[rdl]

NY Daily News is reporting that VASI was down as well (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/expert-runway-guida...) Which appears to be due to someone incorrectly reading a post-crash NOTAM which is about the aids being gone due to the crash, so there's no particular reason to think VASI was down before the crash.

I really don't think I'd trust SF city government to run an airport, even under FAA regulations. Look at every other city service SF has, and imagine that quality applied to preventing hundred ton soda cans full of people and jet fuel from exploding.

[dave5104]

How many of those other services are as highly federally regulated as flying an airplane, though? MUNI may suck, but MUNI doesn't need to answer to the feds.

[rdl]

Rail is federally regulated; it's part of why BART and Caltrain and HSR are so screwed up (passenger rail has to conform to some very very high crash standards to operate on the same network as freight rail, unlike in Europe and Asia -- so instead they built BART as a separate network and used essentially custom gauge, trainsets, etc. for everything.)

Admittedly the parts of Muni, BART, etc. which are the most screwed up are not the parts regulated much by the federal government, but at the very least SF is the organization picking the people to do things, and I'm wary of that. (although elected officials are also bad in SF; a Chief Law Enforcement Officer who beats his wife, etc.)

[VLM]

The short version is there are multiple things on a runway that emit light and I think they're being confused.

"Which appears to be due to someone incorrectly reading a post-crash NOTAM which is about the aids being gone due to the crash"

OK first of all VASI has been obsolete since I was a kid in the 90s, its all PAPI now. (edited to add, in the USA) Much like people still call the AWOS an ATIS because it does about the same thing. I'm not just picking nits, if you try researching this, you'll find the VASI has been outta service probably since the 90s, you want the PAPI. Its all the same anyway, white you're light, red you're dead. VASI is before my time but I'm told it was the same arrangement?

If you want NOTAMs you can just go to FAA's pilotweb, this link might work or you can search. Holy cow SFO has a lot of NOTAMS to read about.

https://pilotweb.nas.faa.gov/PilotWeb/notamRetrievalByICAOAc...

!SFO 07/047 SFO RWY 10R/28L CLSD WEF 1307062309

!SFO 07/046 SFO RWY 28L PAPI OTS WEF 1307062219

The PAPI (precision approach whatever indicator or something) was marked out on the 6th at 2219 and the runways (not all listed above) formally closed at 2309. I think that is after the crash UTC time?

Now according to this NOTAM

!SFO 06/003 SFO RWY 28R ALS OTS WEF 1306011400-1308222359

They've been screwing around with the ALS lights for like 5 weeks now as per the daily news story. The ALS is mostly to light the place up at night, make sure you can line up on the correct runway (L or R) and most importantly in the USA this has the decision bar, if the weather is so poor that you can't see the decision bar, its too poor to continue the approach. I'm told the weather was beautiful during the crash, so I don't think the decision bar being rebuilt or whatever had much if anything to do with the crash.

Something I don't understand about ALS on an airport by an ocean (not exactly a problem where I live) is how they mount the decision bar and its little friends. Its going to be quite a distance from the end of the runway and some runways seem to go right up to the sea, so piers out in the ocean or something? If they hit the SFO ALS that would imply the plane would be well offshore under water.

The ALS, aside maybe from some wiring, is probably not any more or less messed up by the crash than anything else's power wiring. I could imagine a plane running off the runway into the PAPI and that would be about the end of that PAPI, or at least it'll have to be aligned.

[rdl]

It looks like they mount stuff on CA-92/San Mateo Bridge (http://www.flysfo.com/web/export/sites/default/download/abou...) and then from there along the approach. The main issue seems to be the two parallel runways. From when I took photos of the airfield, there were a lot of lights and other things sticking out of the bay on the approach path. Decision Bar is supposed to be 1000' off the threshold so that was probably it.

I'm not a pilot; once I have spare money and time (and enough to fly monthly to keep current), probably.

It's interesting reading about stuff like the "No Transgression Zone", though.

[VLM]

"once I have spare money and time"

I've been telling myself that for decades and never quite had both at the same time. Often a great excess of one or the other. By the time I finally have both, I'll probably fail my medical with my luck. I did do ground school + a bit more on my own, and I've got a couple hours in the air with an instructor. I do some semi-serious sim flying for fun, mostly the X-Plane. If I ever get serious I'll already be pretty good at navigation, flight planning, reading approach plates, E6B use, METAR decoding, NOTAM decoding, etc.

There's a remarkable number of free electronic E6B apps for most phones. And some paid ones that are marginally better. I find my tablet to be quite helpful when "flying" although I also use old fashioned mechanical E6B... Figure $10 for a paper one that'll last "awhile" and $30 for a lifetime metal one.

The frontier of flight sims right now is no one does NOTAM simulation. Why not shut down some ground stuff occasionally, just like you can shut down aircraft systems and screw around with weather? It may be there's a sim out there that does this that I don't know about.

[rdl]

I'm think in the Bay Area it's mostly a question of $10-15k and maybe 100 hours (flight + study time) to get the first license, and there are a decent number of rental choices.

My dream (well, the realistic one) is to get a CH-801 STOL kit plane with a diesel engine so I can live in Central Washington and get to I-5 in a reasonable amount of time, although weather probably prevents that often. That's only $150k or so, which would be saved in taxes and property cost differential several times over.

[sneak]

> I could imagine a plane running off the runway into the PAPI and that would be about the end of that PAPI, or at least it'll have to be aligned.

As best I can tell from the available photos, the reason the 28L PAPI is out is because the plane took out the three rightmost ones when it slid/bounced across the blast pad area.

[snom380]

I bet those other services aren't subject to frequent inspections by the FAA.