Originally Posted by
Grizzly Adams
There are companies out there who can build approaches and departures. Alaska Air Group, for example builds a lot of RNPs. You’ll recall the Delta lawsuit over the approaches into Juneau. When you do that the entity who commissioned it becomes responsible for upkeep costs. Not the feds.
Good point about Alternate and holding fuel for DEN and we are aware of that. Our problem as an airport is when they bump 22 people in the summer it destroys passenger confidence in reliability. So we end up “leaking” passengers to other airports. We’re trying to solve the reliability issues and I appreciate your points!
I once did this for a living but I'm back to being plain old line swine for the past few years so someone should double check my work.
One question to ask Skywest is if they have the authorization for and have paid for payload optimized V1. If they are only using balanced field length performance numbers then they are certainly leaving passengers behind unnecessarily at times.
Aerodata doesn't care about meeting the obstacle departure procedure climb gradient one engine inoperative so changing that parameter alone isn't going to increase the allowed takeoff weights if single engine is what's limiting. So that's why it is critical to know exactly what the issue is. They are designing their own obstacle avoidance path and it doesn't need to meet TERPS standards.
It would also be useful to know what obstacles are impacting the 40:1. I agree that you can't move the mountain but if it turns out to be something else closer to the airport then you can show that to the city/county leadership and see if it can be relocated or shortened.
PAJN is a fascinating case study. The FAA procedures rely on the lower elevation of the 'engineer's cut' to get the aircraft over the hill before the final turn. Perhaps AAG does the same just without needing to see it visually due to high levels of navigation accuracy. If your terrain problem area isn't that big you might even be able to make your own cut for similar or less expense than designing and maintaining a DP.