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A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

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Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#281

Post by jquery »

cycomanic wrote: post #273
krisoft wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So this controller, knowing the plane was near a fuel emergency, gave the pilots the option to either crash their plane with 240 people on board, or to divert to Oakland. Oh please. Fuel emergency is not when the plane falls out of the sky. It is calculated as when the airplane has just enough fuel to go to the alternate airport plus multiple landing attempts there plus navigational reserve in case you get lost on…

> > So this controller, knowing the plane was near a fuel emergency, gave the pilots the option to either crash their plane with 240 people on board, or to divert to Oakland. > Oh please. Fuel emergency is not when the plane falls out of the sky. It is calculated as when the airplane has just enough fuel to go to the alternate airport plus multiple landing attempts there plus navigational reserve in case you get lost…

When I first read the story, I thought ATC was at fault. But on further reading it's clear that the pilot was the one being unprofessional (threatening a fuel emergency as a bluff and then getting mad when ATC did the correct thing and offered vectors to the alternate).

Maybe there are systemic issues to be fixed here, but the plane was two hours late and wanted special privileges during the busiest time...

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#282

Post by cycomanic »

wtallis wrote: post #26
kayodelycaon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delays are estimates. They can’t be guaranteed. All it takes is one other plane to be slow to act.

Estimates and predictions that turn out to be wrong are still wrong . And when the estimate was wrong by 50% and counting, and the ATC wasn't offering any information other than another dubious estimate, and the ATC was not handling the flights in a FIFO order, the Lufthansa pilots were left with uncomfortably little useful information about their situation.

Just a note the estimate wasn't just wrong by 50% the pilots had already been told 10min twice before, so estimate was more than 300% off by that time.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#283

Post by jquery »

YeBanKo wrote: post #40

The article seems to be misleading a little, because it was not 10 min in total. Lufthansa asked for ILS, was put on hold for 20 min, then ATC promised another 10 minutes, and then 14 more min passed and this is when the pilot got frustrated.

After that extra 4 minute delay, the pilot made a bluff because he had get-there-itis and the ATC controller called the bluff. Honestly I don't see what the controller did wrong here. If anything was unprofessional it was threatening to call an emergency and then arguing with ATC

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#284

Post by cycomanic »

isatty wrote: post #205

Regardless of what everyone is saying about the controller, I think the pilots behavior was disrespectful (to both ATC and to the lives of those on their plane) and unprofessional. You don’t get to cry wolf and cut the line because you were late and want preferential treatment. Go to Oakland as told, wait, or declare an actual emergency for emergency procedures to be run for you.

They were put in holding pattern with estimate of 10min, 20min later they again get told it will be another 10min and after 14mins go by the pilot asks "hey you have been repeatedly putting me off with 10min estimates I'm about to run low on fuel" how is that disrespectful?

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#285

Post by YPPH »

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…

>It's not clear who's in the wrong here; just an unintended consequence from many well-intentioned decisions.

Attention should be given not just to what was said, but how it was said. It is obvious the controller was frustrated. It conveys the impression that at least part of his decision-making was influenced by spite and not good intentions.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#287

Post by pixl97 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #211
redtriumph wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

127k is not a huge salary in large cities with a life and death responsibility job.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#288

Post by YPPH »

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.

A pilot's 'flight hours' is regarded as a key measure of their experience.

If a pilot only ever trained visual approaches in sim, and not the real world accounting for the overwhelming majority of their flight experience, that number would be meaningless.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#289

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

whycome wrote: post #277
rmk wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you link me to some of those forums?

pprune and reddit discussed it at length.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#290

Post by lxgr »

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.

It can absolutely make sense to "train" with passengers on board.

Automation complacency or simply being out of practice can have significant repercussions in emergencies.

Consider a task where humans have a marginally higher error rate than the autopilot. Obviously, per task, the safe thing to do is to let the autopilot fly.

But now consider a more difficult scenario where the autopilot just bails out, e.g. due to ILS being inoperable, wind shear, any kind of non-permissible sensor discrepancy on board etc. – how would you like be on a plane flown by a pilot that has never done a manual landing in the past few months or even years due to company policy?

Of course, a night approach at a foreign airport might not be the best opportunity to practice a manual landing (and it looks like the planned arrival time was during daylight hours!), but as a general policy, allowing some manual flying seems like a very good safety practice, at least until autopilots can fly and land in 100% of all scenarios.

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