Where would you have diverted to?

So where would you have gone if you were the captain of the SWA flight?

  • PHL

    Votes: 30 93.8%

  • MDT

    Votes: 2 6.3%

  • Somewhere else?

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    32
midwestpa24 said:
One more thing I just noticed, MDT has a single runway. You land your damaged plane there and can't clear the runway, you've just closed that airport for a while.
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Often an emergency landing closes the airport anyhow even if there are multiple runways. You don't want airplanes mixing it up with responding emergency vehicles.
I remember a United jet with an APU fire that pretty much closed IAD when I was trying to get back in there. I couldn't figure out why they had me fly halfway to RIC before turning me back to the airport. It was only bad that some ass-hat United captain made a big stink about him being delayed. Probably had to eat a bit of crow when he realized it was a company plane that was holding things up (when I came it it was still parked in the deice area at the confluence of 1L (now 1C) and 30.
 
Regs say that an air carrier with an engine failure is required to land at the nearest suitable airport with respect to time.

With that as a given, I'd say whether they had someone on board with critical injuries wouldn't likely change the destination.
 
midwestpa24 said:
One more thing I just noticed, MDT has a single runway. You land your damaged plane there and can't clear the runway, you've just closed that airport for a while.
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Irrelevant. I will scatter parts along the entire length of the runway, along every taxiway, leave a 75 ton wreck in the middle of all of it and close the airport for a week if it gets everyone on the ground again.

Yes, I do recognize that one person died. My point is that how long the airport is going to be closed doesn't matter with regards to landing there in an emergency.
 
MauleSkinner said:
Regs say that an air carrier with an engine failure is required to land at the nearest suitable airport with respect to time.

With that as a given, I'd say whether they had someone on board with critical injuries wouldn't likely change the destination.
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So what determines suitability? What are the key factors?

Runway size?
ARFF capabilities?
Nearby medical facilities?
Company ops on field?
Company mx on field?
Others?

Again, this topic came up in a discussion with a friend and these are questions/concerns that he had. I just thought it would be a good discussion for us. I just wanted to clarify that before someone accused me of armchairing. o_O
 
MauleSkinner said:
Regs say that an air carrier with an engine failure is required to land at the nearest suitable airport with respect to time.

With that as a given, I'd say whether they had someone on board with critical injuries wouldn't likely change the destination.
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Nearest suitable was MDT.
 
I just want to ask when PaulS will have completed his heavy commercial instructor requirements so he can inflict himself on pilots IRL
 
bflynn said:
Captain called Philly. Can't disagree with her. I really don't know Harrisburg, don't know their capabilities. PHL I know and it looked like just single engine ops at the time.

About 45 miles to Harrisburg and 60 to PHL, probably something like 15 minutes to PHL vs 10 to Harrisburg. There was a line of clouds to the west, but not at Harrisburg.

I'm fine with this. Don't wear out your armchair.
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Negative; captain asked ATC for closest (don't they know where the hell they are?) and the copilot can be heard over the open mike saying "Philadelphia". Doesn't look like any discussion.

Where are you getting the distance numbers? Harrisburg is clearly much closer and directly in the direction of trave and it's not in a major urban area (which was obviously not a concern of the crew).

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/SWA1380/history/20180417/1430ZZ/KLGA/KPHL
 
midwestpa24 said:
One more thing I just noticed, MDT has a single runway. You land your damaged plane there and can't clear the runway, you've just closed that airport for a while.
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So what? You think it wouldn't be a major disruption at PHL is they closed a runway and had to divert/cancel a ton of flights? It sucks now with two heavy runways...
 
midwestpa24 said:
Two points to make:

1. ARFF Index - MDT is Index B, PHL is Index E. PHL has several times the ARFF capability of MDT.

2. SWA service to PHL. While that alone should not be a consideration in an emergency, it may have had an impact on what the captain saw when she punched up nearest on the FMS. I know this for a fact due to an incident I personally worked that involved another airline. That airline only had airports it served in its database. The airport an emergent aircraft had diverted to was not in the aircraft database. The recovery aircraft had to get a database update in order to fly to the diversion airport to recover the passengers.

Plus as its already been pointed out, from FL380 to the ground, it may have taken the same amount of time to reach either. Just a difference between spiraling down or going straight.

Also at the time the captain made the decision, the information available to her was only of an engine failure/depressurization, perhaps not of the injuries and cabin damage immediately.
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It wasn't at FL380, it topped at 325 and then stared a 3000+ ft descent apparently because of the loss of pressurization.

And a "spiral" wasn't need to get into MDT.
 
MFE said:
I just want to ask when PaulS will have completed his heavy commercial instructor requirements so he can inflict himself on pilots IRL
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Nice third post troll.

Internet-Troll.jpg
 
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paflyer said:
Of course, the "closest" was 9D4. But the closest "suitable" is clearly MDT.
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Either airport would have been fine. The time savings between PHL and MDT was probably negligible. Also, probably one of the least important things, but still a consideration, is that PHL is served by SW. We had a crew depart out of Toronto that had some sort of issue and the end of the QRH said to land at the nearest suitable airport. They just departed out of YYZ but opted to continue to JFK. Company didn’t have an issue with that decision.
 
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paflyer said:
Of course, the "closest" was 9D4. But the closest "suitable" is clearly MDT.
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Thing is, it doesn't really matter either way.

I would have gone to PHL as well, and wouldn't have given it any more thought. The nice thing about being the PIC at a reputable company is that you can make the best decision possible in the heat of battle, and as long as the outcome is good, you don't have to worry much about the sharpshooters after the fact. I guarantee that this Captain isn't worried about whether or not some Fed has heartburn about where she elected to put the plane down.
 
jordane93 said:
Either airport would have been fine. The time savings between PHL and MDT was probably negligent. Also, probably one of the least important things, but still a consideration, is that PHL is served by SW. We had a crew depart out of Toronto that had some sort of issue and the end of the QRH said to land at the nearest suitable airport. They just departed out of YYZ but opted to continue to JFK. Company didn’t have an issue with that decision.
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I guess if it came down in pieces over Manhattan the company would have had a problem.
 
paflyer said:
I guess if it came down in pieces over Manhattan the company would have had a problem.
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The CA of the SW flight isn’t going to get grief over choosing PHL over MDT. There could have been a bunch of different outcomes. At the end of the day, given the information, she made the best decision. Was it safe? Yes. Was it legal? Yes. As long as I can cross off those two questions, I’m in a good spot.
 
SkyDog58 said:
So what determines suitability? What are the key factors?

_O
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Judgement informed by critical thinking skills determine suitability.

/Vent On/

My perception today is that many people fear the answer I just provided. Seems like the voice of the public today expects that humans are incapable of sound reasoning, that sound reasoning should be restricted to the use of a logic tree to come up with the pre-determined correct answer.

This was exemplified in the movie about Sully, the plot line of NYSB second guessing his decision. The correct answer that day was sound reasoning led to all onboard living to see another day.

/Vent Off/
 
ShuRugal said:
That graph shows a 15 minute descent with an average ground speed of 350 mph, giving a roughly 90 mile radius. Direct distance from MDT to PHL is 73 miles...

In terms of time, both airports were the same distance.

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If you're flying a twin and lose one catastrophically are you going to circle and land at the airport under your nose or are you going to leisurely head to an airport 15 min away, over a densely populated area with no other landing options ?
 
TCABM said:
Judgement informed by critical thinking skills determine suitability.

/Vent On/

My perception today is that many people fear the answer I just provided. Seems like the voice of the public today expects that humans are incapable of sound reasoning, that sound reasoning should be restricted to the use of a logic tree to come up with the pre-determined correct answer.

This was exemplified in the movie about Sully, the plot line of NYSB second guessing his decision. The correct answer that day was sound reasoning led to all onboard living to see another day.

/Vent Off/
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Well, the "adversarial second guessing" Sully was largely fiction.
 
As someone who works in airport ops at PHL, I agree with everyone that PHL would be a better option. We have more ARFF capability and more resources for emergency response than MDT such as bringing in emergency responders from Philly and other counties and towns close to PHL.
 
paflyer said:
If you're flying a twin and lose one catastrophically are you going to circle and land at the airport under your nose or are you going to leisurely head to an airport 15 min away, over a densely populated area with no other landing options ?
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You could also argue that the maneuvering required to get a damaged jet down into a closer airport would be more dangerous than a stable descent into the slightly further away airport. But you already have your mind made up.
 
paflyer said:
If you're flying a twin and lose one catastrophically are you going to circle and land at the airport under your nose or are you going to leisurely head to an airport 15 min away, over a densely populated area with no other landing options ?
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In a transport jet it’s completely different. You still want to get the plane down ASAP. But you’ve got a lot more time and they can on fly on one engine pretty good. You’re talking about a difference of maybe a few minutes.
 
paflyer said:
If you're flying a twin and lose one catastrophically are you going to circle and land at the airport under your nose or are you going to leisurely head to an airport 15 min away, over a densely populated area with no other landing options ?
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I'm going to land at whatever airport I can get to without undue stress to an airframe which has suffered unknown catastrophic damage. Am I going to pull a 2G spiral descent to get to the airport under me when there is a better one I can reach by gliding in a straight line? Hell no I'm not, and I'll call anyone who would irresponsible.

I don't understand the obvious personal hangups some people seem to have with how this woman brought 200 souls safely to land after a catastrophic failure at cruise altitude. Why are all you armchair-CFI types in such a rush to crucify this woman?


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ShuRugal said:
Oh really? You have the descent profile data for that flight?

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I already posted the information on that. They did not lose time going to PHL.
 
Dave Theisen said:
You could also argue that the maneuvering required to get a damaged jet down into a closer airport would be more dangerous than a stable descent into the slightly further away airport. But you already have your mind made up.
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It wasn;t "slighty further away.Look at a freaking map
jordane93 said:
In a transport jet it’s completely different. You still want to get the plane down ASAP. But you’ve got a lot more time and they can on fly on one engine pretty good. You’re talking about a difference of maybe a few minutes.
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They had no idea what the damage was at that decision point, only that they lost one, the cabin had an explosive decompression, and had an initial fire indication. They were already in a 3500fpm decent.

I haven't seen a time vs location/comm diagram so it's probably going to wait for the CVR and black box data to be made public and see the chain of events. FA isn't granular/accurate enough.
.
 
ShuRugal said:
I'm going to land at whatever airport I can get to without undue stress to an airframe which has suffered unknown catastrophic damage. Am I going to pull a 2G spiral descent to get to the airport under me when there is a better one I can reach by gliding in a straight line? Hell no I'm not, and I'll call anyone who would irresponsible.

I don't understand the obvious personal hangups some people seem to have with how this woman brought 200 souls safely to land after a catastrophic failure at cruise altitude. Why are all you armchair-CFI types in such a rush to crucify this woman?


Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk
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How did this become a choice between doing a Wagstaff act and staying over an unpopulated area until arriving at approach altitude?

Who's crucifying anyone? Just because they lucked out it was the best solution? BTW, I see nothing "heroic" on the part of the crew. That word gets used way too easily.
 
They did a 3500 FPM to get down to below 12000. If you listen to the discussion they had with ZNY and then PHL approach you'll see they were no longer concerned about a fire but rather with structural problems. The 1500 FPM descent and the long straight into PHL were quite sane decisions. Given this descent rate and setting up for a long straight approach, MDT was NOT any closer. Had they had an uncontained fire, that would have been a different story, but they didn't have that.
 
paflyer said:
It wasn;t "slighty further away.Look at a freaking map
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I looked at the 'freaking map'. At the time that they popped the engine, PHL would have made a lot of sense from >30K'.

Not sure why you're so hell bent on this.
 
flyingron said:
They did a 3500 FPM to get down to below 12000. If you listen to the discussion they had with ZNY and then PHL approach you'll see they were no longer concerned about a fire but rather with structural problems. The 1500 FPM descent and the long straight into PHL were quite sane decisions. Given this descent rate and setting up for a long straight approach, MDT was NOT any closer. Had they had an uncontained fire, that would have been a different story, but they didn't have that.
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Do you have the CVR transcript? There was zero discussion as far as I heard on the released audio. I don't know if the FO was already in the process of looking, and had done the calculation of time, distance, descent rate, structural load, runway options & etc, but the captain was asking ATC for closest and then the FO chimed in. So therefore no consideration of other options.
 
paflyer said:
It wasn;t "slighty further away.Look at a freaking map

They had no idea what the damage was at that decision point, only that they lost one, the cabin had an explosive decompression, and had an initial fire indication. They were already in a 3500fpm decent.

I haven't seen a time vs location/comm diagram so it's probably going to wait for the CVR and black box data to be made public and see the chain of events. FA isn't granular/accurate enough.
.
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Either way, I think it was a pretty successful emergency. Besides the one fatality, which was beyond the flight crew’s control, they did everything right. Not sure why it matters that she picked PHL over MDT.
 
paflyer said:
Who's crucifying anyone?
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The guy who insists, against all evidence to the contrary, that the pilot who brought a damaged aircraft to a safe landing without additional loss of life is wrong.

paflyer said:
Just because they lucked out it was the best solution?
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I would love to see your evidence that this outcome was the result of luck, and not the result of sound ADM and excellent piloting under extreme circumstances.


paflyer said:
BTW, I see nothing "heroic" on the part of the crew. That word gets used way too easily.
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You're quite entitled to your opinion, of course.


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[/QUOTE]
 
jordane93 said:
Either way, I think it was a pretty successful emergency. Besides the one fatality, which was beyond the flight crew’s control, they did everything right.
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As it turned out. You could say the same thing regarding the cops shooting some person with obvious mental issues instead of waiting them out.

I happened to be looking north out of my window on the 35th floor in center city, not knowing at that time that I was watching 1380 cruise by at low altitude over north Philly. If things went south at that point then we would have lost more that the passengers and crew. This is why I have a problem with their decision.

Also, listening to the ATC playback, the controllers had to coordinate several arriving flights to the runway which increased the risk and added workload to everyone involved. If they had gone to MDT, there's no one else around except some cows.
 
kayoh190 said:
I looked at the 'freaking map'. At the time that they popped the engine, PHL would have made a lot of sense from >30K'.

Not sure why you're so hell bent on this.
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You represented by ALPA by any chance?
 
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