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Comment by reso | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

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

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.

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 going to be a bully expect others to play the game in the same manner.

> 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 get any repercussions it was because in that situation his action was considered a reasonable judgment call. Yes, technically it wasn't an "emergency" since nothing was wrong with the plane, but it was in the sense that the pilot did not think he could safely land on the runway ATC wanted him to land on, so it was a safety issue.

Following along that logic. Nobody would fault the LH pilot for a similar judgement call requiring an immediate landing at the closest suitable airport, namely SFO.

ATC was in the wrong here and the attitude displayed was neither called for nor professional.

> Nobody would fault the LH pilot for a similar judgement call

Bad analogy. The LH pilot's reason for asking for an ILS approach was company policy; he made no claim that he was unable to make a visual landing safely because of actual conditions, only that his company wouldn't allow him to make a visual landing as a matter of policy.

> ATC was in the wrong here and the attitude displayed was neither called for nor professional.

Many other posters in this discussion have pointed out aspects of the situation that make it clear that it wasn't that simple.

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.

You wrote: <<American Airlines (at JFK) proved you can call emergency just because you feel like it with no repercussion.>>

Can you provide a flight number and date? I would like to learn more.

AA2 on May 5, 2010

An aggressive pilot that declares an emergency simply to avoid diverting won't be a pilot for long. The ATC did nothing wrong.

I beg to differ. He didn’t divert, a diversion was pushed down his throat.

It’s also arguable that the diversion was the lesser safe course of action given his location.

"if we are not set up for base soon, we will have to declare fuel emergency and that would really ** up your sequence"

At that point ATC offered vectors to the alternate. A diversion was never pushed down his throat.

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.

“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.

> “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.

Like, not running tests gets your code to prod faster

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.

Crew fatigue is an ATC concern insofar as it contributes greatly to accidents. The controllers may have volume goals, but the ultimate goal is safety.

Crew fatigue really isn't an ATC concern. The FAA and airlines set rules for crew fatigue management. Flight plans are designed to keep the crew within limits even if they have a delay or diversion. It is simply not a controller's job to assess a flight crew's fatigue state, or second guess whether they need an alternate plan due to fatigue. Controllers aren't trained or qualified to do that.

>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.

The total number of landings is not fixed. If landings can be more frequent, airlines will schedule more landings so they are more frequent. Just like adding lanes to a highway induces more cars to travel on the highway.

I'm talking about the the situation on a given day when the planes are already in the air. All those scheduled flights are presumably going to end up landing at that airport and paying the agreed fee, no?

>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.

source?

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?

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.

You can't do it that quickly. You have to look at the charts, set up the airplane, brief the other pilot(s) about the approach and landing, etc.

You can have mayday fuel situations where attempting to divert is more risky. But in this case they had plenty of time to prepare to divert to Oakland.

> 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.

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.

> The controller doesn’t have time to explain why the previous estimate was wrong or discuss company policy.

Absolutely. ATC might have been less helpful than possible here, maybe because they had too much on their plate. In that case, if they waste further time on long discussions and get behind on their other planes, the whole carefully juggled sequence might break down, sending many planes to holding or even their alternate.

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.

> This is tough for me to wrap my head around.

It's pretty easy to explain: the controller took the pilot at his word, and immediately offered the fastest and safest option to get them on the ground, which was to land at Oakland. The runway thresholds at SFO and OAK are less than ten miles apart.

Exactly. ATC called his bluff and won.

Note the pilot was not willing to even dare to break his company rules and do a visual, so why should ATC break theirs?

No ILS is not an ATC rule, it's simply a way to get more flights to land (increasing airline/airport profits) and putting responsibility on the pilot (not ATC). Lufthansa has the policy exactly so that pilots do not get bullied into taking a visual approach, by ATC.

Most pilots would prefer a visual approach given the choice. I doubt this pilot actually believed it would be unsafe to fly the visual at SFO that evening: given the dozens of other jets actively doing it, that would be absurd. He was just following his company policy. If he had a real emergency that required him to land immediately, I'm almost certain he'd have flown that emergency landing visually.

I don't know for sure... but on a modern jet, I suspect he was able to contact his employer during that long hold to ask, and they told him "yes, we really want you to divert if you can't get the ILS". Either way, if there's any fault here, IMHO it's on his employer not doing their homework and putting their pilot in a no-win situation.

> ATC called his bluff and won.

I wouldn't put it like that. I think the pilot probably genuinely believed that diverting him would be much more of a problem for ATC than working him in, and was trying to make sure the controller understood he was going to need to divert soon.

The Lufthansa pilot was like the guy who drives the Google bus in the carpool lane at the speed limit, slower than the cars in the other lanes.

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.

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.

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.

Either the plane has a fuel emergency, or it doesnt. If they had a fuel emergency, the pilot wouldnt have threatened to call one, they would have just done it.

Instead, by threatening to issue an emergency, the pilot reveled his cards - he was annoyed at the delay. The controller called the bluff and told him to fuck off and wait at the back of line or land in Oakland.

In the future, Lufthansa cam call ATC before hand if they want special treatment.

I guess the controller shouldn’t make recommendations but give choices. If the controller is saying “you must divert” they are give advice based on a very short conversation. Whereas the pilot has all the information.

HN understands this concept well. Look at any advice asking thread. People don’t tell the asker what to do.

> 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 the way there. The plane was not there, but just thinking about maybe being there soon. You know what you do when your primary airport is unable to land (for any reason) you are approaching the fuel emergency line? You head to your alternate, that is what it is for. And it is not some unheard of thing, this is literally how you have to calculate how much fuel you have to put in the airplane. When you take off you have to have enough fuel to get to your primary destination, waste your time there, then head to your alternate, get a bit lost on the way, have a go around on your secondary and then still have enough juice for a second landing.

> This is tough for me to wrap my head around.

Because you are thinking “oh my, oh my, the controler was risking so many lives”. When what the controller heard is that they still had plenty of fuel to go to their alternate, so he suggested that they do so.

You know what crashes airplanes and kills people? It is not airplanes flying to their alternate. It is plan continuation bias, or in laymen terms “get-there-itis”. It is when pilots want to reach their destination so much that they make poor decisions. Such as for example delaying leaving for their alternate until it is too late.

Being too polite crashed a plane that got diverted many times and run out of fuel (was on the cloudberg site). I think it may have been coming from Colombia IIRC. But that is super rare.

They kept asking for “Priority” but never said “Emergency” or “Mayday” or “Pan Pan”

Avianca Flight 052 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avianca_Flight_052 (mentioned above in the comments)

> > 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 the way there. The plane was not there, but just thinking about maybe being there soon. You know what you do when your primary airport is unable to land (for any reason) you are approaching the fuel emergency line? You head to your alternate, that is what it is for.

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. The pilot could have just been a dick and waited for his slot and until he has to declare emergency (which would have caused lots of trouble for at), instead he asked.

> You know what crashes airplanes and kills people? It is not airplanes flying to their alternate. It is plan continuation bias, or in laymen terms “get-there-itis”. It is when pilots want to reach their destination so much that they make poor decisions. Such as for example delaying leaving for their alternate until it is too late.

You know what also crashes airplanes, ATC, airports and airlines prioritising profits over safety (like it was the case here).

> 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.

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

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

Looks like the ATC was being more professional here than the pilots. Threatening an emergency isn't how you do things...

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