A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion • Hacker News Board

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#221

Post by p_l » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 2:02 AM UTC

Cody-99 wrote: post #203

JAlexoid wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ATC should have just told them that, from the get go. They know exactly how many aircraft are headed their way, the pilot doesn't

I'm pretty sure they did.. the article says controller told them there would be "extended delays". Sounds like the pilot just got impatient when ATC couldn't get him on the ground after 10 minutes.

No, the pilot got inpatient when the controller told them the next info will be in 10 minutes (reasonable, shit happens) and did not contact them at that point -the pilot even had to remind the ATC they were supposed to update the flight.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#222

Post by iudqnolq » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 2:02 AM UTC

p_l wrote: post #206

thriftwy wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do not train with passengers on board, period.

That is simply not how things work. Every airline trains with passengers on board.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#223

Post by diebeforei485 » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 2:16 AM UTC

ian-g wrote: post #72

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…

That would also mean it's really incredibly difficult to declare a fuel emergency around SFO, since Oakland and San Jose and (I guess, if it were really urgent) Moffat Field are all a five minute flight away, right?

You can't do it that quickly. You have to look at the charts, set up the airplane, brief the other pilot(s) about the approach and landing, etc.

You can have mayday fuel situations where attempting to divert is more risky. But in this case they had plenty of time to prepare to divert to Oakland.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#224

Post by jcalvinowens » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 2:22 AM UTC

perihelions wrote: post #66

There was a major airliner crash at JFK caused (partly) by poor communication between pilots and ATC, resulting in the plane running out of fuel, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avianca_Flight_052 (1990) https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-words-not-spoken-the... There was a similar fact pattern to the OP: the pilots relied on time estimates from ATC which turned out to be inaccurate, - "Due to the air traffic cont…

> major airliner crash at JFK caused (partly) by poor communication between pilots and ATC

IMHO that doesn't accurately represent the NTSB's conclusions. They didn't cite ATC as a cause at all, only as a secondary contributing factor (along with the weather):

  >> The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the
  >> probable cause of this accident was the failure of the flightcrew to
  >> adequately manage the airplane's fuel load, and their failure to
  >> communicate an emergency fuel situation to air traffic control
  >> before fuel exhaustion occurred.

  >> Contributing to the accident was the flightcrew's failure to use
  >> an airline operational control dispatch system to assist them during
  >> the international flight into a high-density airport in poor weather.

  >> Also contributing to the accident was inadequate traffic flow
  >> management by the FAA and the lack of standardized understandable
  >> terminology for pilots and controllers for minimum and emergency fuel
  >> states.

  >> The Safety Board also determines that windshear, crew fatigue and
  >> stress were factors that led to the unsuccessful completion of the
  >> first approach and thus contributed to the accident.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#225

Post by FireBeyond » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 2:23 AM UTC

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?

https://www.flysfo.com/sites/default/files/assets/investor/F...

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#226

Post by strangemonad » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 2:31 AM UTC

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…

The key bit of information missing here and from all these replies is that Lufthansa’s no SFO night time VFR policy was a reaction to and SFO and NorCal notice requiring this limitation from inbound international carriers after a few incidents but the requirement of how to implement this was ambiguous and Lufthansa is complying as best they can

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#227

Post by david422 » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 2:32 AM UTC

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…

I dunno. If everyone is doing 75 on the freeway, "safest" might be 65, but you can also create more unsafe conditions by not matching the speed of all the other traffic.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#228

Post by filleduchaos » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 2:37 AM UTC

ralph84 wrote: post #178

perihelions wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- "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 onl…

Describing this as "barging in" is rather strange to me. The aviation industry is neither a charity nor the average software engineering shop; not only is air traffic control something that airlines pay for, this is far from the first or the last time that Lufthansa will fly into SFO.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#229

Post by bruce511 » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 2:38 AM UTC

tomrod wrote: post #167

r00fus wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FAA (and specifically Transport Secretary Buttigieg) hold all the cards here. That they're not doing more to address the issues speaks volumes about the FAA's mission and abrogation of it.

Aye. Increasing taxes is basically the only way to ensure the system is funded sufficiently to: (1) hire enough people to perform the ops (2) hire enough people to update and modernize the policy Any other solution that doesn't emphasize building up the human capital is easy to argue against, IMO. You simply cannot draw from an empty well, and you really really don't want text GPTs attempting to land you no matter ho…

>> Increasing taxes is basically the only way to ensure the system is funded sufficiently

Making no judgement either way, its worth pointing out that there are other ways.

Firstly one could prioritise this over some other budget item. Perhaps, for example, the military budget (currently 766b) or the TSA budget (currently 11.2b, up 1.6b over last year.)

Secondly, one could restore taxes that have recently been cut. While this is indeed a "short term increase" it can also be framed as "a restoration of tax income recently removed."

Removed incidentally by a govt that was already running a deficit.

Again i make no judgement. All budgeting (at a personal or govt level) is about setting spending priorities. It just appears that safe air travel in the US is not a priority right now.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#230

Post by diebeforei485 » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 2:40 AM UTC

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.

The article is incorrect (no surprise, considering it's a blog hawking credit cards that offer bonus frequent flyer miles written by people who are not aviators or controllers or anything related).

The issue isn't the visual approach. Lufthansa can do visual approaches at night. What they can't do is maintain visual separation from other aircraft at night. They mentioned this is exactly what isn't allowed for them. I think perhaps they could have been accommodated better at SFO, but the plane landed in Oakland and everyone survived so it worked out.