Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/06/21/southwest-plane-drops-dangerously-low-over-oklahoma-scaring-people-inside-their-homes.html
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Scaring people inside their homes? I’ll bet the people inside the plane were at least a little unnerved too.
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Aww come on, Yukon isn’t that bad. Ok, maybe it is.
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Sounds like the pilot didn’t read the manual
(Am I doing this right?)
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It was in the glovebox, sorry I mean secret compartment so it’s no surprise they didn’t find it as that’s such a high tech idea.
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strangely flightradar24 says that the flight never dropped below 1725 feet. but that’s a barometric altitude. still the radar altitude should not differ too much.
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It happened at midnight so I doubt anyone on the ground even knew about it or the passengers noticed anything wrong (assuming they were in level flight and not descending steeply). It would have felt like a normal approach other than the fact they were still 9 miles out from the runway. A typical final approach fix (outer marker) starts at around 5 miles out with an altitude of between 1000 to 3000 ft MSL. So they were really low considering their distance from the airport. MSA (minimum safe altitude) over populated areas is 1000ft above the highest obstacle.
CNN has some ring cam video showing the low flying plane passing overhead. https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/20/us/southwest-flight-low-altitude-warning-faa/index.html
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Fryin’ chickens in the barn!
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There’s height, which is height above ground and altitude which is height above mean sea level.
And above a certain altitude, Flight Level is used which is a pure barometric reading.
Perhaps the flightradar24 was the altitude and the 500 feet was height above ground?
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i think you are right that the barometric alt reported by FL24 is ASL. in fact oklahoma city’s altitude is ~1100ft so that squares.
in fact that’s the whole reason why bigger planes have radars, so that they know the height independent of the atmospheric pressure and terrain.
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Maybe the pilot got distracted talking about gladiator movies.
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A slight edit:
… scaring people who were outside and saw the plane, then ran into their homes but then realizing, oh, shit, that plane could crash into my home and kill me! then rushing back outside, then running wildly down the street and into a blind alley, then, again, thinking, oh, shit!
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The nav got confused and flipped from fly-over to fly-under.
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