Pull out the ALT Manual

KCFlyer said:
Hmmm...I see that the skygod has spoken again, and in a thread about the dangerous cowboylike pilots at LUV. Now, I have him on ignore, but I thought I would open it to see if he might have posted about the two LUV flights that did NOT land at PVD because of weather and no tower personnel. Turns out he didn't. But I wonder why, within hours of a negative incident being reported, he doesn't hesitate to post on this board...but after several DAYS of an incident he himself most likely would have diverted in, no so much as a "good job" to the pilots at LUV. Guess I might expect too much.
Click to expand...

Why not divert to BOS or MHT? Somewhere closer to allow for busing to the destination? As for the pilots to blame the controllers for not staying late enough to accomodate the LUV flight I would say, "don't flatter yourselves". What is in it for the controllers? This is a business and if SWA can not get a flight to PVD before the tower closes I suppose the rest of the world should wait on them?

I wonder how many other carriers wasted 2 hours worth of fuel and passenger time that night? There are some really good options closer to the destination but that would have cost money and we know the guys at SWA could care less about the peeps.

I have my own suspcions as to why they did what they did and blamed who they blamed. Always has to be the airports fault for any SWA errors. Could never be the loose nuts behind the wheels.
 
magsau said:
Why not divert to BOS or MHT? Somewhere closer to allow for busing to the destination?

The weather was crappy there too, and at other places in the region, crappy as in below alternate minimums.

magsau said:
As for the pilots to blame the controllers for not staying late enough to accomodate the LUV flight I would say, "don't flatter yourselves". What is in it for the controllers? This is a business and if SWA can not get a flight to PVD before the tower closes I suppose the rest of the world should wait on them?
Click to expand...

Has your airline ever run late with the last one getting in after the tower closed? If it was someplace where you could shoot an approach, great, but what about the places that have an approach predicated on an operational tower? Do you ask them to stay?

magsau said:
I wonder how many other carriers wasted 2 hours worth of fuel and passenger time that night?
Click to expand...

I don't know; you tell us. I mean, you seem to think you know everything else...

magsau said:
There are some really good options closer to the destination but that would have cost money and we know the guys at SWA could care less about the peeps.
Click to expand...

Assumption based upon facts not in evidence. Nothing else "closer" that night with acceptable weather.

I have my own suspcions as to why they did what they did and blamed who they blamed. Always has to be the airports fault for any SWA errors. Could never be the loose nuts behind the wheels.
Click to expand...

...and I have my own suspicions why you always seem to be johnny-on-the-spot with some anti-Southwest diatribe based upon an assumptive "I know SWA screwed-up and now all I have to do is find/invent some facts to support it" kind of attitude. Turned down at SWA, perhaps? You're obviously bitter about something....
 
OPNL...nothing is good enough for mags. I remember when my wife spent the night at the O'hare baggage claim because her flight was cancelled and she was not allowed to board an earlier flight because "your bags were checked on the later flight" (nevermind that her baggage indeed made the earlier flight and was waiting for her at noon the next day)...UAL quit flying. Period. Their customers were put up (and fed) in the O'hare baggage claim by the city of Chicago...not United Airlines...meanwhile over at Midway, the cowboys at Southwest were running behind enough that the 6:00 p.m. flight arrived in KC at 2 in the morning...but it arrived. I know this because a coworker was on that 6 p.m. Southwest flight that very same night.

But I'm sure in the skygod's world, UAL was "safe" that night by discontinuing operations, and bussing employees anywhere was out of the question. Feeding them a damn sandwich was out of the question as well. Southwest was nothing more than a cowboy operation who took off in "questionable" conditions. I swear, if Jesus Christ himself were a Southwest pilot, he'd be the worst thing that ever walked the earth according to the all knowing, all powerful, ever safe United pilot on this board.
 
OPNLguy said:
Has your airline ever run late with the last one getting in after the tower closed? If it was someplace where you could shoot an approach, great, but what about the places that have an approach predicated on an operational tower? Do you ask them to stay?
Click to expand...


OPNL,

ALT mins only apply for filing the alternate from the departure point. That is to say you must have a plan prior to departure that meets the ALT MINS. However, in actual operation you may land at any airport that you choose that is approved in your OPS SPECS and is above LANDING mins, not ALT MINS. Operational and planning are separate issues. The only time an airplane would be locked into returning to BWI would be if it was the filed alt and the aircraft lost communications with ATC.

Seeing as how this flight did not experience lost comm. only lost tounge, there were better alts. closer to the destination. Again, blaming the airport for SWA inadequacies is a bit old.
 
OPNLguy said:
"Cat III mins N/A when tower closed",

What's so difficult about this for you to understand?
Click to expand...
IT's another episode of "What did Southwest do wrong this time". In our last episode, we know that weather in Boston, just 50 some odd miles away was considerably better than it was in PVD. We know this because the United pilot who condiders diverting when winds exceed 10 knots or visibilities are below 5 miles has said that Boston was a better option than Baltimore. So the weather must have been much better than it was at PVD.

But lets assume weather wasn't better at Boston, and Southwest opted to land at Boston. I do believe then that the Southwest cowboys who toss out the rule books would have been putting passengers at risk by landing at a unfamiliar airport, after midnight, in questionable weather conditions. Obviously, they did the wrong thing again.

Furthermore, they would have been considered stupid for landing at an airport where they had no support staff and trying to round up busses...we all know that busses are standing by 24/7 to be dispatched to take passengers to their final destinations. With luck, those passengers could have been dropped off at PVD airport around 9 in the morning, after the busses had finally made it to take the passengers home. Heaven forbid, though, that as one of the busses was heading back to the nasty weather in Providence, it lost control and got in a horrible accident, killing a few people and injuring others. Obviously, Southwest was negligent for sending their paying customers on a bus into an area where it was rainy, foggy and generally nasty...so, once again, Southwest did the wrong thing.

OPNL...I know you are just a silly dispatcher, and the blame should fall squarely on the shoulders of you and your fellow dispatchers. Obviously, the flight should never have been dispatched from Baltimore in the first place. I think you should use this as a learning experience and only dispatch flights when the weather at the origin and destination airports is CAVU.
 
But lets assume weather wasn't better at Boston, and Southwest opted to land at Boston. I do believe then that the Southwest cowboys who toss out the rule books would have been putting passengers at risk by landing at a unfamiliar airport, after midnight, in questionable weather conditions. Obviously, they did the wrong thing again
Click to expand...
.

Questionable weather? If it is C3 at PVD and C3 at BOS would that not make the PVD weather quesionable in your diagnosis? And your heroes at SWA just launched for a "questionable" airport. Also, from the pilots side of the window there is absolutely no difference in how you fly an ILS to C3 at any airport. All ILS's look the same. Also in low vis <1200 RVR the SMGS lighting is used by the airports to guide aircraft to the runway exits and taxiways. You might want to realize that you are not really looking out the window on a C3 approach. It is all about the indications you see on your nav displays affecting signals on the ground and on your aircraft.

Also, "after midnight" is hazardous? Perhaps SWA should stop flying any flight after 0000lcl to satisfy your idea of safety.

Furthermore, they would have been considered stupid for landing at an airport where they had no support staff and trying to round up busses...we all know that busses are standing by 24/7 to be dispatched to take passengers to their final destinations. With luck, those passengers could have been dropped off at PVD airport around 9 in the morning, after the busses had finally made it to take the passengers home. Heaven forbid, though, that as one of the busses was heading back to the nasty weather in Providence, it lost control and got in a horrible accident, killing a few people and injuring others. Obviously, Southwest was negligent for sending their paying customers on a bus into an area where it was rainy, foggy and generally nasty...so, once again, Southwest did the wrong thing.
Click to expand...

Ok let's analyze your logic. No support staff, is a SWA issue that is biting them in this case. This is another reason to avoid the Walmart of the sky. SWA has decided they want to do everything on the cheap and it continues to kick their behinds operationaly.

Transportation from BOS to PVD is provided by trains and scheduled buses that I do believe operate on a 24 hour schedule. Also, chartered airline buses do not stop at passengers homes, as you imply. The buses for irregular ops take the pax to the airport of destination. As to your whatif's. What if the airplane crashed at BWI after returning from it's PVD flyby? What if the terminal caught fire with all of these stranded pax sleeping on the floor and killed them.....what if, what if.

The bottom line is SWA operates an airline like walmart sells and buys its goods. It will protect itself (blame the airport for all the problems) and give the passenger the least amount of care.

KC, I appreciate your unnatural desire to defend SWA but it is the lack of infrastructure and big picture operations that is causing many of the pains it has seen. The "kick the tires and light the fires" mentality of the cowboy is not where safety and service meet. Of course I am surprised that the drunks and strippers that were most likely on this flight even realized they were not in PVD.
 
magsau said:
What don't you understand?
Click to expand...

Why you appear to be some kind of anal-retentive nutcase with a perpetual grudge against SWA, and why you presume to have "inside knowledge" with which to render judgements on the actions of others.

Other than those items, and why people waste their time with you, I don't wonder about anything... :rolleyes:
 
OPNLguy said:
Why you appear to be some kind of anal-retentive nutcase with a perpetual grudge against SWA, and why you presume to have "inside knowledge" with which to render judgements on the actions of others.

Other than those items, and why people waste their time with you, I don't wonder about anything... :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

OPNL,

You are the one that threw out the "what don't you understand comment. I was only providing the information that BOS is a 24 hour C3 airport and you appeared to "not understand" that fact. You don't like the "not understand" comment, then I would suggest you refrain from throwing it out yourself.

In this case a SWA flight did not make it to PVD and landed at an alternate due to the tower closing and no C3 approach being available. The tower closes every night at the same time and this should not have come as a surprise to the pilots, dispatchers or airline. To blame this divert on the airport is bad business. If SWA wanted to fly to the big airports with 24 hour service it would cost a little more and they are not willing to spend those dollars.
 
Lets keep the discussion ON TOPIC and not dwell on a specific poster. Talk about what they are talking about, not them. Thanks.
 
magsau said:
In this case a SWA flight did not make it to PVD and landed at an alternate due to the tower closing and no C3 approach being available. The tower closes every night at the same time and this should not have come as a surprise to the pilots, dispatchers or airline.
Click to expand...

The tower closing at midnight didn't surprise SWA. What surprised them is that normally the PVD tower will stay open for 2 more hours if contacted. SWA dispatch did contact PVD tower and asked it to stay open late. Foe some reason they didn't. Again the surprise was not the tower closing, but it not staying open as they NORMALLY do when asked.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

J
Man Found Dead On Aa Nrt-ord A/c
Replies
9
Views
1K
Boomer
B
S
Swa Ceo: "we're Not Acquiring Ata"
Replies
2
Views
1K
Fubijaakr
F
G
'Abandoned' USA Today Headline
Replies
6
Views
3K
JungleClone
J
700UW
If Us Airways Leaves, What Next?
Replies
10
Views
2K
US1YFARE
US1YFARE

Latest posts

Back
Top