Aircraft flying low over City of Milwaukee

[anp25]

Hello Captain,

I’m new to the sight forposting although I’ve been lurking around your sight for months now.

I just have a questionthat maybe someone can answer for me. On Friday, December 2nd on or about 5pm., I started to notice numerous flights leaving Milwaukee’s MitchellInternational Airport flying very low. Now believe me when I say low, I meanalmost to the point I can see details on each aircraft that flew overhead.

These were not thelittle small single engine Cessna’s, but the larger Boeings and Air Buses thatwere that low and the flight path was many miles northwest of the airport.I did not notice any badweather in the area, but there had to be some type of reason air trafficcontrol from Mitchell International was making these planes fly that low.

I assume bad weatherwould be a reason for flights to fly low, but the weather was nice, butcold. Any other reason why this eventcould happen over the city?

Thanks Captain.

[Barb-SAN]

While waiting for Capt. Hutch's reply...here's a link to the start of this thread over in flight reports, with a couple comments: http://www.takingflight.us/forums/showthread.php?t=10130
MathFox discovered that "there was a pretty strong southerly wind"
Here's the link on AirNav for KMKE: http://airnav.com/airport/KMKE

Of course it's only speculation to imagine what might have been the reason for planes flying lower than usual, if in fact they were.

Capt. Hutch, I'm wondering what would happen if several planes had to do go-arounds. Would they stay at a lower altitude than "normal" when "taking off" to come back around to land?

To anp25...did you see the planes eventually gain altitude, so that you are sure they were taking off, and not going around to land?

I wasn't aware of the term "pattern" until I took some flying lessons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airfield_traffic_pattern

An airfield traffic pattern is a standard path followed by aircraft (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft) when taking off (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeoff) or landing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing), while maintaining visual contact with the airfield.

At an airport (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airport), the pattern (or circuit in the Commonwealth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Nations)) is a standard path for coordinating air traffic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_traffic_control). It differs from "straight-in approaches" and "direct climb-outs" in that aircraft using a traffic pattern remain close to the airport. Patterns are usually employed at small general aviation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_aviation) (GA) airfields and military airbases (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbase). Many large controlled (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_traffic_control) airports avoid the system, unless there is GA activity as well as commercial flights...However, some kind of a pattern may be used at airports in some cases, such as when an aircraft is required to go around (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_around) — but this kind of pattern at controlled airports may be very different in form, shape and purpose to the standard traffic pattern as used at GA airports.
Anp25, does this give you any ideas that might explain what you saw?

If in fact it was a go-around on landing, you would need to check KMKE ARRIVALS at that date and time, rather than departures to see if they showed any go-arounds. The arrival and departure information is only posted for about a week back on FlightAware.