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A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

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Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#141

Post by dodobirdlord »

reso wrote: post #74
markus92 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pilot was bluffing. If they call an emergency, they can do whatever they want. But they can't just call a fuel emergency if they have enough fuel to divert to a viable alternate - that's not how the system is supposed to work. They're supposed to divert if they get close to minimum fuel and can't land at their primary airport. Of course, if it's a real emergency they can call any emergency (weather at alternate preve…

Communicating to a controller that they are close to a fuel emergency is not a threat, it is good practice. People have died because their pilots did not communicate their fuel situation sufficiently to their controllers [1]. This was communicated in this instance, and the controller maintained that to land at SFO, they would have to risk running out of fuel, since the controller refused to give a time-window for lan…

If the pilot declared an emergency the ATC would make room for them, whatever the inconvenience to the airport and the other planes on approach. But after the fact there would be an investigation, and the pilot would be at fault if they falsely declared an emergency or deliberately caused an emergency by flying around in circles until they had to land just because they didn’t want to divert.

If the pilot’s being serious, he’ll declare an emergency and then the ATC will take him seriously. Otherwise he can continue to hold or he can divert to Oakland. There’s not much point in arguing about it over the radio, so I can see why the ATC ended the conversation.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#142

Post by toast0 »

lxgr wrote: post #90
MBCook wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arrived on time? They left hours late from the departing airport.

I wonder if there is any mechanism that reconfirms landing slots (and other aspects of the flight plan) still being available after a delayed takeoff for cases like this. Is it really just a matter of taking off and hoping for the best, or did somebody in the chain of granting a take-off clearance miss something?

I've had flights that were delayed, and then during the start of the boarding process, we had to stop and switch to a different aircraft, because the delay meant we'd be too loud for the noise curfew when we arrived, so we needed to take a quieter plane. That was a domestic flight into a small airport (LGB), but I imagine there's something to manage total flight volume in general; there's certainly exception handling to delay or cancel departures when the destination airport is unlikely to be available due to weather.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#143

Post by lmm »

jaywalk wrote: post #23
noxvilleza wrote: post #17

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.

According to other posts here it's something the FAA specifically recommends (but stops short of requiring).

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#144

Post by db48x »

JAlexoid wrote: post #49
kayodelycaon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s not how it works though. Before the pilots ever leave their starting airport they load up enough extra fuel to fly to their alternate airport and land there safely. Then they add on the “final reserve” fuel, which is enough fuel to fly for at least another half hour or 45 minutes (depending on airline and region). Together that fuel is called the “minimum fuel”. When an airplane gets down to minimum fuel it must declare that it has reached minimum fuel and is diverting to its alternate. They can only declare an emergency if they are down to the final reserve, and by that time they are expected to have already landed at their alternate. Unless their was a mechanical problem or a fuel leak, failing to divert before reaching minimum fuel would be an error by the pilots, not the ATC. Declaring an emergency just to skip ahead in line, when they still have not even reached minimum fuel yet, would not help the pilot’s career.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#145

Post by alistairSH »

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 think that Lufthansa asking for special treatment is the asshole move

Lufthansa’s rules shouldn’t have been a surprise to anybody here. The route isn’t new and operates on the edge of daylight much of the year.

And IIRC, the FAA actually recommends foreign airlines adopt visual approach procedures at SFO, so … how does that make Lufthansa the assholes?

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#146

Post by ralph84 »

ak217 wrote: post #123
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…

I think the FAA leadership is ultimately in the wrong for allowing their area of responsibility to deteriorate to the point where a controller and a pilot were put in this situation. They have a controller shortage that they are not doing enough to fix, and they have a troublesome airport with limited capacity to accommodate traffic, that they are being too bureaucratic about fixing. The controllers at SFO have used…

No, Lufthansa should not be dispatching flights to arrive at SFO at the busiest time of night if their pilots aren’t prepared to do the approaches everyone else is doing. This isn’t a foreign vs. domestic carrier thing. British Airways, Air India, EVA, etc. etc. all have pilots prepared to execute night visual approaches and do so every night at SFO.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#147

Post by gumby »

ak217 wrote: post #123
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…

I think the FAA leadership is ultimately in the wrong for allowing their area of responsibility to deteriorate to the point where a controller and a pilot were put in this situation. They have a controller shortage that they are not doing enough to fix, and they have a troublesome airport with limited capacity to accommodate traffic, that they are being too bureaucratic about fixing. The controllers at SFO have used…

> they have a troublesome airport

What is troublesome about SFO? I’m not a pilot (or in any way connected to flying except as a passenger) so airports are basically a black box to me.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#148

Post by kennylevinsen »

khuey wrote: post #134
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know I thought you were right but apparently for that day sunset was 6:30PM. https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/san-francisco?month=10

Sure, but my point is that this flight arriving in darkness is not something they never would have considered when planning the route and setting company policies prohibiting visual approaches at night.

There as nothing in the Lufthansa plans or policies that would make this flight or landing impossible, unreasonable or unsafe. I imagine this landing at night is not a first either.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#149

Post by toast0 »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #61
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…

You're leaving out that they had a filed flight plan which for an international flight means controllers had many hours of notice as to when the flight was scheduled to arrive and that they would be looking for an ILS approach and it was the responsibility of approach controllers to have a spot in the pattern for them. They arrived in the area on time, and controllers had not allocated it a spot, which is why the pil…

Are controllers expected to manage the details of the take off and landing queues and also expected to be be looking quite a bit upstream to see what's coming up and check the details of the flight and company policies?

I suspect the controller assumed this flight would use visual separation, like everyone else, when it entered the landing queue; and the pilot expected to use ILS, like everywhere else given the conditions, when it entered the landing queue. The difference in expectations became apparent only when clearance was given, at which point there's not enough flexibility to accommodate an ILS landing, and it's hard to guess when there will be a place to slot it in. Diverting to Oakland and repositioning later is a reasonable, if not optimal outcome.

My guess is, if either side had mentioned their expectations when the flight entered approach control, and it had been cleared up then, it would have been quite possible to get an ILS landing on the first go round. (ATIS recordings did say simultaneous visual approaches)

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#150

Post by dfgasdgsd »

gumby wrote: post #147
ak217 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the FAA leadership is ultimately in the wrong for allowing their area of responsibility to deteriorate to the point where a controller and a pilot were put in this situation. They have a controller shortage that they are not doing enough to fix, and they have a troublesome airport with limited capacity to accommodate traffic, that they are being too bureaucratic about fixing. The controllers at SFO have used…

> they have a troublesome airport What is troublesome about SFO? I’m not a pilot (or in any way connected to flying except as a passenger) so airports are basically a black box to me.

The two runways that run in parallel are too close to each other to land side-by-side in bad weather (because they only allow using Visual aka VFR landings).

"SFO operates on two sets of parallel runways. On fair weather days, SFO can accommodate approximately 60 arrivals per hour. During periods of low visibility, current FAA safety regulations allow aircraft to arrive side-by-side only if runways are at least 4,300 feet apart."

https://www.flysfo.com/about/airport-operations/policies-reg....

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