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A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

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Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#41

Post by hef19898 »

babyshake wrote: post #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?

Current AI is nowhere close to be good enough for that. After all, there are literally hundreds of lives at stake every given minute, not sure you want some whacked together ML model or other run your aircrafts landing approach in bad wheather and high traffic.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#42

Post by sccxy »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #14
kokken wrote: post #5

I’m sure the industry has standards for assigning blame, but it looks to me that ATC is clearly being assholes here. Even from this article that clearly seems to think Lufthansa is in the wrong I walked away with a feeling that ATC and small town cops are one and the same.

ATC wasn’t been an asshole. The airspace was extremely busy and there wasn’t space between arriving flights for anyone to make an instrument landing. In order to make instrument landing, dozens of other planes would have to be moved out of the way.

ATC was more incompetent than asshole.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#43

Post by chris_va »

karcass wrote: 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…

I also fly a bit in the bay area ...

ATC is supposed to accommodate to the best of their ability. Accommodating here could have been just waiting for a natural gap (which is what I think happened), but I think ATC should have just called Oakland center immediately and had a gap created for 10-20 minutes in the future. It is not like they were the only aircraft on the ILS approach that evening... Though, as I am not a norcal controller, maybe that is against policy.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#44

Post by seanmcdirmid »

snypher wrote: post #9
riversflow wrote: post #8

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.

“okay, you promised me 10 minutes, that ran out four minutes ago, so how many more minutes?” Seems to me that ATC need to get it together also.

Or maybe SFO is already over capacity and can’t safely take the traffic assigned to it?

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#45

Post by reso »

> Pilot: If we are not set up for base soon, we will have to declare a fuel emergency and that would really fuck up your sequence.

> Controller: What is your divert field?

> Pilot: Oakland

> Controller: Ok you need vectors to Oakland?

> Pilot: No, my company forbids visual separation at night, what is the problem here?

> Controller: I can't have this conversation with you. You either divert to Oakland or you can continue to hold. It's up to you sir.

> Pilot: Ok you promised me 10 minutes, that ran out 4 minutes ago, so how many more minutes?

> Controller: This conversation is over.

So this controller, knowing the plane was near a fuel emergency, gave the pilots the option to either crash their plane with 240 people on board, or to divert to Oakland. This is tough for me to wrap my head around.

I don't want to blame this one controller for what is obviously a pattern of systematic failures at SFO, but I'm going to seriously consider flying into Oakland or San Jose next time if this is the attitude of the controllers there.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#46

Post by xenadu02 »

noxvilleza wrote: post #37
jaywalk wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

Because Lufthansa left a few hours late they arrived during a super busy arrival window. AFAIK ATC had nearly 30 planes already in the queue for landing with spacing for visual. To get Lufthansa in any sooner they'd need to send updated instructions to a lot of planes to make a gap.

If Lufthansa had arrived two hours earlier or later it wouldn't have been an issue. Indeed they were able to depart OAK around two hours later and land at SFO via IFR with no problems.

SFO handles a lot of traffic for having just two active runways - one of the reasons they constantly operate in parallel. Much like other super busy constrained airports (eg JFK) they have very little room to accommodate special requests.

Ideally Lufthansa would have let ATC know of this need while still a long way out so they could build a bubble in the sequence ahead of time but I don't know if procedures even allow for that.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#47

Post by JAlexoid »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #19
wtallis wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, whether Lufthansa's polices are reasonable or excessively cautious is debatable, but the ATC here obviously gave unambiguously wrong information about the delay.

Delays are estimates. They can’t be guaranteed. All it takes is one other plane to be slow to act.

When flying and being responsible for an aircraft full of people - estimates take a very different meaning.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#48

Post by JAlexoid »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #44
snypher wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“okay, you promised me 10 minutes, that ran out four minutes ago, so how many more minutes?” Seems to me that ATC need to get it together also.

Or maybe SFO is already over capacity and can’t safely take the traffic assigned to it?

Then it's literally ATCs responsibility to inform the incoming aircraft of that. That's why there's a diversion airport.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#49

Post by JAlexoid »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #12
jtagen wrote: post #3

I wonder if it was an option to say "okay", continue circling, then declare a fuel emergency and land. Seems like ATC was being a dick here. Not sure: 1) How long this would take 2) If this actually endangers anyone/anything

Declaring a fuel emergency when your alternative is only a few miles away is bound to get someone in trouble.

The fuel emergency would have been literally a result of the ATC staff. Instead of this back and forth, the answer should have been - we cannot take you on ILS in the next X time, consider diverting.

Giving the sense of "we'll take you in within X minutes" to the pilot is disingenuous at best. ATCs job is literally safety.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#50

Post by CaliforniaKarl »

michaeljx wrote: post #39
Hansenq wrote: 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.

If you mean “traffic pattern” (from https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/media/pcg_10-12...), that is also something you would do visually, which I don’t think Lufthansa would accept.

As for not being able to give an accurate estimate, that is not for the on-the-radio approach controller to calculate, given their view of the airspace. The video posted by parent shows how long the inbound flows were (at least on the east side); approach wouldn’t have seen that.

The coordination necessary to get an accurate estimate should’ve involved managers, which might be affected by the current shortage (see https://www.npr.org/2023/11/09/1211838624/air-traffic-contro...).

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