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A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

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Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#241

Post by mattpallissard »

I had a lufthansa flight cancelled due to company policy of how long you could sit on the tarmac. They had an instrument go bad, had a spare on hand but couldn't find it in time.

Flight got cancelled and I got rebooked for 4 days later. Which was after my business trip so I cancelled. I'm still waiting on my refund 3 months later. Everyone I speak to is nice, polite, agrees to refund me while saying but we'll have to call you back "because policy", pretty annoying. Whatever, i'll get it eventually I'm sure

I don't particularly care for Lufthansa.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#242

Post by notwhereyouare »

ralph84 wrote: post #146
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…

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.

"The flight was initially supposed to leave Munich at 4:20PM, but only departed at 6:30PM The flight was supposed to arrive in San Francisco at 7PM, but ended up landing in Oakland at 9:43PM, after a 12hr13min flight"

Don't think they intended to arrive at the busiest time

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#244

Post by neom »

ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #117
kabes wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lufthansa does what the FAA recommends and SFO had air canada almost landing on the taxiway because of the visual approach not too long ago. So calling it an asshole move is turning things around.

So punish everyone because of Air Canada's fuck-up?

As they say, FAA rules are written in blood.

https://www.cfinotebook.net/notebook/rules-and-regulations/r...

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#245

Post by [deleted] »

koyote wrote: post #89
YeBanKo wrote: post #30

Maybe the reason why Lufthansa does not allow visual approach at SFO at night, could be after the Air Canada near miss. > The NTSB determined the probable cause was the Air Canada flight crew's confusion of the runway with the parallel taxiway, with contributing causes including the crew's failure to use the instrument landing system (ILS), as well as pilot fatigue. FAA changed the rules for SFO and made visual appro…

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.

[deleted]

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#246

Post by pdonis »

mixdup wrote: post #232
ralph84 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They didn't "barge in" or expect any priority. They arrived just like everyone else. As a matter of fact, they travelled farther than probably most arrivals that day so ATC had much more warning they were approaching than, say, a flight from Denver or Atlanta

> They arrived just like everyone else.

As I understand the sequence of events, the flight crew informed ATC that they couldn't execute a visual approach...when ATC cleared them for a visual approach. If they really couldn't do a visual approach due to company policy, one would think they would inform ATC of this earlier, to at least give some time to try to accommodate them. (Other commenters have said that this information might be filed with the flight plan, which if true would put more of the onus on ATC.)

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#247

Post by nradov »

lmm wrote: post #231
V-eHGsd_ wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> 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. How are they supposed to know that an ILS approach - a completely routine procedure - is not available? If the problem is them not giving ATC enough warning, what process is there for telling ATC ahead of time? What was SFO going to do if it clou…

All of that information is published ahead of time by KSFO (and every other major airport) including runways in use, traffic patterns, minimum separations, available approach types, and how things will change in bad weather. Everything is available to the pilots and dispatchers ahead of time and in updates during the flight.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#248

Post by pdonis »

rmk wrote: post #168
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…

Airline pilots can lose their jobs if they do not follow the airline's SOP (Standard Operating Procedure). SFO controllers have gotten a shitty rep, with good reason, it appears. This wouldn't have happened at any of the other many busy airports in the US. This seemed to be the majority opinion on a couple other forums where this has been discussed.

> This wouldn't have happened at any of the other many busy airports in the US.

I'm not aware of any other busy airport in the US that has the same parallel runway situation SFO has, with two parallel runways only 750 feet apart both doing landings. Plenty of other large US airports have parallel runways, but they're further apart and they're staggered between landings and takeoffs.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#249

Post by kalleboo »

CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #50
michaeljx wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand, despite the tower not being able to create a gap for 30+ minutes,which although extreme may be understandable due to SFO being the way it is, another major factor was the fact that the tower was unable to provide a realistic estimated time to enter the circuit. That is completely unacceptable.

If you mean “traffic pattern” (from https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/media/pcg_10-12... ), that is also something you would do visually, which I don’t think Lufthansa would accept. As for not being able to give an accurate estimate, that is not for the on-the-radio approach controller to calculate, given their view of the airspace. The video posted by parent shows how long the inbound flows were (at least…

> that is not for the on-the-radio approach controller to calculate

In that case they should not have given an estimate in the first place if it's just made up

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#250

Post by pdonis »

lmm wrote: post #231
V-eHGsd_ wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> 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. How are they supposed to know that an ILS approach - a completely routine procedure - is not available? If the problem is them not giving ATC enough warning, what process is there for telling ATC ahead of time? What was SFO going to do if it clou…

> What was SFO going to do if it clouded over, close the airport?

No, land planes at a slower rate (about half) because they can no longer land two planes side by side on the parallel runways. On a day when the weather is known to be cloudy and that is factored in up front, that's not a huge problem.

On a day when the weather is clear and planes are landing at the higher rate, it is a huge problem.

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