what the heck?

Aviation Notable Activity
1

[flight]KFS69[/flight]

I can’t explain what I saw. I saw this plane seemingly head back to CMH right after take off. It took off westbound and turned north as you’d expect in a flight to Detroit but it in fact was turning in ellipse about 10k north then about 20k east, then turning south in a common CMH landing patter. At the same time Southwest flight that had been in an eastbound leg turned north into the same space and it looked like it turned back to the east as the 2 planes got to about 3 to 5k apart at nearly the same altitude. If you look at the image you see a little dogleg in the trace of KFS69. That is a turn to avoid the airliner that was headed head on toward it.

Then it didn’t land! Its route appears to take it directly over the runway then it accelerated and climbed to it’s planned 14000ft and flew off to Detroit as Planned.

flightaware.com/live/flight/KFS69

flightaware.com/live/flight/SWA437

Here is where Google maps shows the Lear at 11:30 PM.

google.com/maps/place/6498+ … 659d0f0c92

And where the 737 was at 11:30 PM.

google.com/maps/place/2249+ … b91a216677

There’s no way that loop was in the Lear Jet’s flight plan and it looks to me like it invaded the landing corridor head on to a 737 at night in bad weather. It’s wing ice weather out there right now.

Sometimes when I hear a plane go nearby making a distinctive sound I come to this site to see what it was. I found the
Beech Barron I heard fly by. But a few minutes later I clicked on the Lear and was puzzled by the flight trace I was seeing. I zoomed it in and suddenly the 737 appeared and when I clicked it I could see they were at the same altitude. The got very close and I saw them simultaneously turn away from each other. The Lear headed southwest veered right, and the 737 that had started turning west from its northbound leg veered right.

CMH is not a busy place and very little happens there at this time of night and it’s not complicated airspace.

I see no excuse for them to be so close and the resumption of the Lear to its original flight plan to Detroit is a mystery.

Am I wrong in thinking someone screwed up here?

2

The Google Earth 11:30 positions you gave show the two planes at roughly 7 miles apart (using the distance measuring feature of Google maps.)

3

Projecting for where the 737 would be at 11:30:10 gets it down to 4 miles or so in zero visibility wing ice conditions.

Point is, what the hell is the Lear doing there in the first place. It had taken off from CMH 14 minutes earlier looped around back into the landing corridor, then as it neared the runway just climbed back to its planned altitude and flew to Detroit.