[HN Gopher] A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion
___________________________________________________________________
A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion
Author : ghgr
Score : 80 points
Date : 2023-12-19 18:19 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (onemileatatime.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (onemileatatime.com)
| jtagen wrote:
| I wonder if it was an option to say "okay", continue circling,
| then declare a fuel emergency and land. Seems like ATC was being
| a dick here.
|
| Not sure: 1) How long this would take 2) If this actually
| endangers anyone/anything
| kabes wrote:
| Problem is that emergencies also involve a lot of paperwork and
| delay for the pilot.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Seems like ATC has dozens of airplanes to route and cannot give
| preference to those who have the strictest company policy and
| complain the loudest.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| They can and do all the time. ATC would also have known _the
| previous shift_ that this flight was late and would require
| it.
|
| As for requiring it on company policy, I'm not entirely sure
| that our ATC policies should focus on "well, you don't need
| to be _that_ safe ".
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Declaring a fuel emergency when your alternative is only a few
| miles away is bound to get someone in trouble.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| 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.
| kokken wrote:
| I'm sure the industry has standards for assigning blame, but it
| looks to me that ATC is clearly being assholes here.
|
| Even from this article that clearly seems to think Lufthansa is
| in the wrong I walked away with a feeling that ATC and small town
| cops are one and the same.
| dxf wrote:
| The current top comment on the article explains the situation,
| and ATC are "not being assholes here":
|
| >NorCal had a new interpretation of ILS approaches come down
| several months ago that tied the controllers hands with regards
| to ILS approaches during visual conditions... The controllers
| were issued guidelines that if it's busy and an aircraft is
| unable to comply with the approaches advertised on the atis or
| maintain visual separation that its better to hold them until
| there is adequate space on final as it's more unsafe to start
| vectoring 30/40 different aircraft to build the required hole
| for the 1 aircraft who's company has a lame rule
| Zetobal wrote:
| Just tell the pilots that the ATC in NorCAL is also bound to
| policies and they have to divert. No need to be a dick.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| The ATC should have just told them that, from the get go.
| They know exactly how many aircraft are headed their way, the
| pilot doesn't
| toast0 wrote:
| > The controller clears the Lufthansa jet to make a visual
| approach, and the Lufthansa pilot advises "due to company
| procedures, we are unable visual approach at nighttime"
|
| > The controller then advises that "if that's the case,
| then it will be extended delays"
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| ATC wasn't been an asshole. The airspace was extremely busy and
| there wasn't space between arriving flights for anyone to make
| an instrument landing.
|
| In order to make instrument landing, dozens of other planes
| would have to be moved out of the way.
| sccxy wrote:
| ATC was more incompetent than asshole.
| durandal1 wrote:
| Norcal is an amazing bunch of people with a high stress life-
| and-death job. They're incredibly accommodating, but when the
| system is at capacity it's at capacity. SFO is a very special
| airport with a traffic flow much higher than its footprint
| would normally allow. Since there is pretty nowhere for it to
| expand, the only option would be to reduce the number of slot
| times, which for a business hub like SFO would be terrible.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| This feels 'of a type' with the rest of the crisis in the United
| States's air traffic control system.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/02/business/air-traffic-cont...
| riversflow wrote:
| 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.
| snypher wrote:
| "okay, you promised me 10 minutes, that ran out four minutes
| ago, so how many more minutes?"
|
| Seems to me that ATC need to get it together also.
| wtallis wrote:
| Yeah, whether Lufthansa's polices are reasonable or
| excessively cautious is debatable, but the ATC here obviously
| gave unambiguously wrong information about the delay.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Delays are estimates. They can't be guaranteed. All it
| takes is one other plane to be slow to act.
| wtallis wrote:
| 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.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| When flying and being responsible for an aircraft full of
| people - estimates take a very different meaning.
| CaliforniaKarl wrote:
| That's why flight plans have diversion fields, with
| requirements to have enough field to get to the diversion
| airport, and even to hold _there_.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Or maybe SFO is already over capacity and can't safely take
| the traffic assigned to it?
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Then it's literally ATCs responsibility to inform the
| incoming aircraft of that. That's why there's a diversion
| airport.
| noxvilleza wrote:
| 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" just seems
| wrong, having more safety seems totally justified and
| reasonable here.
|
| 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
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGQlQFn0euI).
| jaywalk wrote:
| > your phrasing "Lufthasa is the one making this hard on
| everyone" just seems wrong, having more safety seems totally
| justified and reasonable here.
|
| It's so "justified and reasonable" that nobody else does it.
| Maybe it's not quite so justified or as reasonable as you
| think.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > It's so "justified and reasonable" that nobody else does
| it.
|
| Airlines are a cutthroat business and many will go for
| profit rather than for safety if they're allowed to. The
| large American airlines, for what it's worth, are actually
| loss leaders [1].
|
| [1] https://happyrichadvisor.com/loss-leaders/
| noxvilleza wrote:
| > that nobody else does it.
|
| Apparently some Canadian carriers do also have this as a
| SOP.
|
| Around the time this happened I spoke to some friends who
| are ATCs (in the US) who all immediately agreed it was a
| very reasonable request, especially given that the request
| was made far enough out (so it wasn't like they'd have to
| quickly scramble to respace the incoming planes correctly
| in the sequence).
| xenadu02 wrote:
| Because Lufthansa left a few hours late they arrived
| during a super busy arrival window. AFAIK ATC had nearly
| 30 planes already in the queue for landing with spacing
| for visual. To get Lufthansa in any sooner they'd need to
| send updated instructions to a lot of planes to make a
| gap.
|
| If Lufthansa had arrived two hours earlier or later it
| wouldn't have been an issue. Indeed they were able to
| depart OAK around two hours later and land at SFO via IFR
| with no problems.
|
| SFO handles a lot of traffic for having just two active
| runways - one of the reasons they constantly operate in
| parallel. Much like other super busy constrained airports
| (eg JFK) they have very little room to accommodate
| special requests.
|
| Ideally Lufthansa would have let ATC know of this need
| while still a long way out so they could build a bubble
| in the sequence ahead of time but I don't know if
| procedures even allow for that.
| lainga wrote:
| What's the rationale? Maybe the jetstream reverses and
| the 2-hour delay leaving MUC gets erased during flight?
| raverbashing wrote:
| > reason that Lufthansa wants ILS is to increase safety
|
| Yes because "more technology is more better" right? And
| forgetting about how to do things by hand (or eye) doesn't
| pose a risk to anyone neither
|
| A visual approach is no more unsafe than an ILS one in good
| weather. Sure, ok, the caveat here is "at night" but I don't
| think the multiple pilots that were doing it at the time were
| being risky on purpose
|
| (and people are quoting Asiana, but understand that fumbling
| a visual approach landing is _not_ a thing that should be
| common)
| Analemma_ wrote:
| > 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 are unsafe in normal
| conditions.
| mjevans wrote:
| I'm surprised a computer assisted landing sequence can't
| _increase_ the rate of landed planes, though I assume doing
| so would require subordinating all the inbound aircraft to
| the local traffic control system.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| The problem with having computer separation be less than
| pilot separation is, what happens if the computers fail and
| the pilots have to take over? Then they're suddenly in a
| situation where they're already below whatever the minimum
| safe pilot separation is, and now you've potentially turned
| a recoverable failure into an unrecoverable one. If the
| whole point of having pilots is to be backups for the
| computers, the computer situation has to have more margin
| than the equivalent pilot one, even if efficiency is being
| left on the table.
|
| (The only way around this is to _not_ have pilots as
| backup, and turn the whole thing over to the computers, but
| we 're not ready or willing to take that step yet)
| brigade wrote:
| Instrument approaches are the norm in Europe, visual
| approaches are the norm in the US. Visual approaches can and
| normally do still use ILS when possible; SFO's incidents were
| when ILS was out of service (Asiana 214) or not engaged (Air
| Canada 759)
|
| Which is why ATC obliquely asked whether Lufthansa bans
| visual approaches altogether, or simply requires the use of
| ILS. If it had been the latter, that's fully compatible with
| normal SFO operations.
| jMyles wrote:
| > Why should ATC at a busy airport be so accommodating?
|
| Is it really so much to ask that an ILS-equipped airport...
| provide an ILS approach?
|
| I'm generally on your side here; the controllers did a good job
| with what resources they had. But there seem to be an awful lot
| of oddities / operational hangups through NorCal TRACON.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| ILS approaches require far more separation than visual ones.
| jaywalk wrote:
| With every other plane on visual, they can't just stick an
| ILS approach in there without messing everyone else up.
| thrill wrote:
| "Why should ATC at a busy airport be so accommodating? Lufthasa
| is the one making this hard on everyone."
|
| It is literally ATC's job to facilitate the safe separation of
| aircraft. Note I said _facilitate_ , not ensure, because
| _ensuring_ safe separation and operation remains in the
| cockpit. When a pilot arrives at an airport and requests a
| specific approach, whether that reason is company policy or the
| limitations of weather, it is ATC 's job to accept that request
| or deny it, and not to beat around the bush suggesting doing
| one thing and calling it another. When they give an expected
| time for something the pilot makes decisions in the cockpit if
| that new limitation will work with whatever limitations already
| exist. If ATC is not operating honestly then that should be
| viewed as what it is - a compromise of safety, and a petty
| unnecessary one at that. If ATC is unable to accommodate the
| request then it needs to be stated so explicitly and as soon as
| possible because lives are literally part of the equation. Air
| traffic can be lined up from SFO all the way back to London and
| that still doesn't change ATC's responsibilities one bit. ATC
| does not "accommodate" because that implies they exercise some
| arbitrary discretion and not clear binary criteria.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > 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 for common use of terminal facilities (for airlines
| that don't have dedicated terminals - often with
| internationals, where they have the common check in area that
| is used by multiple airlines).
|
| And that's not all the charges the airline gets from the
| airport, that's just the majority of the charges for "1
| aircraft, 1 landing/departure" at SFO.
| supportengineer wrote:
| Driving south on a clear night on Highway 101, from SFO on
| down, is a neat experience because you can see these planes
| lined up clearly for about 20 miles. All the way down to the
| South Bay and beyond.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Seems like Lufthansa has decided it's not able to land planes at
| SFO at night.
| YeBanKo wrote:
| Pilots can be d*cks, but recently there was a string of ATC
| related incidents, where ATC show questionable judgment and
| become too "moody" too soon. Here is another example:
| https://twitter.com/jasonrosewell/status/1733645088473989245 JBU
| going too slow, instead of assigning a new speed and then
| scolding the pilot, ATC starts giving the attitude before telling
| him what he wants.
| jMyles wrote:
| The bigger issue here is that the ILS is being set aside in favor
| of visual approaches in order to slot in a few more approaches
| per hour.
|
| What's the point of equipping SFO with ILS if it's just going to
| sit idle?
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| ILS is needed when conditions don't allow visual approaches.
| Like, clouds existing.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Clouds at SFO???? Never!
| CaliforniaKarl wrote:
| Charted/Published visual approaches use the localizer part of
| the ILS equipment, and pilots have the option of using the
| glide slope.
|
| "ILS" is equipment, but it's also procedures and (increased)
| spacing (compared to visual separation).
| daedalus_f wrote:
| Like in the youtube video's comments section, I suspect everyone
| on HN is going to assume that the ATC was simply being petty, and
| perhaps that was the case. But...
|
| We don't know what the approach into SFO looked like that night,
| but you can bet it was busy. VASAviation videos are often highly
| misleading in this regard. Most of the talk on the ATC frequency
| is cut (sometimes explicitly, sometimes not) leaving just that
| relevant to the videos content, the time is compressed and they
| only plot a few of the planes involved, making the airspace look
| clear.
|
| My understanding is that SFO often has two closely spaced
| parallel runways taking arrivals. The visual approach is
| preferred because then the pilots on parallel approaches keep
| visual separation from each other, allowing more frequent
| landings. An ILS approach requires more space between planes
| (because ATC remains responsible for separation). Hence, the
| Lufthansa had to wait for a gap big enough to fit that ILS
| approach in, or the whole stack of planes lined up for the
| approach would have to be juggled - how feasible that would be I
| don't know.
| antonjs wrote:
| VASAviation has a video on this incident with commentary from a
| NorCal controller, showing the (large amount of) inbound
| traffic. [1]
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/4zHxdn8oz20?si=6ENIvIot7Q3LSJHO
| Hansenq wrote:
| 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 during a particularly busy landing time at SFO, so there
| was indeed a massive chain of aircraft coming in to land.
|
| Lufthansa was the only aircraft asking for ILS. Because ILS needs
| greater separation, that would require breaking the chain of
| approaches, sequencing a single ILS approach, then resuming. The
| chain of landings already sequenced takes priority, so Lufthansa
| would have to wait 30+ minutes for a gap to appear. By the time
| that gap appeared, Lufthansa had just decided to divert to
| Oakland. If Lufthansa had arrived a bit earlier or a bit later,
| they would have been sequenced just fine.
|
| ATC could have been a bit more accommodating in rerouting their
| divert to SFO as soon as the a gap appeared, but Lufthansa was
| also the only airline requesting ILS, and they're already dealing
| with sequencing 20+ aircraft during a busy time. It's not clear
| who's in the wrong here; just an unintended consequence from many
| well-intentioned decisions.
| michaeljx wrote:
| 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.
| CaliforniaKarl wrote:
| If you mean "traffic pattern" (from https://www.faa.gov/air_t
| raffic/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 on the east
| side); approach wouldn't have seen that.
|
| The coordination necessary to get an accurate estimate
| should've involved managers, which might be affected by the
| current shortage (see
| https://www.npr.org/2023/11/09/1211838624/air-traffic-
| contro...).
| michael_j_x wrote:
| I meant for the ATC to provide a descent estimate of when
| Lufthansa should be expected to enter the AERODROME TRAFFIC
| CIRCUIT (since you want tolink the FAA glossary) in order
| to land (they had them on a hold pattern for 35+ minutes).
| This is independent of whether the approach is IFR or VFR.
| A TOWER controller has all the information necessary to
| calculate that estimate, and should be expected to do so,
| the same way a stock trader is expected to calculate PnL of
| their positions on the fly given the current stock price.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| Most of the queue would have been with approach, not
| tower. The aircraft sequenced to land were split across
| at least two controllers, tower and approach, and
| possibly more than one approach controller depending on
| how SFO splits them up. I would expect approach to be
| able to provide a reasonable estimate but it seems like
| in this case the estimate was found to be four minutes
| off, which seems totally within the bounds of a
| reasonable estimate from an approach controller.
|
| The traffic pattern (US term) isn't really a factor here
| either way, airliners flying visual still usually use
| charted routes (like the instrument procedures) or radar
| vectors rather than the pattern. Remember that the
| pattern is only about one mile out from the field. By the
| time airliners are that close they're probably cleared.
| p3n1s wrote:
| Aerodrome traffic circuit is the ICAO term for traffic
| pattern, which is it what it is called in the US (it may
| be in the glossary but the point is that manual uses
| "traffic pattern" repeatedly). And this "traffic circuit"
| you refer to is almost always a VFR thing, as IFR
| approaches use specific charted procedures that generally
| do not end with a traffic circuit.
|
| https://skybrary.aero/articles/aerodrome-traffic-circuit
| paxys wrote:
| I found that part delightfully ironic, because it's basically
| a meme that whenever a flight is delayed ground staff/pilots
| will always tell passengers "we'll just be off in just a few
| minutes" over and over again regardless of how long the delay
| is going to be.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| The controller tried to give an estimated time, but that
| original estimate was blown out of the water by the other
| planes in the queue taking longer than expected, and the
| controller didn't have time to keep trying to give an updated
| estimated time to the one plane in the queue that wanted to
| do things the hard way (that also, due to circumstances
| within its own control, departed its original airport late
| and arrived outside of the window where SFO could have
| accommodated its silly request without any delays).
| shkkmo wrote:
| Your framing here is weird and doesn't match the facts. The
| airplane didn't want to do anything. Its pilots were
| following a mandatory company safety policy.
| CaliforniaKarl wrote:
| One useful part of that video is how they play clips of ATC
| telling flights to "join the localizer".
|
| SFO has two published visual approaches
| (https://www.airnav.com/airport/KSFO, scroll to the bottom):
| Both visual approaches have pilots fly to intercept their
| runway's localizer, the part of the ILS equipment that provides
| lateral positioning, relative to the localizer's centerline
| (which is generally coincident to the corresponding runway's
| centerline).
|
| So, by flying the published visual approach and remaining "on
| the localizer", you have separation from the planes on the
| parallel runway. What's missing is careful monitoring and
| separation, and that's what Lufthansa wanted.
|
| It's worth noting that SFO does have a Simultaneous Offser
| Instrument Approach procedure: See
| https://www.tc.faa.gov/its/worldpac/techrpt/afs420-84-1.pdf
| (detail) or
| https://www.flysfo.com/sites/default/files/PRM_SOIA_version_...
| (summary). But that procedure requires, among other things,
| additional controllers handling approach and monitoring. SFO
| might not have the spare controllers right now.
| lxgr wrote:
| I vaguely remember reading somewhere that SOIA in SFO was
| discontinued during the pandemic and hasn't returned so far.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| You're leaving out that they had a filed flight plan which for
| an international flight means controllers had _many hours_ of
| notice as to when the flight was scheduled to arrive and that
| they would be looking for an ILS approach and it was the
| responsibility of approach controllers to have a spot in the
| pattern for them.
|
| They arrived in the area on time, and controllers had not
| allocated it a spot, which is why the pilot sounds a bit peeved
| when told there isn't a spot. When he asks for one and they
| tell him that they can't give an estimate, that's the second
| strike.
|
| Strike three was telling him to fuck off ("what's your
| alternate, sir?")
|
| Controllers pulled a power play to bully him for wanting an ILS
| approach that reduces airport traffic capacity (larger
| separation distances) and in the process created a risk
| compounding another risk (a fatigued long-distance flight
| crew.) This is how crashes happen. All because the airport and
| airlines want to shove more flights through the airport to make
| more money.
|
| The sad thing is that they'll get away with it because we have
| a massive shortage of controllers right now (because they're
| underpaid and overworked. Thanks, Reagan.)
| MBCook wrote:
| Arrived on time? They left hours late from the departing
| airport.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Flight plans get updated when plans are delayed on takeoff.
| SFO should have had the arrival time from the updated
| flight plan for quite a while.
| lxgr wrote:
| I wonder if there is any mechanism that reconfirms landing
| slots (and other aspects of the flight plan) still being
| available after a delayed takeoff for cases like this.
|
| Is it really just a matter of taking off and hoping for the
| best, or did somebody in the chain of granting a take-off
| clearance miss something?
| toast0 wrote:
| I've had flights that were delayed, and then during the
| start of the boarding process, we had to stop and switch
| to a different aircraft, because the delay meant we'd be
| too loud for the noise curfew when we arrived, so we
| needed to take a quieter plane. That was a domestic
| flight into a small airport (LGB), but I imagine there's
| something to manage total flight volume in general;
| there's certainly exception handling to delay or cancel
| departures when the destination airport is unlikely to be
| available due to weather.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| _They arrived in the area on time_
|
| Huh?
|
| They arrived way outside their window. I realize they also
| left MUC late, but still.
| avarun wrote:
| This is obviously referring to the fact that they arrived
| on time with respect to their updated schedule post delayed
| departure.
| trentnelson wrote:
| ATC works on a first come, first served basis. (Unless you're
| Air Force 1/2, or a survival flight, or declare an
| emergency.)
|
| So just being in the system hours beforehand doesn't really
| mean much. ATC don't plan ahead based on what's in the
| system, per se.
| bombcar wrote:
| Which is why you circle until low fuel, pan-pan, and land.
|
| Calvin knew it:
| https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1988/05/15
| ak217 wrote:
| I keep seeing this repeated, but it's obviously not true.
| ATC does not work on any such basis.
|
| ATC's job is to safely and efficiently route the traffic.
| Different traffic may have different needs, and if
| unexpected needs arise, ATC has broad discretion on whether
| or how to accommodate them. But being the first in line, or
| anywhere else in line, doesn't mean much if you're holding
| up other traffic - as demonstrated in this incident!
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| The flight plan factors into flow timing, which is used to
| manage capacity, but there's no reservation of a landing
| time. Flight plan timings aren't accurate enough for that to
| be feasible when you have landings at close to one a minute.
|
| The flow timing rate used for approaches to SFO during visual
| conditions is based on visual approaches, so this particular
| aircraft didn't fall into the expectations used for that
| planning mechanism. Even then it's not a forward looking
| plan, just a rate limit on arrivals that causes departure
| clearances to be delayed. I'm not even sure if it works for
| international flights.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| I think the real issue is they promised 10 minutes max then
| once 15 minutes elapsed and the pilot complained, tower told
| the pilot to GTFO. It just feels wrong.
| kiratp wrote:
| The FAA themselves recommend that foreign pilots do not use
| visual approaches at SFO.
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/faa-wants-foreign-...
| kimixa wrote:
| Was that referring to the Primary Glide Slope Indicator being
| out of order at the time though? I find the article a little
| unclear if that's a general recommendation even if all the
| aids are functional for a visual approach.
| antonjs wrote:
| If I remember correctly, this Lufthansa flight usually
| arrives during the day, when the company permits visual
| approaches, but had a delayed departure, which is what let to
| their policy prohibiting visual approaches and the bad timing
| with the huge chain of other arrivals.
| khuey wrote:
| The flight's scheduled arrival time of 6:15 PM puts it well
| into darkness for much of the winter.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| You know I thought you were right but apparently for that
| day sunset was 6:30PM.
|
| https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/san-
| francisco?month=10
| khuey wrote:
| Sure, but my point is that this flight arriving in
| darkness is not something they never would have
| considered when planning the route and setting company
| policies prohibiting visual approaches at night.
| mitchellh wrote:
| 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).
| gkedzierski wrote:
| Did you mean visual approach, not VFR?
| ak217 wrote:
| 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 a
| number of tools to address the handicap, but the FAA recently
| put a lid on that by forbidding side-by-side IFR/VFR approaches
| while also failing to authorize custom precision landing
| procedures like SOIA.
|
| The request for ILS is entirely reasonable in this context, and
| the decision to hold the flight out of the sequence is also
| reasonable in the context, but to hold the flight with no
| updates for half an hour is not reasonable and to require it to
| divert is not reasonable either. The FAA should be held
| responsible for planning things better than this.
| happytiger wrote:
| This is right on point. This issue is squarely on the FAA and
| they need to provide better guidance to controllers and
| pilot. Great comment.
| intrasight wrote:
| So perhaps "frustrating" - but still the correct decision
| YeBanKo wrote:
| 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 approaches
| forbidden at night "when an adjacent parallel runway is closed"
| [2]. Maybe Lufthansa plays it safe and requires ILS for all long
| haul night landings.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Canada_Flight_759
|
| [2] https://www.flightglobal.com/faa-changes-san-francisco-
| landi...
| koyote wrote:
| 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.
| thriftwy wrote:
| 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)
| philip1209 wrote:
| I can't find a source, but I thought I read somewhere that these
| policies came following the Asiana Flight 214 crash [1], during
| which a plane did a visual approach to SFO instead of ILS. My
| understanding was that there was a rule change requiring ILS
| approaches at night at SFO, then the airlines implemented
| policies duplicating the rules in their policies, but then the
| rules were revoked - still leaving airline policies in place.
|
| Anybody have any sources on this?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214
| karcass wrote:
| I got my pilot's license in the Bay Area and transited SFO's
| class bravo frequently. The region has one of the world's most
| complex airspaces (a B, two Cs, and a crap-ton of Ds), and SFO
| has a mind-boggling amount of traffic for an airport of its size.
| Based on my lived experience in that airspace, I think ATC did
| the best they could in a tough position, and I think that
| Lufthansa asking for special treatment is the asshole move. If
| they demand ILS in VFR conditions, they should schedule their
| arrival times to less-busy times.
| mandevil wrote:
| They normally do- this flight left MUC two hours late which was
| why it was part of the VFR landing sequence on this one day and
| is not normally a problem.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| And the flight is twelve hours, with a filed flight plan.
| None of the controllers were even on-shift when SFO knew
| they'd need to have an ILS slot for the flight. That's why
| the pilot is exasperated when he finds out there isn't one.
|
| It's like calling a year in advance for a dinner reservation
| and showing up and having to wait 45 minutes for your table
| "because it's a really busy night."
| vkou wrote:
| > It's like calling a year in advance for a dinner
| reservation and showing up and having to wait 45 minutes
| for your table "because it's a really busy night."
|
| It's more like showing up _two weeks late_ to your dinner
| reservation, show up to a Valentine 's Day Friday night
| rush, and being upset that you don't have an accurate ETA
| to get seated.
| chris_va wrote:
| I also fly a bit in the bay area ...
|
| ATC is supposed to accommodate to the best of their ability.
| Accommodating here could have been just waiting for a natural
| gap (which is what I think happened), but I think ATC should
| have just called Oakland center immediately and had a gap
| created for 10-20 minutes in the future. It is not like they
| were the only aircraft on the ILS approach that evening...
| Though, as I am not a norcal controller, maybe that is against
| policy.
| CaliforniaKarl wrote:
| The video posted by u/hansenq showed what flows were like,
| with traffic from the east sequenced as far out as Salt Lake
| City. It probably would've needed coordination with Oakland,
| LA, and Salt Lake centers
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| This flight came from Germany. They had _hours_ of notice
| to find it an ILS slot in the pattern.
| trentnelson wrote:
| That's not how ATC works. First come, first served.
| throwbadubadu wrote:
| No, that's also not how it should work. Airports have a
| certain capacity, that's why you use slot allocations at
| crowded ones. You can say that day was so botched that
| they blew the one plane in fav of all the others, but
| that is not how it should work, telling a plane with an
| allocated slot you cannot even have a realistic estimate
| when we will fit you in.
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| The plane was hours late.
| db48x wrote:
| You're not wrong, but don't forget that they were three
| hours late. This is really why airports operate on a
| first-come first-served basis; someone is always late.
| throwbadubadu wrote:
| Ah ok thanks, did not get that at all.. then more
| understandable.
| kabes wrote:
| 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.
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| So punish everyone because of Air Canada's fuck-up?
| timerol wrote:
| It's not punishment. The reason air travel is so safe is
| because every near-miss is root-caused and policies are put
| in place to prevent the same cause from resulting in a
| future accident.
| koyote wrote:
| There have been two major incidents around landing at SFO
| in the last decade, one involving fatalities.
|
| Prioritising safety by requesting to land using ILS after a
| 12 hour flight should not be seen as 'punishing' everyone
| else.
| babyshake wrote:
| This is coming from someone who only has experience as a
| commercial flight passenger, but I would expect AI to be very
| promising for ATC. Obviously there are various concerns ranging
| from potential attack vectors and the need for failsafes if any
| automated system fails, but has this been explored?
| hef19898 wrote:
| Current AI is nowhere close to be good enough for that. After
| all, there are literally hundreds of lives at stake every given
| minute, not sure you want some whacked together ML model or
| other run _your_ aircrafts landing approach in bad wheather and
| high traffic.
| ripper1138 wrote:
| This is the type of take that proves AI is in a hype bubble
| right now.
| throwbadubadu wrote:
| That is satire, right? We can discuss more/better automation
| and tooling aids and planning aids and whatever tech.. there
| are so many options you can bring in there before even thinking
| of any $+#(&#&$ AI in safety critical things?! Exploring what,
| the many ways it could hilariously fail?
| rsynnott wrote:
| Oh, my, AI really is becoming the new blockchain, isn't it?
| Animats wrote:
| There's a better discussion of the Lufthansa situation at [1].
| ILS landings require more spacing. The ILS system itself just
| shows the way to the runway, not what other aircraft are doing.
| In a visual approach in busy conditions, the pilot can see the
| aircraft ahead. In an ILS approach, it's assumed that they can't.
| This leads to ATC wanting to use visual approaches to get more
| planes landed.
|
| [1] https://ops.group/blog/us-visual-approaches-lh458/
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Maybe there should be a class for visual ILS with the same
| separation as visual approaches and less chance of error.
|
| Just like visual VFR exists. It would make the use of ILS in
| these situations easiest.
| lmm wrote:
| From other posts it sounds like SOIA is the "right" solution
| here, but SF has not reenabled it post-COVID, perhaps due to
| labour shortages.
| YeBanKo wrote:
| 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.
| reso wrote:
| > Pilot: If we are not set up for base soon, we will have to
| declare a fuel emergency and that would really fuck up your
| sequence.
|
| > Controller: What is your divert field?
|
| > Pilot: Oakland
|
| > Controller: Ok you need vectors to Oakland?
|
| > Pilot: No, my company forbids visual separation at night, what
| is the problem here?
|
| > Controller: I can't have this conversation with you. You either
| divert to Oakland or you can continue to hold. It's up to you
| sir.
|
| > Pilot: Ok you promised me 10 minutes, that ran out 4 minutes
| ago, so how many more minutes?
|
| > Controller: This conversation is over.
|
| 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. This is tough for me to
| wrap my head around.
|
| I don't want to blame this one controller for what is obviously a
| pattern of systematic failures at SFO, but I'm going to seriously
| consider flying into Oakland or San Jose next time if this is the
| attitude of the controllers there.
| markus92 wrote:
| 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 preventing them from landing there for
| example), but not threaten a controller to call an emergency
| just to get priority handling at their primary.
|
| The controller knew that and just called it. A diversion is a
| major annoyance but not a safety issue.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| 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, which means less profit for the
| airport operator.
|
| In the EU visual separation at night is not permitted but
| it's routinely done in the US because airports and airlines
| can run more flights in and out of the airport due to closer
| separation distances and it also reduces controller labor.
|
| Airlines are pushing the system to the breaking point.
| trentnelson wrote:
| "Visual approaches in use" is less labor intensive for ATC
| than instrument approaches in visual conditions. It also
| allows for higher flow.
|
| Bit on the hyperbolic side implying visual approaches push
| the system to the breaking point.
| lmm wrote:
| > "Visual approaches in use" is less labor intensive for
| ATC than instrument approaches in visual conditions. It
| also allows for higher flow.
|
| It's not unusual for a safety measure to be labour
| intensive and/or reduce flow.
| nradov wrote:
| Crew fatigue is not an ATC concern. Long haul flights like
| this carry relief pilots and have crew rest facilities so
| fatigue shouldn't be an issue in the first place.
|
| Controllers mostly work for the FAA. They have volume goals
| to meet, but they aren't accountable to airport or airline
| management for profit targets.
| ian-g wrote:
| That would also mean it's really incredibly difficult to
| declare a fuel emergency around SFO, since Oakland and San
| Jose and (I guess, if it were really urgent) Moffat Field are
| all a five minute flight away, right?
| db48x wrote:
| The distance to the alternate really doesn't matter much,
| because you always load enough additional fuel to divert to
| your alternate and land, plus more fuel called the "final
| reserve" which is enough to fly for another 30 or 45
| minutes (depending on the airline and region). That amount
| of fuel is called the "minimum fuel". If you get down to
| your minimum fuel and you aren't actually landing at your
| destination yet, then you radio the controllers and tell
| them that you're at minimum fuel and are diverting to your
| alternate. It is only time to declare an emergency if you
| get down to your final reserve, by which time you should
| already be at your alternate airport.
|
| Also, you can't really use the straight-line distance
| between airports to figure out how much extra fuel to
| bring, because you never end up flying that line. For one
| thing, you have to approach the airport from the correct
| direction so that you line up with a runway and so that
| you're headed into the wind. For another, you have to get
| down from the altitude you were holding at to ground level.
| Between the two you need to go not towards the airport, but
| towards a spot far enough away from the airport that you
| can fly a gentle slope down towards the runway. You might
| even end up flying completely around the airport while
| descending before actually turning in and lining up with
| the approach runway.
| reso wrote:
| Communicating to a controller that they are close to a fuel
| emergency is not a threat, it is good practice. People have
| died because their pilots did not communicate their fuel
| situation sufficiently to their controllers [1].
|
| This was communicated in this instance, and the controller
| maintained that to land at SFO, they would have to risk
| running out of fuel, since the controller refused to give a
| time-window for landing, or to declare an emergency.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avianca_Flight_052
| dodobirdlord wrote:
| If the pilot declared an emergency the ATC would make room
| for them, whatever the inconvenience to the airport and the
| other planes on approach. But after the fact there would be
| an investigation, and the pilot would be at fault if they
| falsely declared an emergency or deliberately caused an
| emergency by flying around in circles until they had to
| land just because they didn't want to divert.
|
| If the pilot's being serious, he'll declare an emergency
| and then the ATC will take him seriously. Otherwise he can
| continue to hold or he can divert to Oakland. There's not
| much point in arguing about it over the radio, so I can see
| why the ATC ended the conversation.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Those aren't the options presented, you're being dramatic. The
| pilot has the options to wait or divert, no matter what the
| controller says, in any situation where they cannot get into an
| airport.
|
| There is no risk of crashing here. The pilot cannot call the
| controllers bluff and declare a fuel emergency to land at SFO
| because Oakland is so close and it would be unprofessional.
|
| The controller doesn't have time to explain why the previous
| estimate was wrong or discuss company policy.
| masklinn wrote:
| Fwiw fuel emergency is nowhere near crashing the plane.
|
| A full blow "mayday fuel" may be declared because at that point
| the usable fuel on landing will be less than final reserve.
| Final reserve is 30mn of holding flight.
| paxys wrote:
| If there was a fuel emergency the pilot would have declared a
| fuel emergency. This was more him getting pissy for having to
| wait. Big jets normally have enough extra fuel to circle for
| hours without a problem.
| throwbadubadu wrote:
| Depends on some factors, but required and also common is
| 30/45 minutes, +10% longer flights, before diversion (that
| fuel not included).
|
| Recently experienced a closed airport, needed to divert, and
| even with chances high that we need to circle again for a
| while, we only took 1 hour fuel for circling before 2nd
| divert (and luckily made it after 40 minutes). It was no big
| jet, but some bigger especially cannot even land with too
| much fuel.
| murderfs wrote:
| > 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. This
| is tough for me to wrap my head around.
|
| They weren't even close to a fuel emergency (about to become
| unable land with less than the 45 minute reserve fuel amount),
| considering they didn't even declare minimum fuel, which is the
| stage before emergency (enough to fly to your alternate and
| land there without going below reserve).
|
| IMO the only mistake by the controller was giving them a 10
| minute delay (which I didn't hear in the video, maybe it was
| skipped?) instead of telling them about an indefinite delay
| (which was in the video) without having a plan to actually slot
| them in. Bay Area airspace is incredibly crowded and you have
| traffic pipelined in all over the place, so it's pretty
| difficult for the controllers to increase separation for one
| flight without causing a cascading traffic jam.
|
| > I don't want to blame this one controller for what is
| obviously a pattern of systematic failures at SFO, but I'm
| going to seriously consider flying into Oakland or San Jose
| next time if this is the attitude of the controllers there.
|
| Considering NorCal Approach controls the sequencing for SFO,
| SJC, and OAK, I don't think that's going to do what you think
| it does.
| db48x wrote:
| Declaring a fuel emergency doesn't mean that they have run out
| of fuel, or that they will run out of fuel soon. It means that
| if even they diverted to their alternate right now, they would
| expect to go below their reserve fuel level before they could
| land. The reserve fuel level is there to give them an extra
| half hour or more of flight time. Absent some mechanical
| problem with the engines, or a fuel leak, declaring a fuel
| emergency would mean that the pilots waited too long at their
| destination airport before thinking about diverting. You're
| supposed to simply divert _before_ you would need to declare an
| emergency, rather than declare an emergency simply in order to
| skip ahead in line.
|
| There was no risk of a crash in this circumstance, because the
| plane still had plenty of fuel to divert to their alternate and
| land before going into their final reserve.
| perihelions wrote:
| There was a major airliner crash at JFK caused (partly) by poor
| communication between pilots and ATC, resulting in the plane
| running out of fuel,
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avianca_Flight_052 (1990)
|
| https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-words-not-spoken-the...
|
| There was a similar fact pattern to the OP: the pilots relied on
| time estimates from ATC which turned out to be inaccurate,
|
| - _" Due to the air traffic controllers giving ultimately untrue
| delay estimations the flight became critically low on fuel."_
| tomohawk wrote:
| As a pilot, your first job is to fly the airplane, not listen
| to ATC.
|
| A family member was a commercial airline pilot for many
| decades, and had stories of having to declare an emergency when
| ATC direction conflicted with facts in the air. ATC would get
| pissed, but they're safely on the ground.
|
| Another family member was ATC, and so holiday dinners could be
| interesting.
| StopHammoTime wrote:
| Just a clarifier for everyone - a fuel emergency is not what you
| think it is. They don't run until the last drop. While it
| indicates the aircraft should be handled without delay, it's also
| not going to fall out of the sky immediately either.
|
| A fuel emergency would never be severe enough that they would be
| forced to land at SFO in this situation. In fact, if they were
| truly forced to land the pilots would lose their jobs because
| they left it way too late. Oakland was always a reasonable
| option.
|
| Finally, fuel emergencies are not actually a standard call. It is
| a thing that is adhered to in the industry as courtesy. Unless
| there is a malfunction with the fuel system (which would be a
| mayday call) then it is mostly avoidable.
| epolanski wrote:
| A fuel malfunction does not lead to a mayday, there's a PAN PAN
| first.
| pdx_flyer wrote:
| Overall it feels like a punitive measure against Lufthansa,
| rather than spending the time to get them an ILS clearance.
|
| For reference the flight is usually a 6:45p arrival but was very
| late on the evening in question.
| ideator wrote:
| https://youtu.be/o7RId2iiZng?si=ERMLyrSwkrLL6xmh
|
| Recently there was a separation issue with a very similar night
| time visual approach into SFO.
|
| It's not like trying to squeeze two flights into close parallel
| runways at the same time to maximizer capacity is a very safe
| thing to do considering everything that could go wrong
| gosub100 wrote:
| I really worry that SFO is going to have a major disaster.
| There have been so many close calls recently, the controllers
| have been making mistakes and acting out against pilots, there
| are 4 runway intersections (which other major airports are
| phasing-out), they have a fog problem, and an enormous amount
| of flow, and tons of air traffic and airports all around them.
| talkingtab wrote:
| A couple of things to add:
|
| Having watched the planes land at SFO at night provides an
| additional context. There are often two long streams of planes,
| like a spaced necklace, coming in to land. They look far apart
| when flying but then you notice just have fast another one comes.
|
| And to those who fault the traffic controller - it is on the
| controller if something bad happens. Politeness, even a charge of
| grumpiness goes out the window in the face of that
| responsibility. Period. IMHO.
| calf wrote:
| Being rude and grumpy a) tilts everyone else, b) everybody's
| cortisol levels to up, c) cortisol stress impairs cognition
| especially problem solving and interpersonal skills, d) thus
| INCREASING the risk of mistakes and accidents.
|
| Modern psychology, more professionals should keep updated about
| it.
| lsh123 wrote:
| 1/ Visual vs instrument approach. The main difference in this
| case is separation requirements that ATC must provide.
| Specifically, under IFR rules ATC mus provide 3 miles / 500 feet
| altitude separation minimum. For visual approaches, the
| separation is responsibility of the pilots and this enables
| parallel runway landings at SFO with much shorter intervals
| (there is a version of parallel landings with instrument
| approaches at SFO but it discontinued during Covid and not
| resumed since AFAIK).
|
| 2/ The approach sequence is established long long long before
| arrival to the airport. The ATC controllers (approach and center)
| coordinate arrivals and create sequencing hundreds of miles from
| a large airport like SFO. The last minute Lufthansa request for
| an instrument approach would have forced dozens of planes to go
| into hold or fly vectors which creates a lot of work for
| everyone.
|
| 3/ SFO tower is NOT responsible for approaches and was not
| dealing with holding Lufthansa. This is responsibility of NorCal
| approach
|
| 4/ My personal take is that Lufthansa should have advised ATC
| that they need instrument approach much earlier (as soon as they
| got ATIS which would be 50-100 miles from airport). That would
| have enabled ATC to create a gap for them. Last minute request is
| a surprise nobody needs. The Lufthansa attitude afterwards is
| unacceptable. They were asking for preferential treatment (get us
| in and screw a couple dozen of other airplanes). They also should
| have communicated to ATC that they have 30 mins of fuel for hold
| and that would informed NorCal about time limits they are working
| with. Lastly, threatening ATC with a fuel emergency.... not nice,
| not nice at all. From my personal experience with ATC is that
| they are very accommodating but they don't like surprises. Tell
| them what you want early and controllers usually find ways to
| make it work by the time you get there. Have a last minute
| request? If ATC is not busy they will help you. If ATC is busy --
| go to the back of the line. Which is _exactly_ what happened
| here.
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