CAT III?
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Ok knowing that we will be called negative for asking this question here goes…..
It was our understanding that CAT III would enable planes to land with virtually no visibility, helping solve our fog probem at ORH. Last week one day fog rolled in thick and flights were diverted to Boston.
Did we expect too much from CAT III or is there a problem with our CAT III system??
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Does the age of the plane matter? JB planes are 15 years old or more. JB needs new planes, that’s why spirit was big for them. Spirit has the youngest fleet in aviation. Airlines like Avelo are flying older plane.
It could be a number of causes. System was down, aircraft non compatibility, pilot qualifications. Since it appears that more than one flight was affected, you can probably rule out the 2nd 3rd.. CAT III requires precision, and if anything is out of tolerance, it could result in dropping the ILS category. It could be a power dip, a plastic bag on one of the antennas, redundancies down, wire/circuit short, etc.
The good news is that this doesn’t occur very often. In fact, if this was the result of a CAT III system issue, this is the first one o
Im aware of. Pretty damn good track record for a system that’s been up and running for 6 years.
You’re not expecting too much. For the last 6 years it’s worked fantastically. But even a Rolls Royce may may breakdown and require maintenance. Kudos for the FAA tech guys for keeping it up and running, and for whatever they had to do to get it back on line as quickly as they did.
And no, it has nothing to do with age of aircraft. Believe it or not, 15 years is not exactly old. Instruments are upgraded and replaced, engines are replaced, interiors are replaced, pilots and flight attendants are replaced :). That’s why RJ’s are retired so quickly. They fly frequent short haul flights. There are A320s and 737s out there built in the 80’s that are still flying. The 2 major reasons planes are retired are because they are 1 less efficient from a fuel consumption basis than new designs, and 2 the number of cycles (takeoffs and landings) on the hull. Each cycle stresses the fuselage both from hitting the asphalt and multiple pressurizations.
Last week the flights that diverted to Boston, I drove past the airport between when the two flights (MCO and FLL) were supposed to land and I could barely see the airport building from the street (keep in mind that’s about 200 feet or 1/26th of a mile). I don’t blame them for not landing and diverting. Fortunately for the people flying, they did have buses that took everyone from Logan to Worcester and Vice versa so while they did (get to Florida late, the inconvenience wasn’t that bad. In the past, when a plane has diverted to another airport, they’ve come back to Worcester and taken off to go back to Florida but I still don’t know how the Fort Myers flight landed (3 hours late but besides that) because the visibility never got any better.
Cat III is meant to help when there is fog but you still need to see a certain amount ahead of you in order to land. I think that day the fog was just so bad it wasn’t worth taking the risk which is why JetBlue didn’t even bother flying into Worcester from Boston then going back to Florida
JB just lost big time last quarter. The company needs to beef up their Latin America business they say. The Dominican Republic is cutting into their business with arajet. The company is growing very fast. JB needs to put two flights a day from Worcester to PR. One flight to San Juan another flight to ponce Puerto Rico. Both flights will do very well. JB needs to add another FT lauderdale flight. I just flew back from FLL and I sat next to a guy from the north shore. People are driving far away to fly from Worcester, because of the parking price and convenience.
JetBlue isn’t expanding service at ORH. They’ve been here 11 years and really haven’t expanded at all. I’m not counting Fort Myers as an expansion of service because we lost JFK. I wouldn’t be shocked if JetBlue cut back service or pulled out of ORH completely. They clearly have no interest in growing here.
Massport really needs to go full throttle to get either Breeze or Avelo in here. That’s the only way I see expanded service options to Florida, Puerto Rico, etc. If they can’t do that they need to push Delta and American for better hub connections.
JetBlue hasn’t expanded here because they don’t want to have their own crews come in and work the flights especially when they would be all spread out throughout the day. They have room for a 4th flight if they want but who’s to say Worcester airport actually has the capacity to do it. Someone made a comment a while back about how ORH had a capacity of a certain number of passengers a year and the airport was (if I remember correctly) only 20k off from it and that was before the Fort Myers flight. JetBlue is not going to have massive expansions anytime soon and they don’t expect to be profitable this year anymore. More routes will be cut but I believe ORH will still be safe since JetBlue is making money on the route thanks to loads being in the 70-80%+ range even with the bigger planes.
I flew on delta on Tuesday back to Worcester from Nashville and had a 3 hour layover at LaGuardia. New terminal is very nice, only issue with it is the gates are extremely spread out so if you have to go to the 60s gates and you first plane is at the 90s gates, it’s a good 15-20 minute walk to the other side of the terminal. The flight to worcester was pretty full, I believe there was only 10 seats open which is really good for that flight. The flight back however didn’t look like many people were getting on.
One thing I did notice though was all the Florida destination flights with delta and how packed the gates were. I think the LaGuardia flight could be successful if they had the old schedule that JetBlue had: Leave ORH early in the morning and arrive late in the evening. Only issue is LaGuardia airport is closed between midnight and 5am but when I landed at LaGuardia from my first flight around 930am, there were so many Florida flights taking off and boarding that an early schedule like that would easily work. Moving the times 2 hours earlier than what we have now wouldn’t work because getting to the airport, loads would be very low while flying back to LaGuardia they would be good. Kinda have to find that balance right in the middle which is difficult but the LaGuardia flight can work, especially since flying to Worcester from there is 30-35 minutes which is just about the same distance driving from Worcester airport to Marlborough.
https://www.telegram.com/story/business/travel/2024/04/25/passenger-numbers-soar-at-worcester-regional-airport-after-record-year/73427718007/