Fisk arrival on Sunday

[rondawes]

Pardon if this has been discussed already but I don't see it.

What was going on Sunday with the Fisk arrival? It was a mid-air waiting to happen. Granted that weather on Saturday pushed a lot of arrivals to Sunday but:

1. They were sending people past Fisk at 1 mile in trail. It's always been 1/2 mile and they switched back to 1/2 mile on Monday. That cuts the arrivals in half.
2. People at the airport said that the arrival pace was slower than past years. Sure, because they were spaced at 1 mile. What happened to simultaneous landing on the numbers + a dot? Do they really think that having a hundred planes milling around of Rush and Green lakse is safer than the procedure they've used for years?
3. Several times the Fisk controllers said they were down to 1 runway? Why? There were no landing accidents.

I hope next year is better.

[tmcquinn]

I absolutely don't know. I was at a nearby airport listening to the tower and watching the live feeds. It looked to me like they were only using the hard surfaces for taxiing, which surely would have slowed things down. I did hear a controller say that they were going to start using the grass to taxi but when I went back inside, the 'live' video still showed them only using the hard surfaces.

[Kyle Boatright]

EAA management is (allegedly) pretty upset about how poorly the Saturday and Sunday arrivals went. Based on what I've seen elsewhere, I'd expect changes next year. What the changes might be... dunno.

[FURY]

It was hard surfaces only on Sunday combined with a R9 configuration and an extremely high volume. R9 is a tough configuration for ATC.

[Kyle Boatright]

It was hard surfaces only on Sunday combined with a R9 configuration and an extremely high volume. R9 is a tough configuration for ATC.

True. But 36/18 went virtually unused. For whatever reason, they were severely throttling traffic at Fisk. Well beyond what was necessary.

[MEdwards]

I believe some mass arrivals scheduled for Saturday were postponed until Sunday, closing 36 L&R to regular traffic for a while. I believe there was at least one "incident" on 36 also. On all runways, the ground was soft due to weather so they couldn't move airplanes off the runways fast enough. That, combined with all the normal Saturday traffic delayed until Sunday due to weather, resulted in the problem. I bugged out and landed elsewhere. Monday morning also was horrible for several hours because of all the people who, like me, didn't get in Sunday and got an early start Monday.

The only change I would like to see is with the mass arrivals. They come in Saturday for a reason, because the traffic is lighter than Sunday. They should not be rescheduled for Sunday.

There will always be problems due to incidents or weather. They're fairly rare. I hope they don't make radical changes to a system that has worked well for decades.

Mike E

[obmaha]

True. But 36/18 went virtually unused. For whatever reason, they were severely throttling traffic at Fisk. Well beyond what was necessary.

Fasle. There were many mass arrivals on Sunday which led to 36 being shut down.

Bob- Air traffic controller