Originally Posted by
Xyzzy
FWIW, I was once on a CO 737 landing at EWR. We were headed for rwy 4R when at an altitude of a few hundred feet seconds from landing when we swung left and then right in one quick motion and landed on rwy 4L. It was pretty smoothly done and done too quickly to cause any sort of panic. Nobody else seemed to notice! After pulling to the gate I asked the pilot what had happened. He said he was going to the control tower to find out. He was not happy.
EWR almost always lands on the outer runway (4R). Very, very rarely you will get a sidestep to 4L and it's almost always because there's not going to be enough separation between you and the aircraft ahead. Usually in that situation tower will direct you to go-around, but if they don't have a departure line for 4L they will tell you to sidestep. The pilot can always refuse a sidestep in this circumstance and go-around if they feel it is too late in the approach for a stable sidestep, so the pilot's irritation was probably more about the lack of spacing on his initial approach to 4R.