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Costa Rica's San José Airport Called "Special"
Inside Costa Rica
Costa Rica's Juan Santamaría (San José) airport is a "special" airport, special not for being "of a distinct or particular kind or character", but rather for it being one of the more dangerous airports in the region. Pilots coming to and leaving Costa Rica's major airport constantly face navigational challenges, mainly due to its lack of an approach landing system, a system that has not been functioning for years, and the lack of other security measures that often mean flight delays and cancellations.

The rainy season offers the most challenges. In the past the weather conditions of of May, June and July were not a problem However, changing weather conditions have made landings and takeoffs at the Santamaría increasingly difficult, fog playing a major role in flight delays and cancellations. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) says that one of the major items regarding airport security is the approach landing system lights that stopped functioning for some years and airport officials have yet to offer a solution. The ALS allows pilots to line up the aircraft to the runway and in fould weather it can mean the difference between landing and heading for a closer airport, as was the case Wednesday night when a number of flights were diverted to Libera and Panama.

Other problems facing the Santamaría are the size of aircrafts it can handle. For instance, the Spanish airline Iberia uses the Airbus 340 on its direct Madrid - San José route, an aircraft that is a problem parking in the small area allotted to each gate which is designed to accommodate only smaller aircraft. The other problem facing the Santamaría is the land it is sitting on. With only 200 hectares, the airport has no room for the expansion of an additional runway and the terminal area. In comparison, the Daniel Oduber in Liberia sits on 400 hectares and Bogotá, Colombia's, El Dorado which emcopasses some 900 hectares.

The lack of parking space and small terminal and short runway do not permit any of the 21 airlines that fly into San José to use the monsters of the sky like the Boeing 747 or the Airbus 380, the largest passenger jet in the world. The problems at the Santamaría are sure to continue for much time to come, as the government continues to focus its efforts on completing the airport terminal, whose construction has been stalled for the last three years.

In the meantime for those flying into and out of the Santamaría, remember that this is a "special" airport.

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Good article for those with a fear of flying...

They plan to get busy with airport improvements as soon as they finish that Caldera- San Jose Highway project they started 30 yrs ago.

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At least it is relatively easier to land there than other airports up in the hills like that one in Honduras where TACA crashed and burned. The main runway at Juan M. is not real short, is wide enough, on a plateau and not any high hills right around it. Granted if the ILS goes down the geographical advantages are only good in clear weather, no low clouds or fog etc...

I was one of the "diverted" Wednesday night.

We flew to Liberia for gas and sat around for about an hour and a half until SJO gave the all clear. Total delay was 4 hours.

All in all, I concluded it was better than crashing in the fog.

Of course, YMMV.

Now I know why I always wear my "Special" interior ropa..........which are dark colored in case I Shit my self. Thank God all of my flights in and out have been uneventful.

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My life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out and loudly proclaiming...." MAN....WHAT A RIDE!!!!"

Thanks Srlim. That's a different perspective and the most important one.

Out of my 8 times in and out of SJO i have only had one eventfull flight. Seemed that they cleared 2 planes to land at the exact same time. We landed at that airport like a bat out of hell.

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Now, I am back in the game!

I also don't think the San Jose airport is that 'dangerous'.
The landing strip at Quepos...that's another story!
One time about five years ago, as we were ready to take off, a horse
was running back and forth across the runway. It had to be chased away by a couple of guys on motorbikes.

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"In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upwardly mobile, and the rest of us are phucked until we can put our acts together; not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely"...Hunter S. Thompson (RIP)

I'm no pilot but I'm not sure that the issues faced by a pilot of a small plane would be entirely the same as those faces by say an Airbus 340. And its not just the surrounding terrain or geography. How much landing space did your plane need and how much extra safety margin did SJO's landing strips provide? Also, safety equipment like the ALS lights IS part of the airport itself. It might not be strictly necessary at all times and the pilots might be able to adjust and rely on other mechanisms, but if you're landing in a big behemoth of a commercial jet on a short runway in the fog with mountains on either side wouldn't you prefer to have all the navigational aids you could get. And "simply goes to another"? Please. Maybe with your plane you could just fly a few kms further to the Bolianos Airport in Pavas or one of the dozens of small airstrips scattered across the country, but if I were flying into SJO on an international commercial flight and got diverted to LIR (a 4 hour drive away) I wouldn't consider that so simple.

What really makes SJO special is not its lack of re-investment in necessary infrastructure. It is the fact that it has been held up as a model for privatization. The Spanish company, Alterra, which has the concession has absolutely no trouble at all raising landing fees which help make commercial airfares to SJO more expensive than similar length flights to neighboring countries. It has no trouble at all tacking a 10% surcharge on cars that are rented at the airport. It has no trouble with hidden fees they charge airport taxi drivers that get passed along to us in the form of fares that cost upwards of $10 more than what the metered rate would be for a regular taxi picked up on the street just out front. They have no trouble at all building more and more overpriced stores and eateries in the terminal waiting areas. But they do have trouble finding the money to pay for needed safety equipment. There is no money in it. That is the private profit motive for you.

I used to be an airplanes and airports guy, in a former life. With my undying need to be right, I offer the following:

-1 SJO, runway is nearly 10,000 feet long and the airport elevation aprox 3,500'. Depending on barometric pressure, that is enough runway for even the largest jets. I don't know if the landing surface is properly stressed for the landing weight of a mega-jet however. We once had an AN-226 (Russian huge cargo job) land and turn of the runway in 3000'.

-2 The ALS (Approach Lighting System) is a visual aid to landing that is a part of the ILS (Instrument Landing System). When the ALS is out of service, it raises the landing minimum for commercial operators. If the weather minimum for an aircraft was 700' ceiling and one mile visibility with the entire system operating, it might change to 1100' ceiling and 1 1/2 miles visibility if the ALS is out. I haven't checked the minimums here, the numbers above are an example. What it means to the passenger is that the aircraft must divert if the weather is not at the appropriate minimums when it is time to shoot the approach. Welcome to Panama.

In my formerly professional opinion, SJO is as safe an airport as any and safer than many. The killer is the embedded thunderstorm and the associated up/down drafts caused by the micro-bursts that flow downward from a dissipating cumulonimbus cloud (thunderhead). Imagine air flowing straight down like pouring piss from a boot. When it hits the surface, it moves laterally in all directions just like the piss when it hits a flat rock. As an aircraft on approach flies through the micro-burst, the pilot first picks up a strong headwind and increases power. As he hits the center of the burst, the aircraft is thrust downward and more power is applied or the aircraft is reconfigured to compensate. Just as the aircraft comes into full control, the pilot picks up a strong tailwind and his speed increases. Now he retards the throttles to try to stay on profile. Just as he gets the aircraft slowed, the tailwind disappears and he is left with not enough power and, too often, not enough altitude. It takes a moment after throttles are pushed forward for the jet engine to make power.

Micro-bursts from thunder cells can also lead to severe crosswinds on landing or down drafts on short final. Flying in the vicinity of cumulonimbus clouds can be a killer. Often the short-landings and crashes by overshoot are the result of the dramatic changes in wind direction and speed associated with these massive clouds.

_________________
"Your love gives me such a thrill
but your love don't pay my bills,
I NEED THE MONEY!" - John Lee Hooker

Disclaimer: The above is merely the opinion of the author unless specific scientific data is included.
Your mileage may vary. https://costaricaticas.com/phpBB2/viewto ... 978#206978

Now Srlim (and Pacifica) that is some good shit! I see you guys really know your stuff and I didn't mean to 2nd guess you. You are absolutely right that diversion to LIR would be more of a convenience issue rather than a real safety issue per se. In fact, the diversion would be to enhance safety. But it would be a safety issue as far as SJO is concerned in the sense that the reason it was required was because for whatever reason it was not safe enough to land at SJO. Besides even as "just" a convenience issue it would be a royal pain. That said I haven't seen anything to suggest that such diversions occur at any faster rate than say diversions from JFK to LaGuardia.

It also makes complete sense that the sophistication of an airport should be in proportion to the volume of traffic that it handles. One thing that always struck me about SJO was not so much the volume of traffic that it faces in a day but the number of flights it seems to schedule at all around the same time. And that is more a logistics issue than a safety issue per se, although it is a logistics issue that could have safety repercussions if they tried to squeeze too much into too short a time window. Again this is not anything that is necessarily any worse at SJO than it is at other airports. In fact, I've read that a lot of the problem of flight delays at US airports relates to trying to schedule more flights into the popular rush hour time slots than the system can reasonably handle. At a lower volume airport like SJO, the scheduling of nearly all their flights during just a few hours each day is probably an labor efficiency issue as they can de-man counters, checkpoints and such during most of the day rather than have those personnel just stand idle waiting for the random passenger that comes along.

Last comments. Pac, I don't know about necessary runway length or stress loading but the article itself said that SJO can not currently handle "the monsters of the sky like the Boeing 747 or the Airbus 380" and that the problem on the Airbus 340 comes not from the length or capacity of the runway but "is a problem parking in the small area allotted to each gate". Also, Srlim, regarding your comments about SJO expanding its terminal, runway and other infrastructure in concert as rising volume demands. Those sound like very valid points however, apparently, one of the problems might be that might not be an option for SJO at some point. According to that article "The other problem facing the Santamaría is the land it is sitting on. With only 200 hectares, the airport has no room for the expansion of an additional runway and the terminal area. In comparison, the Daniel Oduber in Liberia sits on 400 hectares and Bogotá, Colombia's, El Dorado which emcopasses some 900 hectares."

With all that being said, I'd readily acknowledge that this article probably greatly overstates the dangers. Like many news sources, but seemingly more so in CR, many such "news" articles really just go for the sensational since it attracts more viewers and if they happen to exaggerate to make it more sensational or create an issue where one does not really much exist, then so be it. Its called yellow journalism.

The "journalism" is no better in the States. I used to be on a "Tiger Team". We would launch to assist in accident investigations. We quickly learned to offer nothing to the press because our words were often taken out of context and were used to make giant assumptions that rarely had any basis in fact. The US media is so focused on "first" that they don't care about accuracy any more. Whatever makes the best headline gets printed. Retractions go on page twelve a week later.

I am sure that parking space is an issue at SJO but I would bet that the larger issue is that the taxiways, runways and parking areas were not design stressed to take the bearing weight of a HEAVY. In 85+ degree weather, the wheels of the big guys just kinda slowly sink into the tarmac up to the hubs or leave nice grooves in the asphalt wherever they taxi. Oops...not pretty.

_________________
"Your love gives me such a thrill
but your love don't pay my bills,
I NEED THE MONEY!" - John Lee Hooker

Disclaimer: The above is merely the opinion of the author unless specific scientific data is included.
Your mileage may vary. https://costaricaticas.com/phpBB2/viewto ... 978#206978

That sorta sounds like the regular road surfaces everywhere else in CR.