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Parallel Landings Are Like Airborne Drag Races for Airplanes

Airplanes are machines so fascinating that people have devoted their entire lives to them. And by that, we don’t mean those who build and fly them, but the spotters, those people with nothing better to do than to stalk airports in the hopes of getting the best instance of airplanes doing something spectacular.
Airbus A350 and Boeing 737 race to land first at SFO 7 photos
Photo: Airplane Pictures/NickFlightX/Twitter
Airbus A350 and Boeing 737 race to land first at SFOAirbus A350 and Boeing 737 race to land first at SFOAirbus A350 and Boeing 737 race to land first at SFOAirbus A350 and Boeing 737 race to land first at SFOAirbus A350 and Boeing 737 race to land first at SFOAirbus A350 and Boeing 737 race to land first at SFO
It is thanks to these people that we, the general public, now have a much better understanding of what it means to take an aircraft to the sky or land, of the challenges of doing these things in adverse weather, or of how well-built aircraft are. It is also thanks to spotters that we got to see airplanes drag racing.

Or, sort of. The official term is parallel landing, and it happens from time to time at large airports that operate parallel runways. Like, say, the San Francisco International Airport (SFO).

The place is the largest airport in the Bay Area, and second only to the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in terms of how busy it is. A total of four runways serve the needs of the airport, and they’re arranged in two intersecting sets of parallel stretches of tarmac.

The perfect setting, then, for spotters to catch glimpses of airplanes apparently racing to the finish line, to see who can disembark its passengers first.

We stumbled upon an instance of how that’s going over at SFO at the end of last week, thanks to a video published by a Twitter account called Airplane Pictures. It shows an Airbus A350 operated by United chasing a Boeing 737 flown by Singapore Airlines.

Coming late to the party, the United pilot seems to be pushing it hard to overtake the Singapore one, and by the time the two planes pass the one who’s filming, they are almost neck and neck.

In the end, the American airplane touches down first and provides us with a make-believe race between passenger airliners the kinds of which we rarely get to see.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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