Lightning Strikes (Again)

A lightning strike at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) provides us with more news and another opportunity to delve into the issues. Here’s a video from our friends at ATCnews.com.

Lightning Strike Disables Airport Radar

The local news station -- WCPO -- does a rather nice job of covering the story.

The first thing you probably noticed was the arrival rate at CVG -- 108 per hour. I think you’ll find that a little surprising in that JFK’s best arrival rate is 68 per hour. Or was 68 per hour, I should say. I wonder, how many of you caught that yesterday ? If you’ll look at the chart, you’ll see that JFK can handle 68 arrivals per hour with the runway configuration of: landing RWY 13L and 22L -- departing 13R. Ringing any bells ? No -- really -- do you have The Flick ? Air Traffic Safety vs. Capacity. If you need me to highlight these connections I will. If you’ve got The Flick I’ll move on a little faster.

Where were we ? Oh yes, little ol’ Cincinnati can handle a lot more airplanes than JFK. The next time a politician says something about America’s infrastructure you’ll have an example to think about. Also mentioned in the story was the fact that when the radar site went out, the arrival rate went down to 20 per hour. That leaves the controllers with 88 airplanes that don’t have a place to land. Gee, how many of those do you think JFK can soak up ? Do you have The Flick on that one ? When I said that the number of slots “should be less than the maximum capacity” were you thinking about safety ? Were you thinking about aircraft that might have to divert from other airports for unexpected reasons ?

The story also mentioned that the backup radar was 72 miles away and doesn’t have the weather displayed. It’s too far away to paint half of CVG Approach Control’s airspace and they can’t see the thunderstorm that took out their main radar with a lightning strike. Some backup. But that’s okay says the FAA, because almost no other airport has a decent backup either.

Oh yeah, and it wasn’t the first time lightning had taken out the radar.

You might want to watch that video again and see what other thoughts hit you. Thoughts like, who gave the TV station such detailed information for their report ? Do you think the FAA will try to punish him too ?

Please, get The Flick -- before we run out of time.

Don Brown
July 23, 2008