When the alternative is putting the plane in the dirt when it's out of fuel...

 

When you are out of gas, that's when. I have no idea of the specific details, nor does anyone on here trying to armchair quarterback the situation I suspect.

I say kudos to them for what I'm sure was a rapidly deteriorating situation. I am fairly confident they did what they could with what they had to work with.

This is why we have issues with every aspect of our industry...people jump to conclusions and judge, criticize, and think they are the greatest thing to aviation. I, for one, am far from perfect. But what I am for sure is a fellow professional pilot who will, at a MINIMUM, give them the benefit of the doubt for achieving a successful outcome.

Who am I to trash them when I know very little about the facts?

Good job to the crew!

 

In East Texas, 45 minutes of fuel may not comfortably get you to another 121 airport especially during a situation with pop up TS. So, find me a 5000 foot strip to put my 145 or CRJ on. If I'm choosing between getting to a 121 airport with 15 minutes of gas left and a GA with 40, I'm taking the GA strip 100 times out of 100

 

When dispatch issues another alternate en route, you usually don't have enough fuel to go to your destination then alternate A and then alternate B. Especially in this case where SGF and FSM are literally opposite directions and a good amount of distance from XNA. The reason why dispatch gave them the second alternate is weather was getting bad at SGF, and FSM appeared to be the better option. Then they couldn't get in, and they were running out of fuel and options. They landed the plane safely at an airport.

Hopefully AA will re look at their fuel policies with their regional partners. Just a couple weeks ago I was flying into the NYC area, and the aviation weather products were showing nothing. Weather.com future radar was showing a handful of cells popping up over Manhattan, LGA and NJ at our ETE. We called our dispatcher and demanded more fuel and were basically told that AA is cracking down on us carrying extra fuel for cost reasons, and they already gave us all the holding fuel he could. The captain told them we wouldn't leave without an alternate, dispatch gave us one and added the fuel for that. 1:45 min later as we are getting to the NYC area pretty nasty storms are popping up. Meanwhile we had gotten a reroute for flow, etc, and now they were starting to hold us. We ended up diverting, landed with plenty of fuel and probably had 25 'suitable alternates' to choose from being on the east coast. That story could easily been different in a more sparsely populated part of the country with a line of storms popping up instead of a few air mass t storms.

For us, this asinine fuel policy where they were going to save 2% fuel burn by not letting us carry that extra 1000 pounds, resulted in a bunch of missed connections, several really delayed flights, a bunch of ****ed customers, and another 1200+ pounds of fuel burned getting from the alternate to the destination. In the case with envoy, this policy put a bunch of lives at risk and forced the pilots into having to make a really $ h it ty decision to land at a 4000 foot strip. I really hope they re think these policies, or we will be seeing more events like this.

 

Where do you suggest they go? FSM wasn't good. XNA certainly wasn't. TUL and LIT are probably the next closest airports with airline service, but I assume TUL was blocked by storms, and LIT is probably a good 20-25 minutes away. That's not an option with less than 45 minutes in your tank. So you put it down where you can. ARFF is the last thing on my mind at that point. I just need a strip of pavement.

 

I don't get all the negativity here. (Well, this IS APC, so I guess it kind of makes sense) From all available details, the crew did an outstanding job. Enough so that the CP (or someone high up in the company) put out a notification about the event and congratulated the crew. I think the event turned out very well, and congratulate the crew on managing the threats for a successful outcome.

We all would prefer to go years without ever getting into a situation like this one. But Murphy has more to say about it than we do. And I for one would MUCH prefer to have been in their situation than in the CP's office explaining bad (or lack of) decisions being made. Or worse, the cause of the company having to pay some random farmer for the ruined crop of corn.

At the end of the day, it is impossible to say what "I would have done" because we were not in that cockpit. Pucker factor changes things.

 

Gojo is a hojo, let him go play with his jojo.

 

A few comments:

Just yesterday I was a pax on an AA 757 that diverted to DTW enroute between MIA and ORD. We were out of gas. The Capt said he put on 40" of extra fuel, on top of his flight plan, and burned through all of that...had to fly all the way to DCA to get around a line of weather.

I had a flight, no alternate required, forecast at the destination was CAVU for about 48 hours...area forecast also good. Unforecast heavy fog in the whole OH River valley...had to divert due to fuel issues.

Had a flight PVG-SYD. Dispatcher put 48 tonnes (106K lbs) of contingency fuel on due to typhoons in the route of flight. We didn't use very much of that fuel.

 

Your focus on the need for ARFF and a commercial airport to land at really shows a scary thought process for a pilot. Since you seem very interested in regs; you're saying that in this case it would have been better to go past the nearest suitable airport and not land as soon as possible (direct quotes from regs) after reaching the level of a fuel emergency, which for most 121 ops is 30 minutes of fuel remaining, than to try to continue on to try to land at an airport with Part 129 services. You're saying that landing at this airport was not safe? Would it have been safer to end up landing with 10 minutes of fuel remaining at a commercial airport? Hey, at least ARFF would be in the area when they come up 5 miles short of the runway and land on a highway!

Pop-up thunderstorms happen all the time this time of year and encompass entire regions of the US. It is not practical to carry enough gas to make the alternate completely outside of a weather pattern. Even with dispatch and ATC watching and communicating well, a dynamic weather pattern can catch up with even a GREAT pilot. Although it seems like these pilots made all the right choices along the way to add a non-required alternate, and have it updated as the weather changed, the weather did not allow for a safe landing, so the plan changed again!

I have been in 121 safety departments for awhile, having had the opportunity to see many different situations where decisions were made using emergency authority, and from the information available here, I'm confident that this crew acted in the best practices that I'd like to see if my family were on the plane.

Gojo: I would encourage you to go do some reading:
Avianca 52
Hapag-Lloyd 3378
ALM 980
United 173
TAM 3084

All commercial flights that crashed due to fuel exhaustion when viable options presented.

One of the most dangerous condition in flight is a pilot who won't make the tough decision, in this case to get on the ground safely when the opportunity presents, because they are so paranoid about having to explain their use of emergency authority!

 

Any suitable airport seems safe when the alternative is running out of fuel. When was the last time you needed the services of ARFF?