Landings at San Diego Int Airport Nov 23, 2012
December 2, 2012 10:37 AM   Subscribe

Landings at San Diego Int Airport Nov 23, 2012 - 4.5 hours of plane landings in 30 seconds
posted by Blazecock Pileon (33 comments total) 21 users marked this as a favorite
 
This. Is. Awesome.
posted by 4ster at 10:40 AM on December 2, 2012


That was really neat, thanks.
posted by Fleebnork at 10:41 AM on December 2, 2012


The small civilian plane makes me think of the children's story: The Little Engine That Could.
posted by ericb at 11:15 AM on December 2, 2012


Best 30 seconds of my day so far. Thanks!
posted by pdxpogo at 11:17 AM on December 2, 2012


I can't make this work in my head. Why do the clouds move smoothly?
posted by Gorgik at 11:23 AM on December 2, 2012


It's fun to watch this while listening to "Ride of the Valkyries".
posted by scrowdid at 11:23 AM on December 2, 2012 [2 favorites]


It reminded me of the London Heathrow Approach Time-Lapse. They fly like dragonflys.
posted by jjj606 at 11:25 AM on December 2, 2012 [2 favorites]


I'm actually rather surprised at how little overlap there seems to be. Perhaps the filmmaker intentionally ordered the clips so as to minimize overlap.
posted by ocherdraco at 11:30 AM on December 2, 2012


Busiest single runway airport in the world. I know because I live in Pt Loma, directly underneath the flight-path of this airport.

You could do a time-lapse of me shaking my fist at the sky every 30 seconds. Unless it's foggy, when they land coming in from the ocean, the plane headlights lighting up my living-room.
posted by remlapm at 11:43 AM on December 2, 2012 [3 favorites]


I can't make this work in my head. Why do the clouds move smoothly?
posted by Gorgik at 13:23 on December 2 [+] [!]


That's what I thought, those clouds barely move through the FOV in 4.5 hours.
posted by Grumpy old geek at 11:55 AM on December 2, 2012


Geese.
posted by scratch at 11:56 AM on December 2, 2012


My grandma lives next door to Burbank airport, directly under the flight path. You seriously can't even get a taxi to her house (it's a five minute walk, but walking in LA is just weird and the cabs don't want to waste their time when they can get a better fare from someone else...they actually tell you no). When I used to visit her as a kid, the sound was deafening. All through the night. Over time it became a comfort, a quirk of being at grandma's. In the last 15 years or so I've visited less and the standards have changed as well. The planes are quieter and I don't seem to hear them at night anymore. And I don't like to think of the day I won't be able to walk to hers under the flight path.

I guess what I'm saying is that airplane porn holds a special place in my heart and this video is a particularly good example, sound effects and all. Thanks.
posted by iamkimiam at 11:57 AM on December 2, 2012 [1 favorite]


I can't make this work in my head. Why do the clouds move smoothly?

I saw this too - I believe it was a 'winds calm' kind of day.
posted by seawallrunner at 12:03 PM on December 2, 2012


Busiest single runway airport in the world.

Mostly because they put it in the dumbest place you can put an airport and now it can't get any bigger without tearing down part of the 5.
posted by shakespeherian at 12:04 PM on December 2, 2012


More information on the project here. It was inspired by this comp photo.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:06 PM on December 2, 2012 [6 favorites]



I can't make this work in my head. Why do the clouds move smoothly?
posted by Gorgik at 13:23 on December 2 [+] [!]

You are looking at a composite shot the clouds are one layer of 30 seconds captured in real time. Subsequent layers are individual planes rotoscoped and framed in time lapse. Each plane had it's background removed and composited onto the real time sky. It is a very impressive bit of editing.
posted by pdxpogo at 12:17 PM on December 2, 2012 [12 favorites]


Love the little dog prop job yapping along behind the rest of the pack at the end.
posted by Standeck at 12:30 PM on December 2, 2012 [1 favorite]


You are looking at a composite shot the clouds are one layer of 30 seconds captured in real time. Subsequent layers are individual planes rotoscoped and framed in time lapse. Each plane had it's background removed and composited onto the real time sky. It is a very impressive bit of editing.

Yeah, the bridge in the film is the 1st Avenue bridge in Banker's Hill, which is a good ways north of the actual flight path into the airport, so that perspective of airplanes from under the bridge is not physically possible - the bridge is between Nutmeg and Quince streets,while the flight path over 1st Avenue is more down by Hawthorne. The bridge is shot from the Maple Canyon open space park.
posted by LionIndex at 12:46 PM on December 2, 2012 [1 favorite]


Busiest single runway airport in the world.

Second busiest. Number one is London Gatwick.
posted by jontyjago at 1:13 PM on December 2, 2012 [2 favorites]


yeah, I'm really glad I didn't rent that apartment at Brant & West Hawthorn my best friend wanted back in college.
posted by changeling at 1:21 PM on December 2, 2012


Mostly because they put it in the dumbest place you can put an airport and now it can't get any bigger without tearing down part of the 5.

Or put another way, because they put it in the best possible place, and thankfully it can't get any bigger. I lived in downtown SD for several years, and my morning run was out along the bay to the airport and back in. Glorious. I could also see in the window of my condo on approach, which always made my heart smile. It's one of the few airports I know of that you can comfortably walk to from the downtown. And your bags arrive out really quick into baggage claim. And if the airport is a limiting factor on the growth of the region... well, hey.
posted by amorphatist at 2:40 PM on December 2, 2012 [2 favorites]


Fascinating, LionIndex (I gEarthed to confirm)! Sort of a fantasy geography of San Diego, warping space in addition to time.

Mostly because they put it in the dumbest place you can put an airport

I dunno, in Lindbergh's day could they have anticipated the jumbo jet? Anyway, looks like they've been trying to fix that error for decades and have their sights set on getting Miramar someday.

Standeck, I'm wondering if that's related to the curfew -- a window for GA usage. Given the utilization I'm surprised there's any room.
posted by dhartung at 2:45 PM on December 2, 2012


I still remember flying into Burbank once where our approach was banked just right to be able to see quite a few planes both ahead of us and behind. I was a bit freaked by how closely timed the landings were. It seemed like each time a plane that had just landed had barely turned off the runway to the taxiing lane, another landed on the runway it had just exited. Looking out the window in the airport confirmed that. I imagine that Gatwick and San Diego, and probably others, must look like that fairly often.
posted by Philofacts at 2:49 PM on December 2, 2012


San Diego Intnl also has a a really short runway. My mom used to always irrationally freak out about this on the rare occasion I was flying in there.
posted by atomicstone at 3:10 PM on December 2, 2012


San Diego Intnl also has a a really short runway. My mom used to always irrationally freak out about this on the rare occasion I was flying in there.

It's all kinds of messed up. On approach, you have to dodge the downtown area on your left, where the buildings are taller than your plane is high; and you're dropping down over a hill onto the runway. The hill also continues to the north, so that from where I live (a bit north of the bridge), the planes appear to be coming in at street level. Because of all that, they can't have planes come in the normal way on instruments, so under low visibility conditions the runway direction is reversed or they shut the place down.
posted by LionIndex at 6:21 PM on December 2, 2012


I'm really glad I didn't rent that apartment at Brant & West Hawthorn my best friend wanted back in college
Heh. When I was in grad school at UCSD, one of my fellow students had just arrived from Finland to do some sort of post-doc stint, and on fairly short notice he got an apartment in that area, under the flight path. He ended up renting a room in La Jolla as soon as he could, mostly because the guy living underneath him was being driven slowly (or not so slowly) mad by the airplane noise and had taken to banging on his walls with a baseball bat or suchlike when the planes would go overhead.
posted by Creosote at 7:08 PM on December 2, 2012


I want to go to there.
posted by spitefulcrow at 7:51 PM on December 2, 2012


The rest rooms in the terminal are going to be way busy.
posted by subgear at 8:43 PM on December 2, 2012


Busiest single runway airport in the world.

Sorry, that's London Gatwick -- which, admittedly, looks like a two runway airport, but the second "runway" is a widened taxiway that's been marked out with landing marks in case the actual runway is unusable -- they are far too close to use together.

SAN is the busiest single runway airport in the US, and second busiest in the world. It is also the busiest airport in the US that isn't a hub.
posted by eriko at 6:09 AM on December 3, 2012


It's all kinds of messed up. On approach, you have to dodge the downtown area on your left, where the buildings are taller than your plane is high; and you're dropping down over a hill onto the runway. The hill also continues to the north, so that from where I live (a bit north of the bridge), the planes appear to be coming in at street level. Because of all that, they can't have planes come in the normal way on instruments, so under low visibility conditions the runway direction is reversed or they shut the place down.

Perhaps there should be another Mefi thread called "White Knuckle Landing Strips"... This reminded me of something the author Joel Garreau mentioned in passing in his book The Nine Nations of North America about Charleston, WV's Yeager airport (CRW).

The wiki for that airport blandly notes, "The airport sits on a hilltop over 300 feet (about 100 m) above the valleys of the Elk and Kanawha Rivers, and the hill drops off sharply on all sides. Due to the airfield's unusual location, passengers flying into Yeager enjoy a scenic approach of either downtown Charleston, or the rolling hills to the north and east of the field.[citation needed]"

Garreau observes, "Southeastern West Virginia is problematic. It is at all times isolated by its mountains. … Charleston, West Virginia, is by no means the most rugged part, yet its airport can inspire respect in good weather. In search of enough horizontal space for a runway, its planners sheared off the peaks of two mountains. That leaves no margin for pilot error."
posted by Philofacts at 7:59 AM on December 3, 2012


Philofacts: I'd rather take the train
posted by dhartung at 10:59 AM on December 3, 2012


Ah, thanks! Should've known there had been one already. Whiteknuckle porn!

(btw, I usually do take the train if possible, although more for carbon footprint.)
posted by Philofacts at 11:22 AM on December 3, 2012


This video has showed up all over the web in the last few days, but most notably at Cartoon Brew where it has been made a trope: "Everything We Do Is Animation".
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:32 AM on December 6, 2012


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