Is this standard procedure or an emergency situation?
It looks dangerously close due to the camera lens.
In reality it wasn’t.
The runways are likely pretty far apart. Telephotos lenses compress depth and make objects appear closer to each other. It’s why telephoto lenses are used for portraits to make facial features look more attractive and with slightly less depth.
Well you use 50 mm (in the old system) because that was considered the “correct” perspective. Less would give you the fisheye lense distortion.
I’ve done this (sitting in a passenger seat), it’s normal. This video is a bit of an optical illusion, the planes are nowhere near as close as they look.
There are certain airports where it’s standard procedure.
SOP (like 99% sure). Many airports have parallel runways with more than enough clearance for two simultaneous landings. I have been a passenger in this scenario at least four times that I can think of, and I don’t fly that much. I think those were in Denver, SFO and LAX. I don’t recall there being any situation that would be considered an emergency on any of those.
Likely just an issue with the perspective of the video, I bet these planes have plenty distance between them if you were to see them from the front
Looks like San Francisco. There are two main runways there, this is common. I think it’s just time and chance to land at the same exact moment like this.
That has to be an emergency. I can’t see how any pilot would risk it unless they had to.
The runways are probably 300 m apart.
So the Alaska is a e175 which is about 70 people vs the United which is about 170 people. It looks close because of the angle and some camera tricks. Landing on parallel runways happens all the time.
They are called Precission radar monitoring approaches and they start doing them when things get super congested. Requires us to listen to another radio so atc can tell us to break-out if someone crosses the no go zone in between the runways.
It’s an optical illusion. The planes aren’t really that close together. The person who shot the video is using a telephoto lens and is zoomed way in. This compresses the space and flattens it out so it’s hard to judge distance. Also the plane in front is smaller than the one in the back which heightens the illusion. It’s a really cool shot!
I mean, it’s rare enough that 2 planes land at the same time. They are definitely “close” but probably some 200m apart.
It’s not as rare as you may think. I used to work at a weather service office located right near the end of one of the runways at IAD and it would happen a few times a day if the airport was busy and the winds were such that they were coming in from our side.
Well, now I need to see commercial airplane drag racing.
