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A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

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Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#171

Post by AmVess »

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…

FAA is completely asleep at the wheel in most areas it governs. Youtube is filled with ATC simply refusing to do their jobs, and under no circumstances should exchanges like this should be allowed to happen.

There's an ATC shortage, but so what? There's an even larger shortage of safety which needs to be addressed, and FAA are doing nothing at all.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#172

Post by TaylorAlexander »

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.

Ah I see, that makes sense.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#173

Post by [deleted] »

perihelions wrote: post #155
ralph84 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

- "their pilots aren’t prepared to do the approaches everyone else is doing" Is this is a fair framing? My read of it is that Lufthansa's enforcing a minimal standard of safety—one that's higher than both other airliners' and the ATC's. They're not incapable of doing visual landings at night; rather, they have a policy banning it in non-emergency situations. It (naively) seems reasonable to me not to budge on this ki…

[deleted]

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#174

Post by gamblor956 »

shkkmo wrote: post #93
gamblor956 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The controller tried to give an estimated time, but that original estimate was blown out of the water by the other planes in the queue taking longer than expected, and the controller didn't have time to keep trying to give an updated estimated time to the one plane in the queue that wanted to do things the hard way (that also, due to circumstances within its own control, departed its original airport late and arrived…

Your framing here is weird and doesn't match the facts. The airplane didn't want to do anything. Its pilots were following a mandatory company safety policy.

My framing here is literally based on the transcript of the conversation between the pilot and ATC.

Its pilots were following a mandatory company safety policy.

This is not true, because if it was true the pilot would already have diverted to Oakland per "mandatory" company "safety" policy when he was first told that they would not be able to accommodate his non-standard request to disrupt the twenty plus planes that were already in the queue.

It's not the ATC's fault the pilot didn't manage his plane's schedule properly.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#175

Post by wtallis »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #83
michael_j_x wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant for the ATC to provide a descent estimate of when Lufthansa should be expected to enter the AERODROME TRAFFIC CIRCUIT (since you want tolink the FAA glossary) in order to land (they had them on a hold pattern for 35+ minutes). This is independent of whether the approach is IFR or VFR. A TOWER controller has all the information necessary to calculate that estimate, and should be expected to do so, the same way…

Most of the queue would have been with approach, not tower. The aircraft sequenced to land were split across at least two controllers, tower and approach, and possibly more than one approach controller depending on how SFO splits them up. I would expect approach to be able to provide a reasonable estimate but it seems like in this case the estimate was found to be four minutes off, which seems totally within the boun…

> but it seems like in this case the estimate was found to be four minutes off

No, I don't think you are being at all accurate about characterizing that; maybe you lost count of the delays. After being told to wait ten more minutes, the pilots waited an extra four minutes before pressing for an update, and got told to wait another 10-15 (or f off).

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#176

Post by throwup238 »

blindriver wrote: post #157
throwup238 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a bunch of reasons but it's primarily the popularity of the airport combined with the runway layout and the noise abatement procedures all made worse by the Bay's weather. SFO has two pairs of parallel runways and the pairs are very close together, with the runways in the 28L/28R pair only 750 feet apart. That's really close for an A350 with a giant 200ft wingspan and the noise abatement prevents the use of a…

There is little to no actual noise abatement at sfo for residents living around there, especially during inclement weather.

https://www.flysfo.com/about/community-noise/noise-office/ma...

But yeah it all goes out the window in poor weather.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#177

Post by shkkmo »

gamblor956 wrote: post #174
shkkmo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your framing here is weird and doesn't match the facts. The airplane didn't want to do anything. Its pilots were following a mandatory company safety policy.

My framing here is literally based on the transcript of the conversation between the pilot and ATC. Its pilots were following a mandatory company safety policy. This is not true, because if it was true the pilot would already have diverted to Oakland per "mandatory" company "safety" policy when he was first told that they would not be able to accommodate his non-standard request to disrupt the twenty plus planes that…

> first told that they would not be able to accommodate his non-standard request

Now you are just making things up. Please go take a chill pill and stop spreading misinformation.

Edit: You may not be aware of the international differences in views on visual approaches. Requesting ILS is far from the "silly request" you seem to be trying to mock. This doesn't mean that ATC was wrong to make the decisions that they did, but it does mean it is a reasonable safety request to make. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/47638/why-are-v...

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#178

Post by ralph84 »

perihelions wrote: post #155
ralph84 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

- "their pilots aren’t prepared to do the approaches everyone else is doing" Is this is a fair framing? My read of it is that Lufthansa's enforcing a minimal standard of safety—one that's higher than both other airliners' and the ATC's. They're not incapable of doing visual landings at night; rather, they have a policy banning it in non-emergency situations. It (naively) seems reasonable to me not to budge on this ki…

Sure, Lufthansa can make up whatever rules they want for “safety”. Safest would be to not venture 7 miles above the arctic at 500mph at all. But if their rules are obviously in conflict with the standard operations at an airport, it’s on Lufthansa to adjust not everyone else. You can’t barge in and expect to get ATC priority on account of “company policy” or suddenly there’d be a lot of company policies requiring only direct routings with straight-in approaches.
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