LWkitty

Does anyone know what happened with AS Flight 2209 (SEA-OAK) today (1/23/22)? My parents have been stuck at Sea-Tac airport all day trying to get home to OAK. Flight scheduled to depart at 10:45am, then Alaska played the "rolling 30 minute delay game" for 6 hours, until they finally canceled the flight. By that time, the only option they had was a 7:35pm departure into SFO.

What the heck?!?! Is Alaska now taking a page from AA's book with rolling delays for several hours before they cancel flights? I've never had that happen to me in over 20 years flying AS and 5 years as MVPG. Is this the "new normal"? Or were my parents just really unlucky today?

Kacee

AS says weather:

SCHEDULE ACTUAL DELAY/CANCEL ARRIVAL
CITY ARRV DEPT ARRV DEPT CODES GATE
SEA ORIG 1045A CXLD WX
OAK 1255P TERM CXLD WX

WX - WEATHER - CANCELLATION
3SEA/ETD0537P 6.52L DUE LATE ARRIVAL *1622
6SEA/DX XCLD WEATHER - CANCELLATION *1645
2OAK/ETA0735P 6.40L PROJECTED *1622
1OAK/LX XCLD WEATHER - CANCELLATION *1645

AkWxMan

Dense fog at SEA today. A lot of the EMB175 flights (like AS2209) were canceled as they cannot land/takeoff in the conditions experienced today. Most of the mainline aircraft can handle the low conditions and were not affected as much. Paine Field (PAE) was totally shut down after the early morning flights. Forecasts are the same into tomorrow morning.

Kacee

Is that a 5G cancel? There were several of those at SFO last week

LWkitty

Thanks for the info. I knew about the fog (I live 10 minutes from Sea-Tac), but was unaware of the Emb175's limitations. This also explains the rerouting to SFO.

Yikes! That's going to be an expensive Uber ride!

Kacee

Not so bad, usually around $55 for Uber X, $110 for Uber Black.

futuramadramallama

What limits the E175 (or other regionals) from taking off in foggy weather, that a mainline aircraft could otherwise handle? Is it that the regionals have simpler navigation/communication equipment?

PDXMSPSEA

It depends on what the aircraft, crew and airline are rated for. Today we had a good deal of the day in CAT III ILS operations (lowest of visibility minimums) at most of the PNW airfields. It got PDX pretty bad too, which is more rare than SEA. Today was also super slow to burn off, which was a killer for operations. Tons of E175s ended up at RDM, a flew off to BOI across the airlines.
International heavies did not get the timing right either, Hainan did 2 tries at SEA and diverted to YYC, and Lufthansa ended up at YVR (YVR/YYJ improved a little bit faster than in the US).

Honestly today was one of the roughest days that I have seen, departing SEA or PDX and knowing that you may not have an option of a return in an emergency is kind of not great either, lot of miles to RDM in an emergency!

rune87

According to a friend thats a Pilot, AS doesnt pay Skywest for Cat3 takeoff/landing capability. Its not part of the contract. Dumb up here, but I guess the savings must measure out.

ShutUpDonnie

Interesting article with some great graphics that talk about Cat3 conditions:

https://www.boldmethod.com/blog/infographics/ils-cat-3/

PDXMSPSEA

Love Boldmethod!

Here is the SEA ILS plate for runway 16-R:

https://flightaware.com/resources/ai...+II+-+III)/pdf

I did not listen into ATC today, but just from what I could see at home, the RVRs must have been hella low!

sltlyamusd

The flight referenced by the OP was Horizon operated. Do their ERJs have Cat III capability at SEA?

SNAnghbr

According to the Horizon pilots recruiting page both the Q400 and the 175 are rated ILS cat IIIa
https://alaskaair.jobs/career-opport...s/horizon-air/
My old brain seems to recall that the rating is fairly new for the 175, as opposed to the Qs, so it could be a crew training issue.

Raymoland

Horizon's 175 can do Cat III. Skywest can do CAT II.

The difference is largely money - airplane and crew certification. If Skywest's partners felt it was financially sensible to have Skywest train crews for Cat III, it would be done.

However, even when plane and crew are trained, equipment malfunctions onboard the airplane can downgrade the airplane's ability to conduct Cat III ops. Additionally, newly trained Captains have higher approach Minima for the first 100 hours. This doesn't allow CAT II or III approaches and requires visibility close to 1 mile to even be allowed to begin the approach. Most likely one of these two conditions are what caused the problems yesterday.

Lastly, the 5G issue seems to have largely disappeared as quickly as it appeared. The NOTAM for SEA has been rescinded and most companies now have had their RA dependent low vis approach authority restored.

jsguyrus

I believe the QX E-175's still have not been totally cleared for 5G operations yet, and of course Skywest E175 cant do Cat III approaches at all. All Alaska mainline and QX Q400's have been cleared. Even with that some airports (like BLI) have not been cleared for 5G low visibility operations. If you look at BLI almost every flight on every airlines has been cancelled the last couple of days.