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I note that due to high westerly wind gusts this morning, aircraft arriving at EWR are circling over the NJ Turnpike Spur to Jersey City and then making a visual approach to Rwy 29. I believe they are also departing from Rwy 29. When I look at a list of EWR Approaches, no such approach to Rwy 29 is listed. Does this approach have a name ?
I just called the ATIS and it's "ILS runway 22L circle-to-land runway 29". Nothing special published for this as circle-to-land is not airport-specific here. Also, charted visual approaches are the exception rather than the norm, and are only published when they have specific steps to them, like LGA's expressway visual, when you're not making a "normal" entry.
The majority of arrivals landed runway 29 today obviously due to the wind. There is an RNAV approach being developed and currently flown by Continental only as a test. But when we are departing runway 29 as well, the tower will tell the pilots how wide of a base to make to make room for the departures so it won't matter what approach is being used. The arrival rate is only 24 an hour today so lots of delays coming in which works out well when only using one runway. Some of the foreign carriers took the straight in to 22L still but not all. Lufthansa A340 made a nice short approach to 29 along with most of the Continental heavy jets. Air India chose 22L and was rocking all over the place slamming the right side down first. Its alwasy a fun day up and down 29.
Bill
Must have made for some good pictures Bill - you have your camera there?
I started this discussion because I was riding aboard a Staten Island Ferry and always watch operations from EWR from the deck. It was so windy on Thursday, passengers weren't permitted to go outside on the decks. A wise decision. I noticed the regular inbounds to Rwy 22L were making a wide circle east then flying westerly into EWR so I knew something was up. I think arrivals on Rwy 29 are more or less rare, as are JFK arrivals using the ILS 13L Approach.
I had the luck of getting a work assignment at Anhueser Busch that day. Wierd, seeing them lift off to the west and just keep going. Port Newark would have been my choice, for the approaches, but since I did not bring my camera to work, no loss there. Lesson learned. Bring that camera everywhere.