Saturday, January 1, 2011

AA 757 runway overrun @ Jackson Hole; insightful PAX video provides clues

Jackson Hole, WY is a most interesting airport from the perspective of airline operations. A quick glance at forthcoming Friday flight schedules into the field (I checked Fri, Jan 14 and Fri, Feb 11) reveals a modest 9 scheduled operations, about the expected number for an airport catering only to a finite flow of skiers, but serving no sizeable business or residential community. Here is their (surprising) composition:

3 Delta flights from SLC (1 CR7, 2 319)
3 United flight from DEN (2 CR7, 1 319)
1 United flight from LAX (CR7)
1 United flight from ORD (757)
1 American flight from ORD (757).

The chief surprise: to have a regional airport served by a (admittedly narrow) majority of mainline aircraft -- JAC has 5 mainline flights and 4 regional ones. And two of the mainline flights are on relatively high-capacity Boeing 757s.

One of these 757s took a spill a few days ago: American's flight from Chicago failed to decelerate in sufficient time and subsequently suffered a runway overrun. Here's excellent coverage of the incident courtesy of the Aviation Herald.

And, the raison d' etre for this post is this: a vivid passenger video of the landing, complete with insightful post-incident commentary by a knowledgeable third-party.

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