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A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

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Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#191

Post by ww520 »

lsh123 wrote: post #128

1/ Visual vs instrument approach. The main difference in this case is separation requirements that ATC must provide. Specifically, under IFR rules ATC mus provide 3 miles / 500 feet altitude separation minimum. For visual approaches, the separation is responsibility of the pilots and this enables parallel runway landings at SFO with much shorter intervals (there is a version of parallel landings with instrument appro…

Yes. I got the feeling that the pilot was playing the cry-wolf game with the threat of declaring fuel emergency. ATC then responded with, ok, divert. It’s a case of FAFO.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#192

Post by ra7 »

FireBeyond wrote: post #97
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.

> Why should ATC at a busy airport be so accommodating? Apropos of the other issues already being well debated: 1. ATCs role is to facilitate use of the airport. 2. They/the airport are being paid by Lufthansa to do so: ~$4,000 landing fee based on the OEW + 5% fuel being 340,000lb at $9.11/1000 lb. ~$800 for up to 8 hours at a gate (or a flat rate of $36,000/mo per aircraft for a frequently visiting ship). ~$1,000 f…

This is great information. Are these pricing details publicly available for airports?

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#194

Post by aworks »

antonjs wrote: post #105
daedalus_f wrote: post #27

Like in the youtube video's comments section, I suspect everyone on HN is going to assume that the ATC was simply being petty, and perhaps that was the case. But... We don't know what the approach into SFO looked like that night, but you can bet it was busy. VASAviation videos are often highly misleading in this regard. Most of the talk on the ATC frequency is cut (sometimes explicitly, sometimes not) leaving just th…

VASAviation has a video on this incident with commentary from a NorCal controller, showing the (large amount of) inbound traffic. [1] [1] https://youtu.be/4zHxdn8oz20?si=6ENIvIot7Q3LSJHO

Interesting.

I live in West Menlo Park and often see planes overhead coming from the West or Northwest to the Bay. I didn't fully understand they may need to slot into a really long flow from the East and even the South.

The prior Philippine Airlines flight did get ILS due to a temporary gap. Lufthansa wasn't as fortunate. The guy on the video didn't think anyone was at fault based on his interpretation and the comments from his insider.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#195

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#196

Post by gruez »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #71
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…

It's a safety issue when the plane is getting low on fuel and the crew are fatigued from a long international flight, and the only reason they're being told no is because of policies designed to maximize airport/airline profits. Controllers had hours of notice the flight would need an ILS approach. They petulantly ignored it because ILS approaches take up more space in the pattern, which means less landings per hour,…

>Controllers had hours of notice the flight would need an ILS approach. They petulantly ignored it because ILS approaches take up more space in the pattern, which means less landings per hour, which means less profit for the airport operator.

source?

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#197

Post by danielschonfeld »

markus92 wrote: post #58
reso wrote: post #45

> 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 cont…

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…

American Airlines (at JFK) proved you can call emergency just because you feel like it with no repercussion.

And really the pilot in command is the one in control. For the attitude that controller had he should have declared an emergency and told him what he was going to do and have him clear all airplanes around them.

Bullying attitude don’t belong in a game with 500mph (~300mph in this case) objects. If you’re going to be a bully expect others to play the game in the same manner.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#199

Post by noxvilleza »

raverbashing wrote: post #57
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…

> reason that Lufthansa wants ILS is to increase safety Yes because "more technology is more better" right? And forgetting about how to do things by hand (or eye) doesn't pose a risk to anyone neither A visual approach is no more unsafe than an ILS one in good weather. Sure, ok, the caveat here is "at night" but I don't think the multiple pilots that were doing it at the time were being risky on purpose (and people a…

> Yes because "more technology is more better" right? And forgetting about how to do things by hand (or eye) doesn't pose a risk to anyone neither

That's a very nifty strawman, but that's not my claim (at least not in such a general way). In this case it's become SOP by experts in a field, specifically for safety reasons. Other experts in the field have said "well, we don't think it's necessary - there are downsides such as aircraft landing rate". These groups of experts don't disagree on the fact that it's more safe - they just disagree as to what the optimal combination of (safety, financial value) is appropriate.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#200

Post by V-eHGsd_ »

MBCook wrote: post #151
shkkmo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flight plans get updated when plans are delayed on takeoff. SFO should have had the arrival time from the updated flight plan for quite a while.

Makes sense. Thanks. That is weird then that SFO wasn’t ready.

they were ready. "fly heading XXX, vectors for visual 28R", is them saying, "i'm ready for you to land". What norcal (not SFO) was not prepared to do was accommodate the extra wide gap that lufthansa's company policy would've required.

it was up to lufthansa to tell approach that they're not going to be able to accept the approach in use. It's being advertised on the atis that they would've been able to pick up in the air long before they got near the airport. (well, 10+ minutes before this interaction started anyway, they can probably get d-atis anywhere).

i'm sure it was said in the follow up video, but lufthansa knew what they were offering at SFO and if they needed something different they should've spoken up much sooner.

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