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A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

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Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#291

Post by Hansenq »

mitchellh wrote: post #106
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…

A small nitpick: the other aircraft were doing _visual_ approaches, not VFR approaches. A visual approach is a type of instrument approach operated under IFR regulations. Practically, this has no affect on your comment. Just pointing this out in case its interesting to you or others (if you didn't know this already).

ooo thanks. Too late to edit now but appreciate it! Not a pilot currently; just very interested and will probably get one in my lifetime.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#292

Post by pixl97 »

FireBeyond wrote: post #97
riversflow wrote: post #8

I see this as a reap what you sow moment for Lufthasa. Why should ATC at a busy airport be so accommodating? Lufthasa is the one making this hard on everyone. I used to watch both these airports fairly frequently from Oyster bay regional park, they are both super busy with flights often lining up to the horizon.

> 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…

And if the separation delay caused by this one aircraft caused another one or two aircraft to delay instead?

Unfortunately this airport sounds like it's seriously overcrowded and not designed well for the amount of traffic it's getting.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#293

Post by ryandrake »

MBCook wrote: post #166
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.

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…

Congress holds the purse strings but FAA makes the rules. And their rules are strict, limiting both populations. There is an ATC shortage and FAA’s rules make it difficult to hire/train enough ATC. There is a pilot shortage and FAA’s rules make it difficult to hire/train enough pilots. We need to either reduce our demand of pilots and airline travel, thus reducing the load on ATC, or train more controllers and pilots.

ATC has ridiculous age limits for onboarding and retiring staff, and there are a lot of things (aeromedical and otherwise) that can disqualify your from becoming a pilot. I think they can lighten up and still maintain aviation’s good safety record.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#294

Post by relix »

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…

I don’t think this makes much sense in the real world. Shit happens and plans change. What if an aircraft needs to do a go-around, do they suddenly face 45m of delay or immediately need to divert, because The Sequence is immutable?

No, they’d move things around a bit. SFO decided that this plane wasn’t going to land there as soon as they asked for ILS, instead of doing their job and making a gap.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#295

Post by phendrenad2 »

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.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#296

Post by duxup »

ak217 wrote: post #123
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…

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…

If there were more controllers would that change anything?

The volume of flights and their chaining flights wouldn’t seem to change in that case would it?

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#297

Post by petesergeant »

jersa wrote: post #264

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,…

Reasonably sure the passengers all had to stay on the plane

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#298

Post by higeorge13 »

jersa wrote: post #264

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,…

European here; what’s so special about Oakland? :-)

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#299

Post by cjbprime »

pdonis wrote: post #246
mixdup wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inf…

If I recall from listening to the ATC conversation back at the time, the ATC acknowledged that they had received this information from Lufthansa in a phone call far ahead of the arrival.

Re: A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion

#300

Post by tass »

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 air Canada issue can still be mitigated, even on a visual approach, by programming the plane for the runway’s instrument approach (ILS or otherwise) assuming one is available.

Many pilots do this, and you don’t need a special ILS clearance or its corresponding separation to do so.

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