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A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

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Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#31

I see this as a reap what you sow moment for Lufthasa. Why should ATC at a busy airport be so accommodating? Lufthasa is the one making this hard on everyone. I used to watch both these airports fairly frequently from Oyster bay regional park, they are both super busy with flights often lining up to the horizon.

"Why should ATC at a busy airport be so accommodating? Lufthasa is the one making this hard on everyone."

It is literally ATC's job to facilitate the safe separation of aircraft. Note I said facilitate, not ensure, because ensuring safe separation and operation remains in the cockpit. When a pilot arrives at an airport and requests a specific approach, whether that reason is company policy or the limitations of weather, it is ATC's job to accept that request or deny it, and not to beat around the bush suggesting doing one thing and calling it another. When they give an expected time for something the pilot makes decisions in the cockpit if that new limitation will work with whatever limitations already exist. If ATC is not operating honestly then that should be viewed as what it is - a compromise of safety, and a petty unnecessary one at that. If ATC is unable to accommodate the request then it needs to be stated so explicitly and as soon as possible because lives are literally part of the equation. Air traffic can be lined up from SFO all the way back to London and that still doesn't change ATC's responsibilities one bit. ATC does not "accommodate" because that implies they exercise some arbitrary discretion and not clear binary criteria.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#32
I can't find a source, but I thought I read somewhere that these policies came following the Asiana Flight 214 crash [1], during which a plane did a visual approach to SFO instead of ILS. My understanding was that there was a rule change requiring ILS approaches at night at SFO, then the airlines implemented policies duplicating the rules in their policies, but then the rules were revoked - still leaving airline policies in place.

Anybody have any sources on this?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#33
I got my pilot's license in the Bay Area and transited SFO's class bravo frequently. The region has one of the world's most complex airspaces (a B, two Cs, and a crap-ton of Ds), and SFO has a mind-boggling amount of traffic for an airport of its size. Based on my lived experience in that airspace, I think ATC did the best they could in a tough position, and I think that Lufthansa asking for special treatment is the asshole move. If they demand ILS in VFR conditions, they should schedule their arrival times to less-busy times.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#34
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This wasn't some new policy of Lufthansa though, apparently it's their SOP for basically all airports. Outside the US, I'm not sure if visual approaches are all that common for (heavy) aircraft at night. Overall, the reason that SFO wants visual approaches is to increase rate of landing, and the reason that Lufthansa wants ILS is to increase safety -- your phrasing "Lufthasa is the one making this hard on everyone" j…

> your phrasing "Lufthasa is the one making this hard on everyone" just seems wrong, having more safety seems totally justified and reasonable here. It's so "justified and reasonable" that nobody else does it. Maybe it's not quite so justified or as reasonable as you think.

> It's so "justified and reasonable" that nobody else does it.

Airlines are a cutthroat business and many will go for profit rather than for safety if they're allowed to. The large American airlines, for what it's worth, are actually loss leaders [1].

[1] https://happyrichadvisor.com/loss-leaders/

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#35
This is coming from someone who only has experience as a commercial flight passenger, but I would expect AI to be very promising for ATC. Obviously there are various concerns ranging from potential attack vectors and the need for failsafes if any automated system fails, but has this been explored?

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#36
There's a better discussion of the Lufthansa situation at [1]. ILS landings require more spacing. The ILS system itself just shows the way to the runway, not what other aircraft are doing. In a visual approach in busy conditions, the pilot can see the aircraft ahead. In an ILS approach, it's assumed that they can't. This leads to ATC wanting to use visual approaches to get more planes landed.

[1] https://ops.group/blog/us-visual-approaches-lh458/

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#37
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This wasn't some new policy of Lufthansa though, apparently it's their SOP for basically all airports. Outside the US, I'm not sure if visual approaches are all that common for (heavy) aircraft at night. Overall, the reason that SFO wants visual approaches is to increase rate of landing, and the reason that Lufthansa wants ILS is to increase safety -- your phrasing "Lufthasa is the one making this hard on everyone" j…

> your phrasing "Lufthasa is the one making this hard on everyone" just seems wrong, having more safety seems totally justified and reasonable here. It's so "justified and reasonable" that nobody else does it. Maybe it's not quite so justified or as reasonable as you think.

> that nobody else does it.

Apparently some Canadian carriers do also have this as a SOP.

Around the time this happened I spoke to some friends who are ATCs (in the US) who all immediately agreed it was a very reasonable request, especially given that the request was made far enough out (so it wasn't like they'd have to quickly scramble to respace the incoming planes correctly in the sequence).

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#38
post #33

I got my pilot's license in the Bay Area and transited SFO's class bravo frequently. The region has one of the world's most complex airspaces (a B, two Cs, and a crap-ton of Ds), and SFO has a mind-boggling amount of traffic for an airport of its size. Based on my lived experience in that airspace, I think ATC did the best they could in a tough position, and I think that Lufthansa asking for special treatment is the…

They normally do- this flight left MUC two hours late which was why it was part of the VFR landing sequence on this one day and is not normally a problem.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#39
post #29

There's a follow up video to the one linked in the story that provides a lot more context missing in this piece. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zHxdn8oz20 Basically, SFO normally does VFR parallel approaches at night. Approach sequences these approaches miles beforehand, so there can be a chain of 10-20 aircraft all sequenced to land before responsibility is even transferred to SFO's tower. The incident happened du…

From what I understand, despite the tower not being able to create a gap for 30+ minutes,which although extreme may be understandable due to SFO being the way it is, another major factor was the fact that the tower was unable to provide a realistic estimated time to enter the circuit. That is completely unacceptable.
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