Originally Posted by
JOUY31
Well, at the same time as the road blockade, there was a wave of hostage taking, something that France is very sensitive to in Lebanon, and several Gulf states ordered their nationals out of Lebanon. So, the situation as seen from Paris did involve more than the past demonstrations and seemed to be deteriorating rapidly. (Note that after the diversion, the U.S. Embassy warned of increased risks of attacks on its nationals.) Yes, there were other nations targeted by kidnappings, but the U.S. and France were the primary targets, even more so in the murderous barracks bombings.
You mean the barrack bombings in the 1980s? Now I understand why the Turks are in danger, after all they colonialized the country up until 1918. Unless of course we believe that going back so far in history is irrelevant.
Originally Posted by
JOUY31
In addition, French soldiers have been primary targets when participating in FINUL/UNIFIL actions, so I fully understand French authorities being more cautious than other countries. In that respect, I would say that being in Damascus was probably safer with respect to state sponsored terrorist attacks than being in Beirut, as nobody but the Syrian regime would be held responsible, whereas any militant faction in Lebanon could be used as a pawn in Beirut.
So the tradeoff is "there is a chance that a road blockade on the way to the airport whose aim is to block traffic actually might threaten people in the airport and might lead to a marginal chance that French nationals might get kidnapped, and then we don't know who the kidnappers are" vs. "we land in the middle of a war zone, in a country which is openly hostile to France, we face much higher dangers for passengers, but at least we know who it was". Also, since the hostage taking has happened, then AF should also stop all subsequent flights, which it didn't.
As it turns out August 15th and the holiday period was a day when only junior decision takers were present at the Quai d'Orsay, and it emerges that communication and assessment of the situation was not optimal.
Originally Posted by
JOUY31
With respect to this specific case, I would probably question why the flight was not diverted directly to LCA.
That is the one big question. The decision not to land in BEY may be doubtful and with hindsight it is always easier to judge. Fair enough, the decision takers could at most be accused of being overcautious, and if they had gone to somewhere safe the end of the story would have been "a lot of hassle and one day delay for an overcautious decision". Unpleasant, but not more.
However, even without hindsight, chosing AMM over LCA is a wrong decision. LCA is closer, does not involve flying over a war zone, with the possibility of having to land in the war country. A captain should always think about the diversion of the diversion. Even taking the fuel situation out of the equation, imagine there is an ATC failure at AMM or some other reason why the airport has to close, then what? Fly to DAM. At least in that moment the captain should have said "no, it's less dangerous to land in BEY than in DAM and certainly less dangerous to divert to LCA". Because if LCA has to close, there still would be Paphos as another airport big enough to handle that type of plane and incident.
Originally Posted by
JOUY31
The answer probably lies, as mentioned by an Air France pilot in charge of flight operations, in the fact that the situation was evolving rapidly, as seen from Paris, while the plane was on approach to BEY. In hindsight, probably a poor decision.
The decision not to land in BEY may be explained by "rapidly evolving events seen from Paris", fair enough. But what is it that happens on the ground that makes them decide to choose AMM over LCA? The two are unrelated.
I think the "asking for money to pay for fuel" cannot really be blamed on AF, it is just bad luck that the provisions usually taken did not work in this case. But they shouldn't have found themselves in this situation in the first place.
Thus, as more facts emerge, it becomes a debatable decision not to land in BEY (and overcautious in hindsight, but hindsight is always smarter), an error of judgement not to take LCA as an alternate, and just bad luck following prior debatable/bad decisions, but in isolation nothing that could have been avoided.