United flight comes in low and loud over downtown Boston

Everything's relative, I suppose, but the flight was climbing through 1000 over the airport and 1700+ over the center of the city. Winthrop/Millennium Tower are both around 700' tall.

When I lived on the west side of Southie/Fort Pt., when they were departing straight out on 22R, the walls of my building would shake. Guessing those altitudes weren't much different than this.

https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/UAL688/history/20240605/1938Z/KE...

Flight ASA389 was departing on the north-south runway "22L" and was instructed "no delay on the roll, cleared for takeoff" as it appeared the tower was trying to clear a backlog of departures using both 22L and 22R. UAL688 was already cleared to land on the crossing runway but I can't tell if ASA389 took a bit too long to taxi/takeoff or if the controller shouldn't have sent him. Controller apologized after telling UAL688 to go around. Since UAL688 was coming in on runway 27 (pretty much due west into Logan), "going around" meant going right over downtown. I have a feeling ATC was trying to also clear the departing runway for the incoming A380 from London that was going to have to use 22L to land (the only runway long enough for him to use since he's so big) about 5 minutes after ASA389 used it to depart.

as Adam points out, is that while this wouldn't be typical for Eastie it's not typical for Boston or Kendall (where we heard it). And the go-around was initiated from 400' so it had to climb significantly to clear the Downtown buildings. In general, flights departing on 27, which is not infrequent, immediately bank to the left over the Seaport. The runway center line extends across the Seaport and just south of the Back Bay "high spine" but the aircraft turn left along the flyway which crosses Carson Beach and runs southwest from there. (See height restriction maps here.) This is why the Seaport is short and stout: there's a 274 foot building height restriction for most of it.

Downtown is this exception which is located in a triangle between runways 27 and 33 where much higher building heights are allowed (probably because taller buildings were already there when the FAA put out these directives). The tallest buildings allowed are in a small swath from the west part of Back Bay over to Kendall. Jet aircraft do not generally overfly these areas because of the layout of the runways. Because of the departing traffic, UA688, which was directed to go around because of the delays from AS389, went to the right and flew over Downtown and Kendall, and if it was noticeable to have a plane 2000' AGL in Kendall (inside a building) it was probably very noticeable 800-1000 above the buildings Downtown.

Too many planes, too many tall buildings. I'm always expecting something horrible. But I'm a pessimist.