Unusual aircraft sightings – from helicopters to commercial jetliners – often bring questions, and we try to get answers. Twice today, here in Upper Fauntleroy, we noticed loud flyovers; both times, we looked them up on our favorite flight tracker, and they were commercial flights from Sea-Tac. The second one, an hour or so ago, brought in questions, so we asked Sea-Tac Airport spokesperson Perry Cooper if anything unusual was happening at the airport. Cooper had information about the most recent flyover (which showed on our tracker as a Delta flight to Shanghai) and we thought we’d share it in case you heard/saw it too:
We were, and have been, in south flow today; however, the tail winds for south flow were too strong at the time for this widebody aircraft and the pilot requested to take off to the north. So, for only this aircraft, the traffic was spaced out so he could take off to the north. Due to the fact the rest of the traffic was coming into south flow, they directed the aircraft to turn quickly to the west to get out of the traffic flow as soon as possible. This pattern would be similar to what we see when the Blue Angels practice in the summer, and they direct traffic to turn more quickly to the west in north flow to stay out of their practice pattern. Some of our own Port staff were out in the field today and noticed it when it happened as well.
P.S. One of the people who also noticed this points out that Sea-Tac has a noise-complaint hotline. Reversing it in web search, we discovered the Sea-Tac and Boeing Field numbers are part of a city-prepared one-sheet with info on all types of possible noise, not just aircraft – you might want to save it.
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