tht

No I am not a professional airline pilot, I have only ever only flown 1 [small] plane a long time ago under supervision. But have been in the flight deck of a number of commercial aircraft including 777 and 787 (although with 1 exception, none while inflight since 2000).

Are you a professional airline pilot? how would you have communicated those 2 issues to your passengers in a similar situation?

Both of those were on a US airline and I thought the information provided was useful and appropriate. I had another experience on a large SE Asian airline where about 5-6 hours in to the flight I noticed our heading was incorrect for our scheduled destination. No announcement was made so I asked the cabin crew, who went off to find out and 15 minutes later the flight deck made an announcement that were were heed back to our airport of origin, I much preferred the situations where I was proactively given information and have access to channel 9 to listen to update myself.

audio

Briefly to answer your questions:

I was, now retired.

Holding over NY for 3+ hours then saying they didn’t have enough fuel to go to an alternate airfield is criminal. When you divert from your proposed destination for whatever reason, the minimum fuel requirements are fuel to the alternate plus 45 minutes holding fuel remaining when reaching the alternate.

To advise that they might run out of fuel WTF? Yes, relaying the information is correct but do it diligently and don’t scare the crap out of the passengers.

An instrument approach is pretty normal.

I think you need to choose your future carriers more carefully

scrubbedexpat091

For US carriers in 2019 404,556 animals were transported in total of which 11 died while in the care of the airline (not necessarily the faulty of the airline.) 8 were injured, and none were lost, so while any death or injury sucks, they are pretty small numbers when compared to the total transported.

As per DOT stats. 2020 probably saw a significant decline as many airlines suspended their live animal programs due to instability of COVID chaos.

In hubs most US airlines use climate controlled vans to move animals around, but in smaller outstations we don't generally have this, but we would never leave a animal out in the elements, on a hot day we would put them in our break room while they waited for their flight as the bag room gets mightily hot on hot days, but has heat in winter, so cold outside isn't a problem in the bag room.

scrubbedexpat091

Yes it is warm enough so animals don't die or have ill effects.

I only ever personally saw 1 animal arrived dead, the airline paid for the necropsy, turns out the dog was 12 years old, had existing health issues, and died of natural causes.

Animal deaths in general are pretty rare when compared to how many animals travel, we do our best to make sure they are as comfortable as we can, take them out to the departure aircraft last, leave them in the hold until we are done offloading as its quieter than sitting on the ramp, pilots are always informed their are live animals and their location, some airlines go a step further, and put little pull off stickers that we pull one off when we load the animal, sign it, and give it to the flight attendant who gives it to the passenger to indicate their pet has been boarded.

That is for animals going as checked baggage where we on the ramp control everything start to finish, when going by cargo, all we did was take the animal off the aircraft or put them on the aircraft, we didn't do anything else as we were not in cargo, but I assume the cargo services do everything they can as well to keep animals safe, the little sticker doesn't apply with cargo either, but pilots are still notified.

See the other post with the DOT stats on animal deaths/injury/loss of US airlines in 2019.

tht

Assume you did not fly for a US carrier. I have had some interesting conversation in the lounge and flight deck with US pilots and what they think about pilots from other countries.

The storm was so big that I don't think even fields like PIT/DC or BOS were an option, everything was holding. There was lightning everywhere and I would say it was Severe and may verging on Extreme turbulence, it is always hard to judge but it felt like drops of 6-12 feet and was way worse than I have experienced anywhere else including SE Asia where it has been more common in my experience, which is probably way more limited than yours if you were a pilot, I over 1m miles on that airline and probably close to 1m on all the others I have flown combined and while the inflight service and hard product used to leave a lot to be desired I would probably rate them higher than many airlines I have flown for feeling safe (despite those 2 incidents, and mainly because of how they were handled, I much prefer to hear the real information vs being kept in the dark, channel 9 is great for that). I would say that my scariest experience on a commercial flight in the US was actually on the airline mentioned a few posts down the thread.

audio

Of course, you have a right to your own opinions, but any professional carrier should never ever get to the stage where the aircraft is even close to running out of fuel, except in extreme circumstances, for example being hijacked.

markonline1

What????? There are so many things about that that are just plain wrong!! 1 getting to a point where you don’t have the fuel to reach your alternate, 2 telling your pax this, 3 telling your pax you have to do an instrument landing (just about every landing is done using the instruments whatever the weather), 4 announcing that the engines might fail to your pax. Whatever airline that was, remind me never to fly it.

Nowhere near what that was, but I remember flying Allegiant to Vegas from Monterey. Taxiing off stand rather than pushing, as is fairly common, and the pilot comes on the pa and says ladies and gentleman, we are just waiting here briefly for another aircraft to pass, absolutely nothing to worry about. I wasn’t worried until
he said that last part LOL.

scrubbedexpat091

United had an uh oh moment the other day, plane went tippy tip. The 737-800 and 900 series are prone to tail tipping, the -900 is more at risk, seems this was a charter for a foot ball team and seems this is mostly regional jet airport and no regular 738/739 service, so I venture they did not have a tail stand and possibly didn't have training because if you have a -900 especially without a tail stand, you don't remove bags until most passengers are off and forward of the wing, because otherwise this happens if there are too many people aft of the wing and insufficient weight in the front to keep the nose down to earth.

civilservant

That made I chuckle

Someone on the ramp was most likely out of a job shortly after this foul up.

Lion in Winter

Who gets to push them back up?

tht

They don’t all have hydraulics like this….

tht

not sure what you mean, not sure how you think an airline can control the weather… I was actually surprised how long we were able to hold for.

there are lots of events outside an airlines control, another couple of examples are:

- a NYE flight LHR-EWR on a 757, the flight attendant on the jump seat facing row 7 stopped breathing after we climbed out and we had to divert to SNN in Ireland. We got back out and made it back to the US without the reduced crew timing out.

- a EWR-DEL-BLR diverted to LHR for a medical emergency (STO was closer) but LHR had way more options. I was able to get that airline to put me on a direct BA (all be it on one of those erwies seats that faces the wrong way) to BLR so I arrived earlier than my original arrival time.

If you fly enough miles lots of stuff will happen, what matters to me is the airline that has the network and partners and recognition of FF to look after them.

civilservant

Should not be entering into a state where you do not have enough fuel to reach your diversion airport without a conversation with ATC about options though. People have died for this exact reason.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avianca_Flight_52

scrubbedexpat091

Usually the nose will come back down on its own once the weight in the aft section moves forward, if not I assume maintenance has some procedure to pull it back down, I only saw this once in person and once everyone in the cabin moved forward, the nose came back down to earth.

Next time your an airport where there is an airline with 737-900's, look towards the tail of one being loaded or unloaded, chances are there will be a tail stand to prevent this sort of thing. -900 series is more prone to tail tipping -800 can do it but its less common so some airlines wont use a tail stand on an -800 series, all of the 737's from the -100 series to the -700 series don't need one. (I have never been up close to a MAX nor worked anywhere that had the MAX so not sure if they have the issue but I would suspect they do.)

The airlines I have dealt with, the procedure for unloading a -900 without a tail stand was to unload the aft first, if the aft was empty as it often was, then sit and wait for passengers to get off, then offload the bags and cargo or you get what happened to United if you remove bags faster than the passengers after of the wing.

It's not specific to the 737 either, some models of Airbus can do it too. Frontier had an Airbus tip back and kind of balanced that way.




Here is a CCTV video of a Delta one doing it 7 or so years ago, its airport CCTV so not great quality by 2021 standards.

civilservant

It really does serve to remind you that the weight and balance for any aircraft is extremely delicate.