Where Every Seat Is 1st Class

Jetliners Come In Loud and Clear at Park Near National

On a steamy summer evening, as the parking lot at Gravelly Point Park filled up and fishermen hovered beside the boat launch, several people looked into the sky and gasped.

A dark blue US Airways jet was hurtling toward the runway of Reagan National Airport, where a white plane was still taxiing before takeoff. At the last moment, the blue plane lurched up and arced back into the sky.

Disaster averted? Kevin Cordwell, a 27-year-old payroll specialist on Capitol Hill who was sitting on a grassy bluff nearby, shook his head. A recreational pilot and an avid plane spotter since childhood, he'd seen this before. The white plane had gotten a late start, he explained, and the other pilot didn't want to take any chances.

"He looked at it and said, 'If anything happens to that plane and it can't take off, I'm going to hit it,' " Cordwell said. "I've had to do it myself."

His words were drowned out by a roar and a whoosh. A hulking plane bore down, then dropped onto the runway.

Gravelly Point, which lies between George Washington Memorial Parkway and the Potomac River, means many things to the many people who flock here on summer evenings. With its unimpeded view of the runway, it attracts airplane aficionados, who can sidle in close to the belly of a moving jet without getting landed on. Sports teams compete on its playing fields. Couples embrace in its parking lot. Cyclists and joggers breeze by on its footpath. Heads tip up each time a plane swoops by (depending on wind direction, they either land or take off over the park).

For Cordwell, it is a place to watch the intricate dance of runway patterns and get his mind off work. For his co-worker Shelly Jennings, 36, sitting beside him on the grass, it is a place to listen and learn. Some planes have upturned wing tips that pilots have nicknamed epaulets, Cordwell told her. The epaulets keep air pressure on the plane and reduce fuel consumption. The sleek Embraer 170s are new to the market; the Super 80s often have a black nose cone.

"What is that?" Cordwell asked as something screamed past.

Jennings smiled and squinted. "This would be, um, an F-100?"

"Right! You got it. You're learning."

Elsewhere in the park, as a pink sun hovered above the tree line, Julia Warner, 29, a congressional staff member from Arlington, hardly noticed the planes. Watching her coed Ultimate Frisbee team, Blue Steel, race around in the heavy air, she said, "When we're playing . . . I think we just tune them out."

She does, however, have a pet scientific phenomenon. "Have you noticed the vortex?"