What Is A Safe Following Distance When You Are Flying On A Boeing 777?
Filed on Monday, January 25th, 2010 under Aviation Safety By aviator
Flying along recently and noticed a big old plane closing in from my window. It got so close I could “clearly” read the carriers name. We were vectoring towards each other about the same altitude. The other plane might have been 500 – 1, 000 feet higher when it passed. Isnt’t there wake turbulence? WHAT IS THE FAA RULE FOR THE DISTANCE AIRLINERS HAVE TO MAINTAIN. This was during cruise flight at about 36, 000 feet- not the thing you want to see out your window.
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Tags: Boeing, Distance, Flying, Following, Safe, What, When
January 26th, 2010 at 3:31 am
RVSM, the real wake turbulence issues are clean and slow, not at altitude.
January 26th, 2010 at 7:47 am
There is a definite difference between following distance and vertical separation of assigned flight paths. With RVSM capable aircraft, 1000 feet is a very safe separation distance.
Wake turbulence is a problem for small aircraft taking off or landing too soon after a large aircraft has used the runway.
Anyone flying in tight formation to a passenger aircraft is violating all sorts of laws and regulations, unless they are under military orders to do so.
January 26th, 2010 at 11:16 am
The Boeing 777 is classed as ‘Heavy’ because it weighs more than 136,000 kgs. This means that following aircraft must have at leased 4 Nautical Miles of radar separation (if the following aircraft is also classed as heavy). If the following aircraft is classed as light (less than 7,000 kgs) it must have 8 Nautical Miles of radar separation.
Hope this helps
January 26th, 2010 at 12:31 pm
A thousand feet above or below is not “about the same altitude.” Standard vertical separation under RVSM is in fact 1000 feet. So everything was fine.
January 26th, 2010 at 2:27 pm
Vertical separation is 1000′ at that altitude.