Having just watched/listened to a ATC of a UA IAD-BCN that went NORDO out of IAD... It looked like the aircraft continued the climb then went into holding south of Washington before returning to the field.
Was the holding something preplanned (something like "If you loose comm squawk 7xxx and hold here"), pilot discretion, ...?
I saw a reference to communicating with ATC via ACARS. I thought ACARS made use of the same radios as voice so if voice communication was out I would have thought ACARS would also be unreliable/unusable?
Originally Posted by
clubord
Absolutely! Last aircraft refusal I had many years ago had to do with a weather radar deferral.
We were not going to take a B752 from SFO or LAX (don't remember) back to EWR in the summertime with widely scattered thunderstorms popping up enroute from the Midwest through Eastern PA. We swapped aircraft with the pilots going to DEN and they took our airplane. WX forecast was clear from CA to CO with no storms forecasted, so no need for a radar on that flight.
The late aircraft swap caused both flights to push slightly late; I'm sure some PAX were questioning why one pilot accepts a plane and another won't. But like most things in this industry, there are reasons the airlines do what they do.
Similar story: A few years ago I was on a E175 ORD-JAX and somewhere around the Florida border the captain announced that we were diverting to ATL because there was enroute icing forecasted and the aircraft had a MELed anti-icing system. We landed at ATL and waited for an inbound E170 that had been planned to turn to IAH. We stole that plane (after convincing a few pax to fly Delta, rent a car, or just not go to Jacksonville to make up for the loss of 6 seats) and continued to JAX, while ATL-IAH used our aircraft since there was no enroute icing possibility