seaskybound

You are correct and that is why the crew deliberated about landing in Jordan, Lebanon or Syria which are well known liberal democracies with a strong tradition of respecting international law.

They ultimately landed in Syria, where the democratically elected leader Bashar Assad (he is so loved by his people that he received 99% of the vote, that is more than even Obama or Hollande got!). These days Syria is the beacon of human rights and international law. There are some 'troublemakers' but Assad is applying the full love of the Syrian constitution to solve this

JOUY31

Merely speculation on my part, but when looking at the past three decades, whether it is abductions or more violent acts, I would guess that France is a more prominent target in Lebanon than the Netherlands, Italy, Germany or the UK (note that the U.S. suffered even more grievous losses than France). The perception of risk could therefore be higher for French authorities.

You want to go where?

I agree with the above, and would also that as an event is unfolding, information is often scattered, conflicting, and difficult to interpret. My understanding is that the event was more than a 'demonstration'. It is quite possible that the French had different information than the other airlines (not surprising given France's relationship with Lebanon) which may have encouraged a different choice than the one which the other airlines took. Whether that information was accurate or not, is a different question on which I would not care to speculate.

q

I read on another forum that AMM and LCA were the designated alternates. LCA was saturated (?), and direct AMM was "not permitted by Israel". Does AFR planning assume the direct route to Amman, even though this may not be / usually is not granted?

Oakshadow

Why wouldn't TLV be an option where AF does reguarly fly to, has a ground staff and presumably has a fuel supplier that would accept their credit card?

San Gottardo

A "target" of what exactly? A road blockade? Protesters close a road because they are unhappy about something the government does or doesn't do, as they are frequently doing in Lebanon. They block cars from reaching their destination by the originally planned route. How does that target any particular nation more or less than another?

And if you are referring to the fact that in the past three decades (actually until 1989, i.e. until a quarter century ago) there have been French hostages in Lebanon, well, there also have been British ones to name just one other country. British Airways/bmi landed happily that evening in Beirut.

Seriously, whoever assessed that situation that evening was either incompetent (and then shouldn't be allowed to take a decision/express a strong opinion which influences the final decision) or he is competent but then got it plain wrong.


Quite an inappropriate comment. Noone argued that either of the three countries you mention are better or worse in respecting international law than Israel. The argument was that apparently (note the qualification) overflying Israeli airspace on the way to Amman was not possible. In this context, Israel does the same thing as some of its other neighbouring states, which is to not allow planes with destinations in those other countries to overfly its own territory. Syria or Lebanon wouldn't allow an Israeli plane to fly over its territory. So they're all somewhat evil in this particular respect. Your other comments re: the political situation are off topic, but if you're interested in it you might find the amnesty international report 2012 quite revealing. It shows that all of these countries have issues, and numerous experts would not place Israel as the "least worst" of the four.

Obviously Syria is currently a complete madhouse and its ruler a tyran, which is why the decision to land the Air France plane in Damascus raises some questions as to why this supposedly was the only alternative.

-------

The more I learn about this story, the more the Damascus episode can only be justified in one very particular situation.

First, there was a wrong judgement by whoever that Beirut was not safe to land. If someone feared for his security, well stay at the airport a little longer until the road blockade is over. Those people assessing the situation should know that these blockades never last more than a couple of hours.

Still, the crew decided to divert. There were two designated diversions, Larnaca and Amman. Larnaca is closer, especially when taking into account the zig-zagging around Israeli airspace to reach Amman. Still, the crew decided to go to Amman. Tel Aviv isn't an option, Israel wouldn't like to see plenty of Lebanon-bound passengers on its soil. And I have trouble buying the "Larnaca was saturated" argument. It would be plausible if other airports in the region had closed and diverted its flights to LCA or more flights had asked to be diverted to Larnaca. But this wasn't the case, it was only this one Air France flight on its way to Beirut that was looking for a diversion to Larnaca. There is space for one plane on the ground in Larnaca next to scheduled operations there, otherwise it wouldn't have been designated as a diversion airport.

Since Amman was a designated diversion and the plane had not used extra fuel for any other unforeseen things during the flight (evidenced by its expected arrival time 15 mins ahead of schedule in Beirut) it should have enough fuel to reach Amman (and do a couple of other things like wait time etc). This is if Air France dispatch and the captain have properly done their flight planning. They then notice that they don't have enough fuel. Why? What has happened between the moment AF and the captain did their fuel planning and the moment the decision was taken to divert to Amman some five hours later? Usually airspace restrictions are communicated ahead of time in NOTAMs, but this is Syria in a war so it may very well be possible that part of the airspace was actually closed because some military flying was going on (who knows, Assad on another killing spree in Aleppo or elsewhere). But then, that fact would probably be communicated to the crew when it informs of its decision to divert. Apparently not, or it was and the crew believed that they could still make it.

Then they find themselves short of fuel. Would be interesting to know where that happened. Maybe somewhere between Damascus and Amman, maybe somewhere between Beirut and Damascus. In that situation, would it have been possible to revert the prior decision and land in Beirut? Quite possibly so, doing some flight and fuel mathematics. Still, the crew decided it was safer to land in Damascus, in a country in the midst of civil war including fighting close to the airport (real fighting, not a blocked road), rather than in Beirut where one access road to the airport was blocked. Strange judgement. All the more so if one believed in the "French are targets" school of thought, because with France being one of the more vociferous countries/a permanent member of the UN security council pushing for sanctions against Syria there we have a serious "French are targets" situation.

Once they have fueled up - thankfully paid by the airline - they then decide to go to Larnaca. So in a way they confirm that Larnaca is a better choice than Amman (leaving aside that not going to Beirut is still an odd choice). Which brings back the question why they haven't chosen Larnaca right from the start.

So the only thing which "justifies" the outcome of putting the passengers and crew in danger in Syria would be if initially the crew was allowed to fly to Amman on a route for which it had enough fuel, but then events in Syria developed in a way that made a detour necessary, leading to a low fuel situation. If that is the case then it is a combination of two poor judgements (not to land in BEY, not to use LCA as diversion from the start) exacerbated by bad luck (sudden new routing too long for initially planned diversion fuel). Otherwise it's three bad choices: not to land in BEY, not to use LCA as diversion from the start, heading for AMM despite uncertainty about fuel.

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. 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.

With respect to this specific case, I would probably question why the flight was not diverted directly to LCA. 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.

brunos

If the story was coming from a James Bond's type novel, it would seem really far fetched. Whoever made the strange decision not to land in Lebanon because of some demonstration near the airport, ended up having the plane land in Damascus and we hear today that fighting is taking place near the airport. And asking business class pax for cash or credit card! The whole decision process seems faulty and unprofessional. It just sounds like a bad novel. But lucky that it all ended well.

JOUY31

They did ask for cash, but not for credit card. As reported by the New York Times, Syrian authorities refused the payment of the AF captain by credit card, invoking international sanctions.

Whether it was actually the case or whether some local officials wanted the cash both for the fuel and for associated "commissions" is another issue.

Source : The New York Times

Finally, the AF captain acted in accordance with current legislation - article L6522-4 of the transport code - which empowers him to take loans in order to ensure the safety of passengers.

Source: Le Parisien

Richelieu

Do you really think he acted without taking advice from Air France ?

JOUY31

Where did I say that?

Richelieu

You quoted article L.6522-4, which says that the captain is responsible for the aircraft operation, and should difficulty arise, he should take instruction from the operating company, and if unable to do that, is empowered to negociate loans and hire employees and do all repairs necessary to accomplish this task on behalf of the operating company. In our highly connected world, I am pretty sure it's impossible to be unable to contact the operating company unless you're stranded in a place far more exotic than Damascus.

Edit: oops, you translated the part about that from Le Parisien, you didn't quote le Parisien as a support for your text. Sorry about that.

JOUY31

No problem. I should have made it clearer.

KLflyerRalph

As long as the flight deck hasn't declared an (fuel) emergency, they have no right on a direct routing per se.

orbitmic

Hmm? Why??? Whatever the reason for the ATC decision (if it is indeed what happened, I take what I find in the papers with a serious pinch of salt), it is certainly not the result of a blanket objection of Israel to have AMM-bound planes flying over Israeli airspace. Flights to AMM regularly fly over Israeli airspace, and indeed, there are regular flights between Israel and Jordan (RJ flies TLV-AMM twice daily). The two countries are in peace and there is no restriction that I know of be it in terms of air, land, or sea traffic between the two countries.

My suspicion is that if the direct route to AMM from BEY was disallowed, it is probably not because of any restriction on Israeli airspace but more likely because the route goes over South Lebanon and the Golan heights which are considered dangerous (there are rockets fired towards Israel in that area on a nearly weekly basis). DAM was also the closest airport when they did (under 50 miles while TLV is 130 miles away and LCA 210). As for not flying into TLV, I presume it is because if the plan was to then fly back to BEY if the situation cleared, this could not have been done from TLV because Lebanon does not permit traffic coming from Israel. This being said, as a passenger, I wouldn't have been all that reassured if told I was going to land in DAM under the current situation so I certainly agree LCA would have sounded like a more reassuring choice or an indirect route to AMM following the sea southwards and flying over Israel turning south east from Haifa or east from Tel Aviv.

PS: The 'cash for fuel' story is hilarious in a non-funny way. Still I can't help imagining the email received the next day by the backers: "Dear customer, thank you very much for lending us money for our refuelling in Damas. We can reimburse you your €200 in cash or offer you €300 in travel vouchers or credit 20,000 miles on your flying blue account"