD-88 or 757 do that.

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October 30, 2010
7:49 pm
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seluryar
Akron Ohio

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would something like this show up on flightaware?

October 30, 2010
11:00 pm
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redngold
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Kudos on getting a sequence of pics!  I wonder, though - was this a full S turn and you couldn't get all of it, or did the pilot only do a 1/2 S?

October 31, 2010
1:35 am
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drpepper

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Nice to know what that is, but I gotta tell ya, in the Westpark area it freaks out a lot of people.

October 31, 2010
8:40 am
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New Flyer C40LF
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Seluryar wrote:would something like this show up on flightaware?

zoom in far enough it should.

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October 31, 2010
5:09 pm
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N960DL

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Imagine the Space Shuttle doing an S turn to maintain spacing and then having to go around.  Ok, I just though it would be cool to see the rockets ignite...

October 31, 2010
6:16 pm
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New Flyer C40LF
MARTA of Atlanta, Ga

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if it had fuel left lol. That'd be awesome though. 10 times better than after burners seeing 1,500,000 pounds of thrust at work.

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Re: How to do an "S turn"... | General Aviation Discussion | Forum