600 FPM...Folks was freakin'

[Fearless Tower]

More awesome overstatements by the media:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/16/travel/hawaii-near-collision-ntsb/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

In reference to the altitude conflict between two airliners last week. The media sleuths determined that "Flight-tracking websites show the United plane descended 600 feet in 60 seconds"

OMG! 600 FPM....that's some serious excitement

 

[Jim Logajan]

More awesome overstatements by the media:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/16/travel/hawaii-near-collision-ntsb/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

In reference to the altitude conflict between two airliners last week. The media sleuths determined that "Flight-tracking websites show the United plane descended 600 feet in 60 seconds"

OMG! 600 FPM....that's some serious excitement

The smallest time resolution of those flight tracks appears to be 1 minute. If the aircraft has descended 600 feet in 6 seconds then they would indeed have experienced weightlessness per the report and still be consistent with 600 feet loss in a minute. Faster than that and they'd have negative gees.

S = a*t*t/2

a = 32.2 ft/sec^2
S = 600 ft
yields t = 6.1 secs