Originally Posted by
caspritz78
The weirdest thing is that the LHR-FRA flight landed at 8:30pm in CGN and they didn't let the passenger leave the plane until 11:30pm.
Around 10:30pm the pilots should have known that they have no chance to reach Frankfurt before 11pm. At 11pm the airport closes and the night fly ban kicks in until 5am. So no take-offs and landings during this time.
In addition the crew probably time out around 11:30pm. That's why they let off the passengers.
The whole handling of the situation seems like a big screwup by LH. LH could have easily get the Cologne ground crew ready within the time the aircraft landed and parked on the tarmac until the passenger got off it.
Exactly. Big screw up from LH.
One thing, however, that might have hold them in the plane till 11.30pm (when, as you say, probably crew timed out) was if they tried to get the pax with this plane and with this crew to another airport where they had other choices to fly off from - like ZRH (which would have had a convenient lunch departure for SIN and many other asian destinations) - and be less likely to have overfilled hotels. However, I doubt they really tried that, it's just an idea why they could let them have stayed so long on bord. (ZRH does have a night time ban as well, but it's not enforced very strictly, and other airports don't have night bans in Europe at all, so this MIGHT have been a possibility..)