Yet another aviation thread.

Landing to take on additional fuel enroute would have cost money but avoided landing on fumes.

I'm advised that their intended destination is not an airport likely to be free of delays. They were criminally negligent and the only reason seems to have been to avoid additional cost.

I've been on a holding pattern seldom, but it does happen. There are also other ways in which ATC can delay landing without holding patterns. Increasing separation, for example, or simply issuing a lower speed during descent. All that can exhaust fuel if you don't follow the usual rules.

I've had one go-round. MEX-ATL on Delta in 1990. The plane ahead didn't vacate the runway, as the pilot explained things, so we had to climb and re-enter the landing pattern. That can add 20 minutes easy.

I never once wondered "have we got enough fuel?"

There was the time when an Interjet flight MEX-MTY began to divert to GDL, then turned back to MTY, with the pilot explaining if conditions at MTY again became untenable, we'd re-divert to GDL (we didn't). Then I wondered whether there was enough fuel to get to GDL after reaching, but not landing at, MTY. after all, the MTY-GDL flight is about as long as the MEX-MTY one.

Quote: Nareed

There was the time when an Interjet flight MEX-MTY began to divert to GDL, then turned back to MTY, with the pilot explaining if conditions at MTY again became untenable, we'd re-divert to GDL (we didn't). Then I wondered whether there was enough fuel to get to GDL after reaching, but not landing at, MTY. after all, the MTY-GDL flight is about as long as the MEX-MTY one.

That is almost insane distance to divert.

Quote: Pacomartin

That is almost insane distance to divert.

You should have seen it from my end. I was supposed to arrive at 8 am, and had until 1 pm to do something at MTY. A diversion to GDL could have shot that to hell.

It's amazing how fast the subconscious works. When the captain announced a diversion, I immediately thought "Saltillo," which has a commercial airport and is about a 60 minute drive from MTY. But then he said GDL, which made no sense.

Now, if Interjet has no facilities and staff in Saltillo, then why not divert closer to Reynosa, Torreon?

Had we diverted to Saltillo, I'd have tried to deplane and then taken a cab or bus to MTY.

Quote: Nareed

I immediately thought "Saltillo," which has a commercial airport and is about a 60 minute drive from MTY. But then he said GDL, which made no sense. Now, if Interjet has no facilities and staff in Saltillo, then why not divert closer to Reynosa, Torreon?

Saltillo does have a full length runway big enough to land a 757, but it gets almost no commercial passenger flights at all, and none from Interjet. Reynosa would be the nearest full facility airport with Interjet flights.

Quote: Pacomartin

Saltillo does have a full length runway big enough to land a 757, but it gets almost no commercial passenger flights at all, and none from Interjet.

It gets at least one daily flight from MEX and some charters, plus I assume some private planes.

The reason it's not a successful commercial airport, is that MTY is very near. Most people who need to get to Saltillo fly to MTY and rent a car or take the bus.

The latest in the Aviation Herald shows fuel calculations compliant with the local rules. This shows the Lamia plane was like 3,000 lbs short of fuel.

What this means is that the flight had lots of opportunities to run out of fuel and crash. Had there been no holding pattern, the crew would have been unable to make a go-round had their first landing attempt failed for any reason. They'd have been unable to divert to their alternate airport had it been necessary. As we saw, they couldn't take a holding pattern at all.

There were also no refueling options available at the time the flight left. Except perhaps on Bogota, minutes away from their destination airport (though the plane also didn't have enough fuel per the rules to fly to Bogota). But had the crew put down there for refueling, they'd have had to admit to flying without enough fuel.

So the captain, and part owner of the airline, gambled he could make it. And that's a hell of a thing to gamble on.

The flight plan, BTW, listed flight length, in hours and minutes, as being equal to the plane's endurance. That's completely insane, and the flight ought to have been stopped on the face of that plan.

There are many bureaucratic rules that are completely senseless and merely get in the way. Fuel rules, though, are sensible. While they incur a weight penalty on every flight for contingencies that are unlikely to arise, these contingencies, when they do arise from time to time, leave you no options unless you have extra fuel. In other words, were all airlines to operate without contingency fuel, we'd have fuel starvation crashes every day somewhere in the world.

Sometimes its not just fuel availability but at what price?

There are different procedures in different countries.

A mere transcription error in the USA had the FAA telephoning airports asking if they had heard from us or were we in transient parking or had we taken on additional fuel, when all that was negative they called out a squadron of the Civil Air Patrol to get aloft and look for our crash site. Fortunately, we landed just then and discovered the transposed figures in the FAA data input. Extra fuel is life insurance. Its an expense that allows options when the unexpected takes place.

Quote: Pacomartin

Alfredo Vasquez Cobo International Airport (LET) was also closed, but the article says they should have made some arrangements for after hours refueling.

It's so irresponsible as to beggar belief.

But not just the pilot. The dispatcher was in on it. An article in Airways Magazine's site claims someone at the airport tried to reject the flight plan, but was talked out of it.

IMO, there should be an investigation on fuel loads out of Bolivia, and overall in every case where fuel is an issue or priority or emergency are called due to fuel issues. There have been rumors of ULCCs in Europe and North America not carrying enough reserve fuel.

Reserve fuel is about the most obvious place for an airline to try to save money. I'm talking about the extra carried beyond what's needed to 1) reach the destination and 2) divert to an alternate airport. You also need fuel for an extra 45 minutes. In the vast majority of flights, the reserve isn't even touched, much less used up. But it has weight and costs fuel to carry. So omitting it will save an airline a few hundred dollars per flight. Not much, but it adds up. Think of thousands of flights a month, even for mall airlines.

I'm not suggesting other airlines are as irresponsible as Lamia. But they may be cutting corners and be ill-prepared for an emergency. We would do well to find out now whether that's the case, rather than wait for another crash.

Quote: Nareed

IMO, there should be an investigation on fuel loads out of Bolivia, and overall in every case where fuel is an issue or priority or emergency are called due to fuel issues. There have been rumors of ULCCs in Europe and North America not carrying enough reserve fuel.

Bolivia will take drastic measures to determine who was responsible for this week's plane crash that virtually wiped out Brazil's Chapecoense soccer team, President Evo Morales told reporters.


I can't believe that every airport in the Amazon jungle is closed at night.




Alfredo Vasquez Cobo International Airport (LET) was also closed, but the article says they should have made some arrangements for after hours refueling.

Bogota was actually too far as well.

The article also mentions a TBT airport, but it was only 4 miles from LET.