adampenrith

What I am saying is that the professionals made a decision - that got all the souls on the ground.

Why should a bunch of armchair experts sit here and judge the experts for those decisions ?

If the members of this forum could do the job better than the good people at AF - why are they not working for AF in this role ?

ATL10A

Goose Bay was once a large joint US and Canadian Air Force Base during the Cold War era and there is still a small Canadian Military component but it's now mainly a regional commercial airport with a small modern terminal geared to handle the CRJs, Q400s and Dash-8s it usually receives. The couple of departure lounges probably seat no more than 150 to 200 and there's a small coffee shop......so passengers were probably just left onboard due to the logistics of processing 500 passengers

But Goose still has the runways and massive ramp area for just these types of diversions and yes they do have airstairs for a A380....

LHR/MEL/Europe FF

The two things you are discussing are unrelated. The pilots diverted. Once the plane was safely on the ground the company takes over the recovery phase. The airline may have handled the recovery as best as possible, or they may not. Or they may have had multiple options any of which might have made no material difference. That's what discussion and analysis aims to work out.

Often1

+1 - "Armchair experts" is exactly the problem with FT threads such as this. Because some other carrier in some other era in some other situation was able to recover more quickly than this situation suddenly applies to this specific situation.

Bearing in mind that the exact situation is always unknown and all carriers can do is have broad contingencies rather than specifics, one has to presume that this was handled as well as it could be unless one has specific facts which none of the commenters have as to why one option and not another was used.

It is in AF's interest to gets its passengers to LAX as soon as possible. It would also be lovely to offload them so that F/J pax can relax in a well-appointed lounge and the rest of the aircraft spread out in a large airport. But, it is not that simple.

Canadian authorities can be sticky in these situations. There are accounts of diverted flights to YHZ where passengers were offloaded into a cramped departure area, not permitted to leave that area and not provided food or water because the supplies on the aircraft were not cleared for use in Canada and the food & water were on the other side of the barrier, it was late at night and no authorities around.

Locating aircraft, crew, catering (even basics) and heading off has a great deal more to it than sending a replacement bus to pick people up at a bus stop.

Concerto

I thought they were going to Los Angeles, or have I really got the wrong end of the stick somehow? Apologies in advance if so. Really glad this has all turned out alright in the end, a lot of people were doing their jobs really well.

Randyk47

I’d imagine ejecting an engine would throw the plane into serious imbalance for starters. Secondly just where do these friends think an ejected engine is going to land? Over the ocean I guess I can see the potential but over land even if you could overcome the imbalance issue?

pvn

What would the upside of ejecting an engine be?

pvn

Any news on equipment swaps due to this incident?

username

I think there were 2 instances where 747Fs had engines falling off (pylon problem not caused by the engine) - one was China Airlines outside Taipei Taoyuan CKS and one was with El Al out of AMS. Both crashed and I think the AMS one killed people on the ground.

simons1

You gotta chuckle, honestly.

As someone else pointed out the Swissair turnaround was fair from instant. About 14 hours, which wasn't far off yesterday's turnaround.

And as for the PanAm one, and the absence of immigration officers, well anyone would think the whole security and terrorism landscape has changed now (as PanAm found to their cost).

Often1

Those who propose that AF could have done better on service recovery because Monarch Airways found an aircraft to hop over to Stornoway at some time in the past, need to propose specifics. What aircraft and crew, qualified for the specific route were available and where and what would it take to get them over to Goose Bay?

In addition, the aircraft is at a civilized and well-provisioned station where, if need be, medical and other needs can be met. No nasty border police pointing weapons. That bespeaks not throwing caution to the wind to race somewhere when issue at hand is passenger convenience, not safety.

CosmicGirl

Here are some reasons you can take to your friends:
1. Engines are the most expensive components of the aircraft, so you'd be ejecting tens of milions of $ in parts which can be salvaged in most cases. Even this engine will likely have parts that can be serviced and put back into rotation.
2. The structure of the wing is designed based on the fact that the weight of engines counteracts the bending moment resulting from the lift force. Without the engine, especially the wing root would have to endure much higher stress levels, so the wing would have to be reinforced to deal with this. This, in turn, would add weight to the aircraft and thereby affect the overall performance.
3. Ejecting an engine (or any other component for that matter) introduces the risk of it hitting the aircraft and doing more damage.
4. It's much more difficult to investigate the incident and deteremine the most likely cause of the failure if the main component is missing.

LarryJ

In air carrier ops you can't just go anywhere (unless the nature of the emergency requires it). There are designated regular, refueling, and emergency airports for each fleet. These airports have been evaluated for their respective purpose to include facilities and equipment. The crews also have the applicable navigation charts and performance data and the aircraft's flight management systems have the airport's data. The A380 is unique in its size, weight, and support requirements. It's list of available airports will be a lot shorter than for other fleets.

I don't know if SFJ was an authorized airport for an AF A380. It's very possible that it was not. It is also very possible that the weather conditions were not favorable and influenced the decision to bypass SFJ for Goose Bay.

At a previous airline I flew the DC8 to Thule AB in northwest Greenland. We flew both DC8-62 and DC8-72 aircraft on that trip. For some reason, that I never fully understood, the DC8-72 was not approved for SFJ as an alternate. Only the DC8-62 could use it. I remember one trip, which I luckily was not on, had to divert and their closest alternate was Reykjavik because they were in the DC8-72 that morning. That's over 1,300 miles to the alternate airport!

MSPeconomist

There was a time, IIRC during the 1980s, when the DC-10s were literally losing engines over the ocean. I believe the problem was with the mounting; it apparently wasn't a situation of engine failure. I think the DC-10s (or at least the ones flown by USA airlines) were temporarily grounded for inspections.

Randyk47

What I remember is American 191 out of Chicago in May 1979. That was a DC-10 that dropped the left side engine on rotation. All aboard plus a couple of folks on the ground were killed. As I recall that caused a grounding of most if not all DC-10s for an emergency inspection/replacement of the main mounting pin. I knew a lady who was an Army nurse recruiter in Detroit who was supposed to be on that flight but her commuter flight from Detroit was late and she missed the flight. Well before cell phones and her parents in California and her staff in Detroit were freaking out because they knew she was supposed to be on that flight and she hadn’t called.