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A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

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Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#331

Post by kqr »

pdonis wrote: post #253
danielschonfeld wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> American Airlines (at JFK) proved you can call emergency just because you feel like it with no repercussion. I don't think it's that simple. In the AA case you refer to, the pilot was concerned about the high crosswind on the runway ATC wanted him to land on, so he declared an emergency so he could land on a safer runway. Crosswind landings are dicey at the best of times, and I suspect that if the AA pilot didn't g…

And this is (should be, at least) good practise. When there's an emergency, you don't want pilots second-guessing that radio call because they are worried about repercussions if they understood the situation wrong.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#332

Post by refurb »

lmm wrote: post #234
throwaway2037 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Does anyone know why EU / Japan / Korea does not have the same issues? Because over there the job comes with a strong union and real job security?

Like the pilots of Singapore Airlines?

In the words of Lee Kuan Yew…

“I gave them a choice. Continue this and I will by every means at my disposal teach you and get the people of Singapore to help me teach you a lesson you won't forget.

Took them 65 minutes and they decided ok it isn't worth the fight.

Why? Because they know they'll lose.

They know that I'm prepared to ground the airline. They know that I can get the airline going again without them.“

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#333

Post by addicted »

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…

The person you’re commenting to is missing the context you’ve provided, which is the U.S. has seen an incredible number of near misses this past year.

The ATC situation in the U.S. is dire. It would be insane for an airline to reduce their safety standards especially in the U.S. right now.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#334

Post by addicted »

zo1 wrote: post #312
MBCook wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they? Congress holds the purse strings, and that seems to be a BIG part of the issue. There aren’t enough controllers (possibly budget). The ones who are are horribly overworked and it’s an ultra-high stress job. Between that and pay they can’t recruit more to ease the burden. But the existing ones are burning out, making things worse. Maybe better equipment could lessen the load, but that’s big money too. Is ther…

This is just another instance of the long set of Shittification and Shrinkflation happening everywhere, brought about by us holding our collective heads in the sand over the real rate of inflation. I'd bet it's a lot more than the official numbers.

I mean, it’s not?

There was inflation. And instead of increasing the budget the FAA’s budget was reduced. At a time when the U.S. Is seeing record air travel.

You don’t need conspuracies around real and fake inflation numbers to see how that doesn’t add up.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#335

Post by stevage »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #71
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…

It's a safety issue when the plane is getting low on fuel and the crew are fatigued from a long international flight, and the only reason they're being told no is because of policies designed to maximize airport/airline profits. Controllers had hours of notice the flight would need an ILS approach. They petulantly ignored it because ILS approaches take up more space in the pattern, which means less landings per hour,…

>They petulantly ignored it because ILS approaches take up more space in the pattern, which means less landings per hour, which means less profit for the airport operator.

Can you explain this? Do planes have choices over where to land once in the air? If not, all the landings needed to happen, so why does delaying some by a few minutes affect the total income for the airport on that evening?

I'm just questioning how an airport's overall profit motive would affect an indiviual air traffic controller's decision making like that.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#336

Post by kqr »

Analemma_ wrote: post #60
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 actually surprised SFO still allows visual approaches at night after that Air Canada 759 flight nearly landed on the taxiway ~5 years ago The Air Canada incident happened because one of the runways at SFO was closed for maintenance, and after it happened the FAA specifically updated their regulations to require ILS when there's a possibility of runway confusion. There's no reason to think VFR landings at SFO ar…

> There's no reason to think VFR landings at SFO are unsafe in normal conditions.

"No reason" seems like a very strong claim. Is that the reason Lufthansa cites for prohibiting visual separation at night? I mean it would clearly be in their interest to increase throughput as well, so they must think there's a reason. Why do you think that reason is invalid?

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#337

Post by krisoft »

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…

> Well the point was that based on the time estimates that ATC gave the pilots assumed they would be well on the ground before they get close to the fuel emergency line.

It happens. Sometimes ATC miscalculates this way. Sometimes a runway snows in suddenly. Sometimes there is a security incident. It doesn’t really matter why you need to land at your alternate, but when things don’t work out with your primary desination you go to your alternate.

Once everyone is safely on the ground, and the wheels stopped rolling we can ask if there could have been something ATC could have done better under the given constraint. Maybe the answer will be yes, this or that could have been done better to get the airplane on the ground at the right place. Or maybe the answer is no, simply there were too many other airplanes landing to do what the Lufthansa was asking for.

> The pilot could have just been a dick and waited for his slot and until he has to declare emergency.

Could have. And in the following investigation they would have been asked why have they not diverted.

> airports and airlines prioritising profits over safety (like it was the case here)

This was not a safety incident. This was an inconvinience incident.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#338

Post by kqr »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #295

So much talk of who's at fault here, but what strikes me is that it ever got to this point. I feel like competence is at an all-time low in recorded history. Maybe we need to take a step back and go back to horse-drawn carriages until we've re-learned how to be responsible. I have a flight this week and this isn't helping my anxiety.

Think about it the other way around: this incident wasn't even close to an actual emergency – and it still gets a lot of discussion because it's so rare that it happens.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#339

Post by kqr »

db48x wrote: post #144
JAlexoid wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fuel emergency would have been literally a result of the ATC staff. Instead of this back and forth, the answer should have been - we cannot take you on ILS in the next X time, consider diverting. Giving the sense of "we'll take you in within X minutes" to the pilot is disingenuous at best. ATCs job is literally safety.

That’s not how it works though. Before the pilots ever leave their starting airport they load up enough extra fuel to fly to their alternate airport and land there safely. Then they add on the “final reserve” fuel, which is enough fuel to fly for at least another half hour or 45 minutes (depending on airline and region). Together that fuel is called the “minimum fuel”. When an airplane gets down to minimum fuel it mu…

You are correct. Technically a fuel emergency should also be declared if the pilots expect to land with less than reserve fuel, not just when they are starting to consume the reserve.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#340

Post by justin66 »

systemvoltage wrote: post #320
Cacti wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FAA budget in 2016 was $15.8B. In 2023 dollars, this is equivalent to about $20B. The current budget is $18.6ish.

Mostly going to inadequate and incompetent new hires. We're not selecting based on merit and competence. We make a big deal out of interview process in Software engineering. But when it comes to critical life/death situation jobs, we don't.

Your experience in software engineering gives you insight into what's happening vis a vis hiring of air traffic controllers?
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