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A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

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Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#211

Post by throwaway2037 »

redtriumph wrote: post #153
KennyBlanken wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Citation for Reagan comment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Contr... .

The original "Thanks Regan" comment makes no sense to me.

To be clear, President Regan fired all striking air traffic controllers in 1981. The same Wiki article says: >

So that means, FAA had enough controllers by 1991. What does that incident have to do with today's shortage? Nothing.

Deeper: I tried to Google why is there a shortage of air traffic controllers in the United States. The root cause appears unclear to me. I found this article[1], that says: >

That is a huge salary in the United States. I'm surprised this is not attracting more qualified candidates. This tells me that this requirements to become an FAA-certified air traffic controller are incredibly strict. Does anyone know why EU / Japan / Korea does not have the same issues? (All highly-advanced, wealthy nations with lots of air travel.)

[1] https://www.afar.com/magazine/air-traffic-controller-shortag...

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#212

Post by [deleted] »

wkat4242 wrote: post #135
Animats wrote: post #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/bl…

Maybe there should be a class for visual ILS with the same separation as visual approaches and less chance of error. Just like visual VFR exists. It would make the use of ILS in these situations easiest.

[deleted]

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#213

Post by throwaway2037 »

ho_schi wrote: post #156

This is not a special Lufthansa thing. The majority of airlines from Europe limit visual approaches to daylight. It does not apply to their home base, which is Frankfurt and Munich. The pilots are familiar with these airports, traffic patterns and so on. Lufthansa tries to schedule outbound flights so that they arrive at daytime - if possible. I don’t know why the controller was handling the situation that way. Takin…

Nice post. This part: >

This sounds reasonable to me as a safety precaution. I tried Googling, but I couldn't find anything. How do you know this information?

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#214

Post by throwaway2037 »

thriftwy wrote: post #101
koyote wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also this crash that happened while ILS was broken: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214 This was ultimately pilot error but also due to the fact that the pilots were not as accustomed to doing visual landings.

Pilots are not going to be accustomized of visual landings in case of emergency, if you have a corporate policy that forbids them in controlled setting! This one is bizzare, not only European pilots on average have less experience than US ones, but they are not allowed to gain experience by corporate policy. (This one coming from a country where aviation is a big mess)

You wrote: >

Can you provide more details?

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#215

Post by lisper »

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…

> Lufthansa was the only aircraft asking for ILS.

Another important detail: they did this because it was company policy, not because it's what the pilots wanted. The pilots would have been more than happy to do a visual approach.

IMHO the blame lies with the Lufthansa corporate office.

(And FWIW, I am a private pilot.)

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#216

Post by p_l »

mjevans wrote: post #65
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…

I'm surprised a computer assisted landing sequence can't _increase_ the rate of landed planes, though I assume doing so would require subordinating all the inbound aircraft to the local traffic control system.

Considering that only one runway (28R, IIRC) at SFO even winks in direction of supporting autoland, and there's no continental USA support for controller-pilot datalink (only used for oceanic flight), at least outside of test flights (correctme if I'm wrong, not an expert here).

On top of that current CPDLC doesn't seem to be as well integrated to autopilot support other than pilots acking each command, and then I do not think Mode S is mandated (or exact enough) to provide good enough separation.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#217

Post by throwaway2037 »

danielschonfeld wrote: post #197
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…

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 goin…

You wrote: >

Can you provide a flight number and date? I would like to learn more.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#218

Post by Cacti »

AmVess wrote: post #171
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…

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.

The FAA budget in 2016 was $15.8B. In 2023 dollars, this is equivalent to about $20B.

The current budget is $18.6ish.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#219

Post by p_l »

CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #53
JAlexoid wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That’s why flight plans have diversion fields, with requirements to have enough field to get to the diversion airport, and even to hold _there_.

That also means that when ATC tells someone they will inform them in 10 minutes,they are obliged to tell them in 10 minutes, even if it's "sorry, we don't have a slot, we can get you info in next ten minutes or help you to diversion airport".

Not have to be reminded that there's a plane in holding waiting for information.

Unless they want a repeat of telling a plane to hold till it crashed into sea.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#220

Post by p_l »

ra7 wrote: post #192
FireBeyond wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Yes, landing fees are public and in most countries are set same for everyone based on type of aircraft and sometimes operations, but not who is flying.

They are supposed to directly reflect funding of airport maintenance, thus fees decided based on how damaging the plane is to the runway etc.

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