If it was a mechanical diversion, they likely had an available RON plane sitting in ATL and the maintenance problem likely to be fixed by the morning so no impact to ATL morning operation. If it was weather or ATC, a good chance that other alternates or airport were busy dealing with not only weathe...
Jump to postIt all depends on how desperate airlines are for pilots. A criminal record will likely generate a rejection letter if pilot staffing is at adequate levels and there are lots of candidates. It wont matter much if staffing needs are great and they need pilots. That being said, you will need to give up...
Jump to postAt least in the US, changing the callsign to an alphanumeric is also known as “stubbing”. The marketing departments at airlines do try to publish schedules with as little conflict as possible but with so many airlines and flights, there are always going to be conflicts. ATC calls each airline when t...
Jump to postAirlines don’t board more fuel “just in case” anymore, if they ever did. Airlines still very much load just in case fuel. That’s usually between the dispatcher and Captain. Certain carriers also give the Captain authority to add up to a certain amount of fuel without a call to Dispatch as well too…...
Jump to postOne overlooked aspect of low visibility operations is the crew experience part. We will this happen more frequently with retirements accelerating and new pilots previously not on the type becoming captains. A new captain in each type is restricted to CAT I approaches for the first 100 hours as a cap...
Jump to postMy point is that if an airline wants to have a convenient filed diversion point - they have to pay to play. And airports should strike agreements with airlines for such emergency handling. Its not for convenience that airlines use YYR. Its one of the few airfields in that part of Canada that allow ...
Jump to postShe may be pretty but she is a total idiot. It was a dumb way to throw away her career in the airline industry. You can get drunk in many different places. Getting that drunk at your workplace while representing the company is inexcusably stupid. The lawsuit may or may not have any merit. The lawsui...
Jump to postIt is important to note that NAT tracks are now at FL340-FL400. It also common that there will be published open altitudes between FL340-FL400 to allow for randoms to cross the tracks. Some aircraft such as the B777-300 and A321s as well as 787s, FL330 and FL410 are often very close to an optimal cr...
Jump to postTo me it seems the LH pilot did not believe ATC when they warned him that he would have an extended delay for ILS 28L. Then he got mad when ATC did give him the promised delay vectors for the ILS. When advised of the extended delay, the pilot should have asked the question of how long of the delay w...
Jump to postAA does not have class I and class II navigation entry and exit points on the flight plans. It only recently within the last week with a new flight planning software started putting ETOPS entry and exit points on all ETOPS flight plans. Before the new software, AA never put ETOPS entry and exit poin...
Jump to postI assume the hotel has cameras. If it was a murder, it shouldnt be too difficult to discover who the culprit is. Always a chance this is an accident or suicide. The bizarre thing is how long it took to find her. Airlines usually do all they can to find a flight attendant when they are not at the air...
Jump to postNot paying for ACARS seems like a penny wise, pound foolish policy. ACARS makes many things at an airline more efficient and allows for time savings when there are flight plan changes and company communications are needed. From a customer service perspective, ACARS allows for automatic reporting of ...
Jump to postWe do look at and route around weather. Some are more conservative than others. Some will build routes that avoid every cell and forecast turbulence area. Others will plan to avoid larger areas. One dispatcher might be working 60-90 flights so time is an issue. You need to be very quick in decision ...
Jump to postATC preferred routes, which are really required routes in actual practice, came about during the PATCO strike and have never left. East of the Mississippi in the USA, if you are headed into or out of the Northeast, you must file a pref route or risk a lengthy delay (and also expect a reroute from A...
Jump to postModern flight planning software can generate optimized routes based on winds, available waypoints, ATC requirements, and MOA activity times. Dispatchers working 60 or 70 domestic US flights do not have time for each flight to check MOA times and manually build more direct/efficient routes so with o...
Jump to postIn the US domestically, airlines have to file either a pref route or in the absence of center required routings the optimal route can be filed. The main obstacle to more direct routes being filed is that US airlines have not invested much in their flight planning technology over the past 40 years. M...
Jump to postSNA is a tough airport to land at when runways are wet. There is really no margin for error. An accident like this has been waiting to happen for a long time. 737s and A321s do not do that well landing performance wise on short, wet runways. SNA is a big money maker for airlines. Pilots get pressure...
Jump to postThe DC metro area was less than half its current population in the 1970s and 1980s. DC area’s population growth came at the expense of mostly rust belt cities that have seen large population drops since that time. It was a much different city and area in the 70s and 80s.
Jump to postI think Japan and travel to Japan might be entering a long decline. The Japanese population is in a steady decline. A steady decline with a rapidly aging population. The older people get, the fewer leisure trips they take per year. They also retire and thus take fewer business trips. Zoom has also r...
Jump to postOne of the reasons this is still a problem during equipment changes is that airlines are still in the dark ages technology wise. The fuel on the plane does get reported by ACARS but it does not carry over from flight to flight automatically. It still relies on word of mouth and humans remembering th...
Jump to postA few years ago the FAA updated the requirements for average passenger weights. This has hit the 50 seaters especially hard and its one of the reasons why they are being phased out. It used to be 190lbs per passenger but now its over 200lbs per passengers. Planes were not designed with this higher p...
Jump to postThis happens all the time in all airlines, and the only one to blame is the FAA for allowing planes without APU to be flown around the world. I’m sorry if its more than 75F outside they should ground the planes until the APU works. The FAA doesn’t let inop APU airplane fly over over the world. An E...
Jump to postOptions are very limited at outstations. If its a 4 man crew and one calls out sick, you see if you can operate with 3. If not, then you look at if there are any intermediate stops you can do to re-crew with available crew. If none then you RON the flight until a crew member can be deadheaded in or ...
Jump to postIts all a balancing act. If flights are full the rest of the day, crew legalities ae not an issue, if delaying wont significantly effect the return leg and those connections, then waiting for those passengers can be good for customer service and get everyone to their destination. Albeit with a sligh...
Jump to postI wonder if having a credit card on file, airlines could automatically charge the fare difference in these hidden city cases. If passenger misses their flight, airline sends message to customer offering re-booking. If no response then airline charges the fare difference. This would end or deter hidd...
Jump to postI think its a stretch to say that turbulence is getting worse. Aviation has changed a lot in the past 40 years. 40 years ago, flights mostly followed published airway or track routings. Random and optimized routes were very rare. Optimized altitude profiles and cost index flying was a brand new thin...
Jump to postI think what is amazing is that with fare increases, demand is still high. Despite all the inflationary pressures, consumers are able to keep purchasing tickets and affording vacations and other leisure trips. I do wonder how sustainable it is as fares keep rising as well as inflation.
Jump to postThe current SIDs for north and east departures are all 12R and 12L specific. So that loop is needed to get flights requesting north and east departures back to those SID routes. Usually one of the 30R/30L SIDs for southbound departures are used and after the first waypoint flights are routed to a wa...
Jump to postHNL: JRF LAX: ONT DFW: AUS/OKC/AFW/DAL/SAT/TUL/IAH IAH: AUS/SAT/CLL/EFD/HOU/BPT/CRP/MSY/DFW ORD: MKE/RFD/IND/MSN/GRR/DTW/STL DTW: FNT/MBS/GRR/CLE/SBN/TOL/FWA LGA: JFK/EWR/PHL/BDL/BOS/ALB/BWI/IAD DCA: IAD/BWI/RIC/ORF/PHL/MDT/PIT PHL: ACY/ABE/EWR/BWI/MDT/JFK/PIT/IAD MIA: FLL/PBI/RSW/TPA/MCO SEA: BFI/P...
Jump to postIAD does get west and northwest wind often. However, crosswind limits for most aircraft are between 27-40 kts. Its very rare to get a sustained crosswind with west-northwest winds strong enough to be out of limits for the north-south parallels. Most times, crosswind is well within limits so 30 does ...
Jump to postCLE welcomed quite a few diversions today due to the wild weather across the Midwest. FI853 KEF-ORD B39M LOT3 WAW-ORD B789 UA225 BOS-ORD B737 (crew time out, RON) LO3 took off from CLE almost 5hrs after the original scheduled ORD arrival and is arriving 6hrs late . How does a international flight f...
Jump to postAirlines are subject to FCAs, AFPs, GDPs and groundstops. VFR GA traffic is not subject to these things. It definitely is a loophole. AIrlines can sit on the ground in increasing length delays as traffic as GA traffic gets in to those same airports with no delay after taking off VFR. Every single ai...
Jump to postBefore slot restrictions, how about use existing rules first. All flights arriving into these airports during peak hours must be on IFR flight plans and no VFR traffic or VFR destination changes will be accepted. No traffic accepted into class A airspace that departed VFR. Subject corporate and GA o...
Jump to postI think the question is why did EK1 start the LHR approach in such a low fuel condition? Pilots in a hold use that time to look at alternatives and if starting the approach is going to leave them in a fuel emergency situation should a go-around be needed, a diversion to an alternate is normally the ...
Jump to postMost airlines have software that when the dispatcher/flight planner is computing the flight, it has either a canned route string or a direct routing from the planned destination to the planned alternate. There is no way to ever know exactly when a flight will need to divert so most diversions either...
Jump to postWas NOT a good day trying to fly into BNA today. Anything and everything for about a 4 hour period held and diverted due to the winds. Two separate, multi-hour ground stops due to >40kt crosswinds, surface winds over 50kts, and significant LLWS will do that. I was watching on FlightAware. Lots of d...
Jump to postLonger flights use more fuel and are frequently up against structural and/or performance MTOW. Russian overflights allowed airlines to cut down on fuel burn in order to carry more passengers and freight, i.e. payload. Russia obviously knew this and charged airlines accordingly for overflight permits...
Jump to postPilots usually report turbulence and windshear to ATC especially if it is bad enough to cause that kind of an altitude drop. If the turbulence or shear was that bad for a B777, smaller aircraft departing behind it could have it much rougher. Pilots would certainly report it in most cases to ATC to w...
Jump to postTheres a saying in this business: if you screw up, you move up. It is SOP for airlines to promote incompetent management.
Jump to postGiven the safety hazards, operational complications, and passenger comfort problems, I am of the mind that APU inop MELs should be one leg only MELs to get a plane to a maintenance station or hub to be fixed. No APU MELs leaving a hub or maintenance base. APU MELs always cause problems especially in...
Jump to postOne thing to keep in mind is passenger accomodation and maintenance part and labor availability. If DL flights out of MAD were lightly booked compared to elsewhere, it might make sense to divert there if able to better re-book passenger. If MAD had the available parts and labor to fix the problem th...
Jump to postIt's no secret that there has been a pilot shortage for some time, worse after the Covid pandemic. So, I'm wondering where do the startups, especially those growing quickly, get their pilots? Hard to believe these people left majors unless they were passed over for upgrade, etc. A close friend and ...
Jump to posthttps://wtop.com/montgomery-county/2022 ... -hospital/
Pilot in 911 call admitted to descending below the MDA trying to find the airport during low ceilings and visibility. Looks like a case of get-there-itis.
[*] By operational control I mean certificated aircraft dispatchers with joint responsibility. There have been many incidents where a certificated dispatcher might have been helpful in preventing an accident or incident. BA 268 and Hapag-Lloyd 3378 come to mind. [...] Over many decades, shared resp...
Jump to postThese kinds of actions gain attention and they embolden more people to take part in future actions. It will keep escalating as long as it continues to help their cause. I would not be surprised to see them at a major hub airport try to stop airline ramp operations or take over an active runway which...
Jump to postWhen the dispatcher or flight planner sends out the release/flight plan, the alternate(s) he selects get appended automatically to the ATC strip. Most controllers probably dont read it or notice but the alternate does get filed with ATC. In some instances, flight plans can be rejected by ATC because...
Jump to postEvery airline has internal metrics and policies for which routes get filed and flown. Unless you know someone in the airline flight operations/dispatch department, it will be difficult to know the exact reason why an airline flies a certain route. Lowest overall cost including ATC fees isnt always t...
Jump to postCompanies like Medlink and STATMD as well as company flight dispatch involvement in onboard medical situations came about because too often pilots treated medical diversions similar to how they would treat a mechanical diversion. You had both needless diversions for very minor conditions and diversi...
Jump to postEach incident is different but this incident underscores an industry wide problem: airline employees doing their own thing and not communicating as well as things being overlook trying to make tight schedules work. This flight plan was filed over Lousiana and Mississippi but the crew took a shortcut...
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