Diversion Question

[ktsai91]

One of my roles as an airport ops officer is to manage diverted flights including determining what services they may need if the airlines usually doesn't fly into our airport. The trickier ones however, are the ones that arrive very late after most ground handlers and staff left for the night. It gets even trickier if its an international diversion where we would have to get hold of the CBP.

As a flight crew or dispatcher, if you were informed that the ground staff left for the night and no one is there to handle your flight would you still divert to that airport no matter what or would you divert to another airport?

Is the airline or the flight crew usually aware of what is available, their hours of operations, and important contact info at the diversion airport?

 

[Soul Brotha']

There are various factors that go into diverting. Yes ground services available are taken into consideration. Most airlines have an approved list of diversion cities(which they don’t serve). With that said weather, fuel, onboard situations play a role too. If the situation starts getting nerve racking, then I’m going to get the aircraft to the nearest airport and deal with the other issues afterwards.

 

[MikeNovemberMike]

Most of us have apps on our phones or ipads which provide us with all the airport information. Still many of us have corporate cards to use in the event we need to overnight somewhere.

i think I speak for everyone that if there is an emergency and the closest airport has no services, we’ll land there and figure the rest out later.

 

[bbmikej]

As a dispatcher, I will call a station late night to let them know we are using them. As far as CBP, we should be choosing airports where we know they will be available at the time. Usually, the contract an airline has with a station says something to the effect they they will be available if notified.

As for being aware of hours, we have a lookup feature on our computers that state operational hours, customs, tower, and station manager along with phone numbers for each.

 

[bbmikej]

By late night, I meant to say that I will call them if I plan on using them for a late night flight. If I can't get a hold of anyone, I will use a different airport as an alternate.

 

[BobDDuck]

If we have a published alternate on our release, our dispatcher is supposed to notify the station and let them know the time window when they may get an inbound. The station manager (or who ever is on duty that day) is supposed to be available to come in during that time frame if needed

If we have something un planned happen, unless it's an absolute emergency, part of the decision making try is to go somewhere that can provide needed services and minimized international issues. Obviously, if you are on fire, you go where you need to.

 

[MikeD]

If we have something un planned happen, unless it's an absolute emergency, part of the decision making try is to go somewhere that can provide needed services and minimized international issues. Obviously, if you are on fire, you go where you need to.

Agreed. The exact definitions of land as soon as practical versus land as soon as possible, respectively.

 

[knot4u]

When I worked at a KBUR FBO many years ago we had a contract to accept aircraft that couldn't land at KLAX when they went 0/0 due to fog. We had a stair truck and a belt loader that would normally sit idle the majority of the time. We also normally had a crew of 5-6 lineguys on a typical shift including the supervisor, a normal day/night was usually GA stuff, a few corporate jets and the LEO helicopters we tended to. It was all hands on deck when the fog rolled in down south and suddenly we had 5 inbound 727s, trying find or make space to park them, getting the ground equipment up and running and coordinating with the airline and the buses they'd send to pick up their irate passengers (we'd leave them on the plane until the buses showed up). The worst ones were those flights with people coming back from Mexico, they'd just park and have to sit there, we had zero Customs support, I do recall fueling one because they were going to flameout their APU if they didn't get some fuel. The FBO would call everyone that worked there and ask them to come in to help when these events happened, most would either say no or just not answer the phone (this was before cell phones were popular). I ended up getting locked in a baggage compartment one night by my coworkers because an off-shift supervisor came in at about 1am and the first thing he did was warm up and eat my carne asada burrito plate, I was going to kill him, I'd been working for 11 straight hours at that point. He actually was asked to go home so I could be released, luckily the girls who worked the counter were "fond" of me and one went to Tommies for a couple of double chili cheeseburgers. I'd say making sure the place you divert to can actually handle the load you send is pretty important, an in person audit would be prudent. All of those 727s were Delta by the way.

 

[Murdoughnut]

I was talking to an airport director just the other day about this. He had a potential situation where a plane was going to land for a medical, but the ground handlers were forbidden from touching the airplane (different carrier). The captain changed their mind while on approach and went to one of their stations instead.

 

[azmedic]

for 121 ops…If it’s a gas and go to an offline station it’s usually not a huge deal to dump into a FBO and fuel up aside from sending a fuel release and doing a white bucket test,it’s when there’s a potential for an overnight diversion and we have to offload pax is where it gets quite a bit tricky especially in places we don’t have ground handling. More often than not Airport Ops can at least get us a gate and then give us some contact numbers or some of us will reach out to colleagues that at are at other airlines to see if they can get us in touch with someone who can handle us


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[///AMG]

I can't imagine trying to get out the gate ladder at a terminal that isn't already in our system. I have probably a 50% rate of entering the code correctly for airports that I have the cheat sheet for I've determined in my first 60 days of doing this, that those locks are designed to be pilot proof.

 

[Flagship_dxer]

As a dispatcher, this is not an uncommon situation. Late at night, there are not many stations that are willing to take diversions. You cant always list a hub airport on the release and weather dictates where a diverted plane goes. Plane has to land somewhere. Theres always something that can be worked out to let passengers off the plane or get plane fueled for gas and go. Its not ideal to divert to outstations late at night but when you need to divert and there arent many good options weather wise, passenger handling comes second to putting the plane safely on the ground.

 

[Burrito]

Back at MHT, we used to have an agreement with B6 that sounded more and more like a "yes please" when BOS WX took a dive. It got creative during some summer thunderstorms, but it really didn't get beyond the phone call of a dispatcher asking for the trucks to be ready, apologizing to us afterwards. We'd only ever have the hair raise up in the winter if deicing were involved, because the staffing was always so bad. 4 fuelers is great, but how many of you can deice? No OT allowed. Figure it out. Thanks, bye.

The time BOS lost their fuel farm due to a pump fire, we had everything up to Delta 757s using us for tanker stops before continuing south. Again, non-normal stuff, and after 3 or 4 transcontinentals were cleared and stopping by, BOS APP just stopped using us altogether because the airport would've run out of fuel.

The real challenge was JFK, if a line of storms were preventing BOS and BDL for ALTNs. Only ever happened once that I recall, but like the guys above had said: Get it on the ground and figure it out later. In my particular recollection, Delta sent us a 330 and we had to send it to the FedEx spot, but because no one had those towbars, they had to swing it perpendicular and the on-duty guy had to call desperately for help. Something like that.

Get it on the ground, really, was always the big takeaway for me. Looking at the KAL A330 post in another thread I'm glad no one was killed.

 

[ktsai91]

I was talking to an airport director just the other day about this. He had a potential situation where a plane was going to land for a medical, but the ground handlers were forbidden from touching the airplane (different carrier). The captain changed their mind while on approach and went to one of their stations instead.

Yea, that is one of the challenges we face at times. If the flight already landed and no one wants to handle it, eventually one of our ground handlers or airline will have to handle it.

As a dispatcher, this is not an uncommon situation. Late at night, there are not many stations that are willing to take diversions. You cant always list a hub airport on the release and weather dictates where a diverted plane goes. Plane has to land somewhere. Theres always something that can be worked out to let passengers off the plane or get plane fueled for gas and go. Its not ideal to divert to outstations late at night but when you need to divert and there arent many good options weather wise, passenger handling comes second to putting the plane safely on the ground.

Agreed, safety comes first and in the end, we could always figure out a solution.