I’m not sure what’s going on here, but somebody someplace was awfully unethical somewhere.
Passengers on the August 8th Alaska Airlines flight 3492, in the air after taking off from San Francisco bound for Jackson Hole, Wyoming, were stunned to hear their captain announce as the plane was about to land at its destination, “Hey, I’m really sorry folks, but due to me not having the proper qualification to land in Jackson Hole, we need to divert to Salt Lake City, Utah. We’ll keep you posted on the next steps.”
Hey, no problem, it could happen to anyb….WHAT?
The flight was indeed rerouted to Salt Lake City, where passengers had to wait about 90 minutes until a qualified pilot was found and scheduled into the flight.
Apparently Jackson Hole is a “special qualifications” airport because of its elevation and the cross-winds. The FAA recommends that airlines provide airport-specific training and insist on higher qualifications to land at Jackson Hole. Either the pilot hadn’t been properly prepped to land there, or having never done it before, lost his nerve. Some have speculated that the pilot was minimally qualified to land in good weather, but when conditions deteriorated, he decided that the approach was too risky for him.
Sure, the pilot did the responsible thing in an abundance of caution once he realized that the landing might be beyond his experience and training level: the ethics issue isn’t his decision and the announcement. The issue is how a pilot not qualified to land at a flight’s scheduled destination ended up in the cockpit to begin with.
Did he get over Wyoming and suddenly say, “Wait, THAT Jackson Hole? I can’t land there…I thought we were going to the other Jackson Hole!” Did he need the work and just think he could fake it if the weather stayed nice: after all, how hard could landing a passenger jet be?
Or is the trustworthiness of air travel declining just like the trustworthiness of almost everything else, with Boeing’s exposed negligence and incompetence just being a tip of a very dangerous metaphorical iceberg?
And is using Titanic references in a post about air travel unethically mixing metaphors? Hey, I don’t feel qualified to finish this post…
Ethics Alarms 
There was only one pilot on the flight deck?
Ever since the Wuhan Flu turned the airline industry on its head, there’s been a critical shortage of commercial pilots. And in its wisdom, Congress decided commercial license applicants needed 1500 expensive hours of time in planes, rather than lesser, more pertinent time in simulators. As a result, trainees are dying in crashes and the airlines are short pilots. I suspect this incident is symptomatic of these problems.
The airline industry, as a whole, hasn’t been inspiring any confidence in me for a few years and it’s a growing pile of things, this story is just another unbearable straw, that make me less confident that we’re going to have an uneventful flight, not have a bunch of self absorbed wackos on the flight, get to our actual destination, get to our destination as scheduled, actually have our luggage arrive on the same plane as us, and get our luggage intact. In fact my lack of confidence in the airline industry is the reason my wife and I decided to change our 10 day vacation plans for 2024 from flying to an airport in our destination area and renting a car to drive more “locally” and instead we drove 6201 miles over three weeks and collated multiple future destination vacations into one long vacation. We got to see lots of stuff and kept most of the drive days under 6 hours (average 4½ hours) but over 95 hours on the road can be a challenge when you don’t drive many long hours as a profession. I really like to drive but this vacation pushed my limits.
I’m still silently debating if we’re going to do the same thing for our next planned vacation which is a LOT fewer miles. The only real negative to driving is the older I get some of the plains areas we need to drive through are pure nothingness and 6-8 hours of driving through nothingness can get quite tiring. We’ve already seen everything we want to see along those nothingness routes. Choices, choices, choices.
I really wish the airline industry, as a whole, would get their act together so I had more confidence like I did 10-15 years ago.
I have a son who is an airline captain (Jet Blue) who says this is the situation.
https://www.aopa.org/training-and-safety/active-pilots/safety-and-technique/currency-vs-proficiency#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20a%20%22High%20Mins,their%20first%20100%20hours%20in
So, the conditions at the airport deteriorated to the point where the flight crew wasn’t qualified to land there. So, much ado about nothing. Thanks.
I wouldn’t go that far. Why is a flight crew assigned to an airport destination that might become too difficult for it? Makes no sense. Incompetent and dangerous—what if the pilot says, “Oh, what the hell, I can do this”? It shouldn’t be up to the pilot: either he’s qualified to land at Jackson Hole or not; if isn’t, then he shouldn’t take off. And if this is much ado about nothing, why have I never heard of this happening before?
I’m gonna take a guess that Airline Pilots are in short supply and as they make a transition to a younger field of candidates, there are a number of supply and demand pressures. I just learned last month that there’s forced retirement at 65? I mean, it probably has to be somewhere and 65 is as good as any, but if you have a poor age distribution in your ranks, you could hit a wave of retirements at an inopportune time.
(The Spam filter might need a good shaking.)
I wouldn’t go that far. Why is a flight crew assigned to an airport destination that might become too difficult for it? Makes no sense …
In fact, it makes a lot of sense. There are a couple reasons why it can be unavoidable that a crew could be scheduled into an airport where weather could deteriorate below the crew’s minimums.
The Captain could be newly qualified in the aircraft, have just upgraded into the position, or be returning from an extended medical. In those situations, the Capt is termed “Hi Minimums”. For example, assume new Captain. The flight release will carry a “Hi Mins” annotation. That means the Capt may not conduct a Cat II or Cat III approach, and must add a margin to the visibility requirement for a Cat I approach. (Can’t remember exactly what — I’ve been retired for four years.)
So, for the Captain’s first 100 hours in the seat, no matter the destination, that constraint applies.
Additionally, there is a Special Airport restriction, which requires the Capt to have conducted a Visual Meteorological Conditions approach into a SA airfield before conducting an approach in Instrument conditions.
In order to dispatch, the weather must have been forecast to be above the applicable minimums, plus or minus one hour of the ETA. But forecast and actual on arrival are two different things. After departure, the Wx went below the applicable mins, and the crew was required to divert. Either way, this is completely legitimate, unavoidable FAA mandated operation.
It doesn’t make sense to me. Every pilot should be qualified to deal with the airports that plane is scheduled to land in. Simple. If one of the destinations risks exceeded a pilot’s minimum, the get a more qualified pilot. And there’s this: the passengers should be informed that their pilot might not be able to land in their intended airport if anything but ideal conditions exist. The time to informed them is not right before they have to be diverted to switch pilots.
“The Captain could be newly qualified in the aircraft, have just upgraded into the position, or be returning from an extended medical.”
Then he shouldn’t be piloting that flight.
It doesn’t make sense to me. Every pilot should be qualified to deal with the airports that plane is scheduled to land in. Simple. If one of the destinations risks exceeded a pilot’s minimum, then get a more qualified pilot.
Except it is far from simple: Special Qual airports *by definition* are a can’t-go-until-you-been kind of deal. Until the latter part of that has been accomplished, there is a greater risk than afterwards that weather will be below legal minimum.If the Capt has fewer than 100 hours, there is a greater risk the weather will be less than what is legal.
Where do you get a more qualified Captain? It takes at least a month for a new Capt to gain 100 hours. Just getting a more qualified pilot would require having experienced Captains sitting around waiting to pinch hit. Which there are — that’s called sitting reserve. But if the Wx is forecast to be good enough within an hour of arrival, the new Capt won’t be replaced. There are a finite number of reserve pilots, and many reasons for substitution — using up a reserve pilot when it isn’t required risks not having one when it is. Further, replacing a pilot entails a lot of schedule disruption costs.Aircrew scheduling is extremely complex, and involves extensive risk management. It has nothing to do with “properly prepped” or “losing nerve.”Then he shouldn’t be piloting that flight.
Then that means no pilot should be piloting a flight until the pilot has enough experience to pilot the flight.Or, pay for additional Captains at over $300/flight hour, and pay the replaced Captains for schedule disruption, and put even more Captains at non-hub airports, and add the hotel costs and per diem, and the training costs for the additional Captains ($40k salary over a typical upgrade, another $40k for instructor costs, and about the same again for simulator time.)For every additional Captain.In case it isn’t obvious, I am a SME.
How do you account for this situation either happening so rarely or never being reported? Do pilots just routinely fly beyond their official limits? One remedy for the problems you cite is having fewer flights to dangerous airports, no?
Aside: a troll just sent in a comment saying that the post was hypocritical because I don’t catch all the typos on the blog. Nice.
I feel your pain, Jack; I participate on another blog which has a loosely enforced 250 word limit.
Some comically inept, idiot TROLT (in his late 70s, mind you!) actually counted the NUMBER contained in my post, and complained.
Darwin…where are you when we need you…?
PWS
Insult to injury, it’s actually Flight 3491. Took some creativity to find that.
I’d have to get into technicalities in order to explain how the decision to fly to Jackson Hole with an improperly credentialed flight crew was better than cancelling the flight.
So many possibilities for why it was Ok to take off for Jackson Hole, including an improper dispatch. The weather may have been forecast to be better. It’s possible that the weather in Jackson Hole would’ve required flying to the alternate, regardless of the Captain’s credentials.
How do you account for this situation either happening so rarely or never being reported?
Good question. This is where it gets down to risk management.
I’ll bet Jackson Hole is VMC more than 90% of the time, restrictive pilot minimums occur in about 5% of flights, and that actual Wx being below forecast *and* below restrictive minimums at about 1%. (If the forecast was below mins, there would have been a substitution prior to departure. Huge penalties for taking off with a bad forecast, both to the company and the Captain.)
Taken together, and public math is very risky, that means the divert rate into Jackson due to poor weather and weather below forecast and a restricted pilot will be about .045% above that for unrestricted pilots.
Say there are three flights/day into Jackson, that means in three months, there is a ~5% chance of a cancellation due to weather below forecast. Three years to get to a coin toss. (In forty years as a pilot, I had — allowances for memory, please — three weather diverts, and at least ten times as many Wx cancellations/delays.)
The most critical factor here is the forecast — all flights face weather restrictions due to pilot qualifications, airfield/aircraft capability, and the aircraft maintenance status. E.G: It is completely legal to dispatch with one generator inoperative, provided the aux power unit and other engine generator are available, but that aircraft won’t be able to fly a CAT III approach, due to lack of autopilot redundancy if another power source fails. The odds of a Wx divert, or takeoff delay/cancellation, increase, but nowhere near enough to keep extra aircraft sitting around.
Do pilots just routinely fly beyond their official limits?
Never.
The liability for doing so is huge. If, as a Captain, I was to start or continue an approach with reported weather below my minimums, or the airplane maintenance status violating the Minimum Equipment List, or without adequate fuel reserves, (list goes on, and on, and on), and the company or the FAA found out, I would get hammered. Hard. And I’d expect the First Officer to be at the head of the line with the hammer.
One remedy for the problems you cite is having fewer flights to dangerous airports, no?
No.
It isn’t that the airport is dangerous per se; rather, in order to make it as safe as other airports, the weather has to be better. That could mean that certain destinations have a much higher cancellation/divert rate (Kodiak, Alaska, looking at you. The missed approach point is five miles from the field due to mountains off the departure end), or just slightly higher. What matters is if the risk of incurring cancellation/divert costs exceeds the system profit of operating those flights.
These diverts are rare and unavoidable absent incurring costs the odds don’t justify. Everyone — dispatchers, forecasters, pilots — was operating according to very well thought out rules.
This is all great stuff, Jeff, and exactly what competent news coverage should do. Why aren’t you on TV explaining this?
Thank you.
I think the bigger question is why those being employed as journalists don’t have a go-to list of experts on any subject they might be asked to report on. This stuff is so arcane that no one who isn’t a SME, no matter how generally well informed and intentioned, could possibly reach the correct conclusion.
One would think that a primary journalist skill would be tracking down those SME’s. Apparently not. (See 737 MAX reporting.)
Once again proving that for a relatively elite and limited readership, the breadth of expertise here is impressive.
The EA Commentariat: One of the best places to go for good reportage. Crazy. Juan Brown at the Blanco Lirio channel does consistently good work on aviation matters. There’s also Mentour Aviation. They’re both the Jack Marshalls of aviation.
Funny, I meant to add exactly those two names as go-to sources, then forgot.
I wanted to say thank you as well. This is what makes this blog’s comments worthwhile!