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A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

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Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#261

Post by pdonis »

lmm wrote: post #259
pdonis wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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. But it can get cloudy any time in SF. So suddenly needing to switch over to ILS operations should be something they're set up to handle pretty routinely.

They would normally have warning from weather forecasters about upcoming cloudy weather so they would have time to switch over to ILS operations in an orderly manner. Switching in the middle of a clear evening because of one plane is something quite different.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#262

Post by V-eHGsd_ »

lmm wrote: post #258
V-eHGsd_ wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How are they supposed to know that an ILS approach - a completely routine procedure - is not available? it's not that the ILS wasn't available, it's that the atis would've said "VISUAL APPROACH, RUNWAY 28L 28R IN USE" and the lufthansa crew would say, "huh, we need something different than that". in aviation if you want something non standard, you need to let air traffic know so they can put you in their plan. If y…

> and the lufthansa crew would say, "huh, we need something different than that". in aviation if you want something non standard, you need to let air traffic know so they can put you in their plan. If you don't tell them different, they're going to plan for you to do what's being advertised. So they should have, what, called them when they were back over the east coast? Genuine question. They filed the flight plan, t…

the flight plan doesn't have any bearing here. norcal approach isn't (and shouldn't be) expected to know the SOP's for every company in the world. the flight's clearance limit was to SFO and they were being given the approach that their requested airport was advertising.

> called them when they were back over the east coast?

depends on who they were on with when they found out SFO was advertising an approach they couldn't take. At the very least they could've told oakland center; that's who they would've been talking to before being transferred to norcal approach, and is probably the one sequencing a good chunk of those other planes coming in.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#263

Post by V-eHGsd_ »

lmm wrote: post #259
pdonis wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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. But it can get cloudy any time in SF. So suddenly needing to switch over to ILS operations should be something they're set up to handle pretty routinely.

again, the ILS wasn't unavailable, but ATC for hundreds of miles had been planning on every plane taking the visual, with its reduced separation requirements. if a plane needs an approach with increased requirements, they need to tell ATC early so ATC can put them in their plan.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#264

Post by jersa »

I thought I would just briefly pop into this thread to say that if I, as a passenger, were to learn that the flight* I was unexpectedly diverting across the bay, I just know I'd somehow embarrass myself from getting all hyphy about my "bonus" trip to Oaktown. Raising my daughter there through the grade school years conjures up some warm memories. Love that town.

But I'm not just here reppin' for Oakland – apparently, there's a lot of dysfunction at the FAA that I had no idea about. Glad I clicked.

*(well, maybe not a 12+ hr one)

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#265

Post by fsckboy »

lisper wrote: post #215
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.)

I agree that Lufthansa has to accept the repercussions of their policy, and if somebody asks me for a favor and says they need to because "it's their policy", I'd squint pretty hard at them, that's not really the jurisdiction of policy.

For all the people who believe that the policy is the safest and safety comes first, that's a fine opinion, but if other people don't agree to that tradeoff (absolute safety versus demands on a crowded airport timeslot) you have to accept that, you can't impose your opinion about safety on everybody else's schedule.

I can also see that the air traffic controller might have messed up. Perhaps they intended to squeeze Lufthansa in when they told them to wait, and maybe they forgot and didn't, and then when pressed they got irritated, that's how overworked people typically would react; but still it was their call.

Perhaps this flight is never late so they never encountered this situation before. We can't expect everything to go smoothly all the time, so we don't necessarily need policy changes because of what happened, simply adjust what expectations we should have. And if Lufthansa expects future conflicts, now is the time to work it out with the appropriate parties (i.e. not the whole internet)

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#266

Post by quickthrower2 »

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.

What about the rookie copilot with 50 hours on type?

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#267

Post by csours »

I see a huge problem here with "Everybody Knows", even among the people who sound like air transport professionals.

Lufthansa Requirement: Instrument landing

SFO Preference: Visual landing

Reason for Lufthansa requirement: IFR/ILS is safer than visual

Reason for SFO preference: Visual allows more planes with lower separation, leading to better throughput.

More context: Lufthansa would be using their instruments anyway, without declaring instrument flight rules landing. Declaring ILS in some generic sense is "safer", but specifically it means that the controllers cannot clear them to land in a degraded ILS environment, where perhaps some beacons are offline.

The SFO preference is not just something that the airport or the controller decided - it's also good for the airlines and the flying public. More planes land faster. The planes took off with the expectation that they would be able to land at a certain rate; otherwise they wouldn't schedule them to arrive so frequently.

The problem with "Everybody Knows" is that you really don't. The controller may assume that Lufthansa means "hey are all the beacons on?" when they say "IFR landing". Lufthansa may assume that IFR clearance means that the ILS equipment is operational, but that they can still fit into the VFR sequence.

In this case, those assumptions probably would have worked out Ok. But if "Everybody Knows" is part of your work culture and you work on life critical systems, than someone will eventually die, as you can see from the history of investigations into air transport incidents.

If you feel like someone is saying or implying "Everybody Knows" in a safety critical or life critical system, that is bad culture. Start documenting.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#268

Post by cycomanic »

bombcar wrote: post #233
jcalvinowens wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is tough for me to wrap my head around. It's pretty easy to explain: the controller took the pilot at his word, and immediately offered the fastest and safest option to get them on the ground, which was to land at Oakland. The runway thresholds at SFO and OAK are less than ten miles apart.

Exactly. ATC called his bluff and won. Note the pilot was not willing to even dare to break his company rules and do a visual, so why should ATC break theirs?

No ILS is not an ATC rule, it's simply a way to get more flights to land (increasing airline/airport profits) and putting responsibility on the pilot (not ATC). Lufthansa has the policy exactly so that pilots do not get bullied into taking a visual approach, by ATC.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#269

Post by csours »

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.

We don't test software systems in production either. Except we do.

We should be testing in non-production environments, but non-prod is not the same as production, so it is inevitable that you will be testing a system change when you deploy to prod. If your non-prod environment is similar enough that there are NO system changes when you deploy to prod ... then your non-prod env is actually prod, because that would mean that your non-prod network routing, auth, and database are the same as prod, because changing any one of those would be a system change.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#270

Post by quickthrower2 »

kalleboo wrote: post #251
trentnelson wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not how ATC works. First come, first served.

If it's first come, first served, then why didn't the other planes have to wait for their ILS landing

Because they were not using ILS.
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