Originally Posted by Nantonaku

I checked the ATC tapes at Seattle. The airport was NOT below cat 3 mins. Go listen. They never called any of the RVRs below cat 3 mins. That flight said they were fine and then came back later and said they were going to Yakima. All the 737’s got in just fine before and after they diverted. All of our airbus have lower mins than the 73’s. Was the CA high mins or was something broken on the plane because the airport was most definitely NOT below mins for any of our planes in normal ops without a high mins CA.

Originally Posted by 2StgTurbine

You will not be in a "world of hurt". If UNFORECASTED weather causes you to divert to a field that doesn't have customs, it will be a pain in the a$$, but that's for the company to deal with. If a crew ends up diverting to a non-customs airport, I will assume they came to that decision after much thought. As soon as holding is an issue, you've got 3-4 pilots worth of experience all thinking about a backup plan.

I had a similar experience happened to me and while it was a long day, I never heard from the FAA or customs. Last flight out of Canada and thunderstorms caused a ground at our destination. A few hours go by and we are at the end of the duty day, but customs has already closed for the day. A couple of hours later and operations got someone in customs to open up. We exceeded our duty day, filled out an ASAP, went to the hotel, and then returned to work the next day.

Originally Posted by Nantonaku

I’m just trying to figure out what happened and maybe learn something at the expense of this crew.

Originally Posted by sailingfun

I can assure you it was a problem.

Originally Posted by 2StgTurbine

I guess I don't understand your point then. You seem to be criticizing the crew's actions as if going to YKM was not a good choice. I find it hard to believe 3-4 pilots, the dispatcher, and plenty of others in the OCC didn't know YKM didn't have customs. I also find it hard to believe they all weren't monitoring the weather (what else are you doing in cruise). They knew what corner they were getting themselves in and to me that means their other options were bad. I'm sorry, but I would rather deal with a complicated customs problem on the ground than deal with a complicated fuel and weather problem in flight. We airlifted two deice trucks to get a 767 home. I think we can handle bussing in some customs agents to YKM.

Originally Posted by GogglesPisano

It's not the crews' fault at all, since we have no access to customs information in any of our pubs.

Information like this ... https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/do-rb/services/aoe-eng.html

Originally Posted by Nick Bradshaw

How about the hail incident at MXP?

Originally Posted by snowdawg

Think some of this is the company adding more seats in recent years on some fleets and the faa upping people and bag weights that they decided on in 2019. Once that went into effect that adds about 4000 pounds to a 200 seat airplane. For the a320 fleet that's a lot of contigency and alternate fuel. Lost count this past summer on how many flights we're at max landing weight and only 6000 pounds of fuel (an hour for a320) which is fine for a vfr day. But it we need an alternate and contigency, holding, diverting fuel, it's not there. I like the a321 but it needs a higher landing weight or bump more passengers, hence we're payload optimized a lot. I find it odd in 30+ years of flying and I find myself feeling pushing the envelope in making it to destination on the fuel we have when an alternate is needed or there's holding. We know the game when we go into holding, lets change the alternate for MIA to FLL..... This past summer I found myself being way more alert to the idea of diverting becuase of lack of fuel. And then on the flip side, burning fuel off to be under max landing weight. Not sure how other fleets are with the new faa weights but I've noticed it or maybe it's my imagination as I get older.

Originally Posted by tennisguru

It seems with some of our already-ordered A350's that we are going to a more-premium seating arrangement with fewer total seats. It doesn't say specifically but those are being put on super-long routes like JNB that are almost always payload optimized so it seems like someone in management figured out it's better to sell more premium seats and be able to fly a full airplane than constantly leave with dozens of unfilled main cabin seats. I wonder if there will be a move to do something similar on 321's and 737 Max 10's.