Ground Delay Question

Malko

Malko

Why…..? It’s so tiring. 🤙
Staff member
So it's a slow morning here at the bank in Minny and I have JFK Ground on the headset. Delta 469 calls up after leaving the gate and read to taxi. Controler comes back and asks, "Are you aware your have a release time of 4 hours from now?" The pilot says it's the first I have heard of that. Controller breaks for a second and comes back with the best he can do is a departure time two hours from now.

I checked the FAA delays and arrivals into SFO are subject to ground stop of up to 4 hours.

Questions:

Who has the responsibility to notify the crew of any ground delay?

If they knew it was 4 hours, why would they load the plane, short of needing the gate?

Now that they loaded the plane and are out on the taxiway they have to go park somewhere for 2 hours....The pilots heard that and you could hear the frustration at the start of a shiddy day.

I am sure there is some reason, but it seemed strange the crew didnt know.
 
....And just like that they get an updated wheels up of 1430......

So much for a 2 hour sit on the ramp....
 
Responsibility would fall to dispatch or operations. They should have that information and then inform the crew if boarding/ departure will be delayed. The crew can also get that information when obtaining departure clearance.
For whatever reason, they may not have had the delay information prior to pushing from the gate. It does happen occasionally.
Going to park for hours gets real sketchy these days thanks to the ground-delay passenger bill-of-rights. BIG fines for exceeding the time allotments during ground delays.
 
SFO always has delays due to wind, not that people don't complain - 4 hours is pretty excessive, but I bet it doesn't hit that high that often. How they measure the figure would be interesting - is it average delay vs planned departure time or some other measure?

In London, underground delays are determined by how long the train takes to load/unload passengers, not by any reference to a timetable.
 
This may be an unanswerable question: If facing a delay like Delta 469, would it be better to park in the penalty box or return to a gate and deplane? What if the delay was three hours? Four? Is there a tipping point to deplane?
 
Most pilots who frequently operate a delay prone airports are proactive in finding out about ground delays rather than hoping that ops will know and spill the beans.

I just pull FAA Wait app, if my destination appears in the ground delay/Ground stop columns it warrants a call to clearance delivery or company to inquire further.
 
tomokc said:
This may be an unanswerable question: If facing a delay like Delta 469, would it be better to park in the penalty box or return to a gate and deplane? What if the delay was three hours? Four? Is there a tipping point to deplane?
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It usually depends on the length of time a demeanor of the crew. 4 hours likely to shorten to 2 would warrant unloading pax. Some shorter delays ie 90 min would depend on boarded or not....or frequently crews want to pad their paycheck or try to timeout for other assignments.
 
JEP said:
....And just like that they get an updated wheels up of 1430......

So much for a 2 hour sit on the ramp....
Click to expand...

Dispatch can work wonders sometimes :)

I've seem them update a wheels up time to something like an hour or more sooner than the original.
 
tomokc said:
This may be an unanswerable question: If facing a delay like Delta 469, would it be better to park in the penalty box or return to a gate and deplane? What if the delay was three hours? Four? Is there a tipping point to deplane?
Click to expand...

Depends.

My manual says that we are to take delays at the gate if possible, unless the gate space is needed.

The tipping point is usually 2 1/2 hours after the passengers are notified of their last opportunity to deplane. Hefty fines start at the 3 hour mark, so that gives us 30 minutes to coordinate the return and find an open gate.
 
Sitting in LAX last week going to JFK. 2 hour ground delay. We unload a full 767. 10 minutes later ATC wants to know if we can make a 20 minutes wheels up time. Seriously? It cuts both ways.
 
Cptnchia said:
Sitting in LAX last week going to JFK. 2 hour ground delay. We unload a full 767. 10 minutes later ATC wants to know if we can make a 20 minutes wheels up time. Seriously? It cuts both ways.
Click to expand...

That's what got me wondering... A 6+ hours flight after a 2 hr sit on the field....That can't be much fun......
 
JEP said:
I am sure there is some reason, but it seemed strange the crew didnt know.
Click to expand...
Delays sometimes pop up after we get going. SFO could have very easily had some ceilings roll in that made PRM approaches impossible.

I have had some interesting delays. Doing DCA-EWR we were just about to get clearance to takeoff and tower all of a sudden got us with a 1 hour delay for flow control. I have had a few ground stops hit right after starting our taxi as well. It just happens.

PDCs will typically give us our EDCT time to warn us of flow prior to boarding. If I know weather is coming in to our destination I'll call up clearance and get their story.
 
So right now, not only is it windy, but it's generally lousy. I'm glad I'm sitting at home with my feet up, instead of going out and messing with this weather.
Code: 
KSFO 062056Z 18030G39KT 5SM -RA BR FEW005 SCT027 OVC055 18/17 A2984 RMK AO2 PK WND 17039/2054 SLP106 P0007 60012 T01780170 56002 $

This weather means that SFO is down to the 19s only. There is only one ILS to the 19s, and all the kit for simultaneous arrivals (PRM SOIA) is built for the 28s, not the 19s. (Even so, the weather that permits PRM SOIA is fairly narrow; closely spaced dependent parallel ILS approaches are much more likely to happen than the ILS- and LDA (RNAV) PRM configuration.) The intensity of the wind also means that departures share runways 19L/R. The arrival and departure rate is significantly reduced when things go this way, hence the large flow control delay.

Operations is supposed to know these things, but they don't. Call clearance delivery, or note the "AT (several hours from now)Z" on your PDC...

JEP said:
....And just like that they get an updated wheels up of 1430......

So much for a 2 hour sit on the ramp....
Click to expand...
The sky belongs to Delta, by order of God, and the President of the United States!
 
A few stations are good about letting us know about a wheels up time. Most of the time, not. It takes us pilots to be proactive about it. I just did lots of SFO turns this week so I got in the swing of calling CD for flow times. Then I'll go a few months without going to SFO, and we'll get burned. It's frustrating with pax because they think us pilots should have known, but it's not always possible. Sometimes it's printed on our clearance, and other times it's not.
 
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