Quote:
Originally Posted by mello
Regarding Lindbergh reaching capacity, what is the feasibility of all cargo activity being shifted to Brown Field? That would take a partial load off of SAN if things got too congested. Brown Field has a long run way and plenty of room to expand facilities. I wonder what % of takeoffs/landings are UPS, FedEx, and DHL?
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There was a serious push for this in the early 2000s, to the point of discussions with reps from FedEx and engineering plans being drawn up.
As it stands, Brown Field's runway is only 8000' long, too short for any serious cargo flights. The airport would acquire the junkyards to the west and east and extend the runway up to 11,000'.
The problem came up with the ILS system, which lets aircraft land in bad weather. The airspace requirements for these things are huge, it forms a cone centered on the runway, 9 1/2 miles long and 3 1/4 miles wide at the far end. The cone slopes upward at 34:1, which puts a height limit of about 1500' at the far end. You also have to keep other aircraft out of the cone entirely, which will come up in a minute.
Otay mountain is 6-ish miles from Brown and over 3000' feet tall, so an ILS approach from the east is out of the question. It's actually so tall and so close most aircraft can't safely descend fast enough to reach Brown after flying over it, which leads most to coming from the west and doing a tight 180 right before landing, not the sort of thing you'd really like seeing a loaded cargo plane do (although I've seen a few do it, and let me tell you it's quite a sight).
That was figured out at the time, so the plans done up had the ILS pointing in the other direction. But that ran into the issue of NAS Imperial Beach, which is about 6 miles away to the west. You'd basically have to shut down the airbase every time a cargo plane landed. Naturally, the Navy wasn't very interested in shutting down "the busiest military airport in the nation" and the "the busiest helicopter airport in the world". This being San Diego the military is king, so that idea was pretty much dead.
Without an ILS insurance and logistics became insurmountable issues for the major cargo carriers. There is a current project to revamp Brown Field which would include some cargo elements, but nothing with FexEx, UPS or the like.
Anyway, it wouldn't actually do that much. Cargo is a lot more flexible than pax in terms of scheduling, they're very willing to be shifted around towards the least busy times, including landing at 3am (FYI the curfew only applies to takeoffs and passenger flights). Last study I saw showed removing all cargo from Lindbergh would only gain you a handful of percentage points in terms of capacity.
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