Originally Posted by
boeing727
I've flown over 1.5 million miles on various airlines and over 50 segments this year on WN, but never experienced a landing profile like the one last night (WN #2678 STL-PHL - see link below). Clear skies, very little wind and a pleasant flight up until final.
We were on the downwind and made our right turn for final. Gear was dropped to bleed off airspeed and flaps were almost fully extended. That's when the fun began. Click and paste the attached link in your browser to see what the next 15-20 minutes looked like. Gear went back up and we executed a number of sharp left and right turns. Power up, power down. We were all over the place. Gear dropped a second time and we went to full flaps and landed without incident (or any kind of explanation from the cockpit).
If I didn't know better I'd say we had a gear problem and we were doing some kind of trouble-shooting. The series of left/right turns were fairly aggressive and angled steeper than I've experienced before (combined with power up and power down). You could see that there were a number of "concerned" looks on people's faces. Who knows, it might have just been a lot of traffic to vector around on a busy night, but I was worried until the mains hit the numbers and we came to a stop.
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/S...210Z/KSTL/KPHL
I'd take that Flightaware radar track with a grain of salt--once the initial turn to the SE had been made, that sudden spike to the NE and immediately back and then flying SE again is typical of FAA's ASD data feed dropping out (as far as Flightaware receiving it) goes.
You were on the BUNTS arrival (
http://204.108.4.16/d-tpp/1013/00320BUNTS.PDF) and the normal pattern into the airport from that direction is to head SE, then turn left eastbound (the right downwind leg) with subsequent right turns for the right base leg and final leg (now headed west). All of this normally takes place north of the extended centerlines of runways 27L/27R.
What appears to have happened with your flight was that they kept heading SE, and went
south of the 27L/27R centerlines, turned left eastbound (now the LEFT downwind leg), with subsequent left turns for the LEFT base leg and fnal leg. Exactly why this occurred could be due to any one of a number of reasons, such strong winds just above the surface causing "compression" on final, turbulence, or even ATC just making a last-minute change in runway assignments.