Flightradar24 Thread Part III

bronn

Lots of repositioning going on this eve - flights coming in low from SNN. And the EI flight from New York has just landed, over an hour early & made the trip in 4hrs 58mins. Must be a bit windy out there.

Didactic Ninja

My sister is still stuck in Liverpool. Passengers going ****ing mental .
Pax from Krakow, Tenerife , Paris among the stranded

andersat2

Just returned from Liverpool on FR494 (FR449 originally, LPL-DUB).
Well.. that was a horrible night tbh.
Scheduled departure time: 22:10
Because of de-icing, actual departure time was 22:45.
From 23:15 till 00:30 were in hold near Wicklow
01:05 - returned back to Liverpool.
Ground agent was so busy, that got refilled only around 03:00
Dispatcher came in around 04:00
04:30 - push back
05:00 - arrived in Dublin.
Absolutely wrecked now. Sitting at work till 5pm...

JCX BXC

13 diversions overall, 12 of which were Ryanair.

irishrover99

bronn wrote: »

Lots of repositioning going on this eve - flights coming in low from SNN. And the EI flight from New York has just landed, over an hour early & made the trip in 4hrs 58mins. Must be a bit windy out there.

Here is your answer

https://m.facebook.com/?_rdr#!/story.php?story_fbid=1645152975524119&id=111607872211978

duskyjoe

JCX BXC wrote: »

13 diversions overall, 12 of which were Ryanair.

Who ever the “snow chief” in Dublin airport is, needs to take a trip state side and see how they operate over there. The airport closed for over an hour plus last night for a light dusting of snow. FFS, scandalous imo with 12 diversions. I’m no fan of the FR ceo with his rantings but this is time he’s deserves to go berserk and rightly.

Fred Swanson

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billie1b

In all honestly, the staff just aren’t used to it, there’s only a certain few that are properly trained in it and the rest are just normal DAA staff that got a slide show presentation and a booklet and then called in to help when the event happens. I do agree though, 12 diversions for a dusting of snow is a bit much

faoiarvok

Fred Swanson wrote: »

1mm of snow and stop the show for 1 hour.

I’ve no horse in this race, but in the interests of accuracy, the SNOWTAM when I looked last night reported 7mm.

Was it one snow shower and then stopped, or was it continuing while they were clearing?

JCX BXC

faoiarvok wrote: »

I’ve no horse in this race, but in the interests of accuracy, the SNOWTAM when I looked last night reported 7mm.

Was it one snow shower and then stopped, or was it continuing while they were clearing?

There was continous showers of snow until before midnight, and just as the last shower was ending the runway closed, and didn't reopen for nearly 2 hours.

Fred Swanson

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NH2013

Fred Swanson wrote: »

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Anything more than 3mm Snow/Water/Slush is considered a "Contaminated Runway" with adverse effects on braking action and directional control on takeoff and landing, and while operations on contaminated runways do take place and are perfectly acceptable, the DAA/IAA are very risk averse when it comes to operating on contaminated runways and insist on the runway being cleared before operations can continue.

Fred Swanson

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NH2013

Fred Swanson wrote: »

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No, I'm saying they're more familiar with snow, better able to judge the effect of the contamination and less averse to continuing operations on a contaminated runway,unlike the DAA/IAA who don't have the experience or expertise to make the call as to whether it's acceptable to continue operations with a contaminated runway, and so instead they go for the conservative option and close the runway to clear it.

The Norwegian authorities would be in a better place to asses the risks in a live developing situation as to when to make the call to close the runway.

Mebuntu

At DUB you always feel there is a distinct lack of preparedness for anything.

Like in the case of Passport Control where nobody is willing/able to be aware in advance that 5 flights are about to land and have sufficient desks manned before the passengers actually arrive into the hall, I can see a situation that last night someone just happened to look out the window at one stage and was surprised to see that it was snowing.

No fault lies with the people who do the actual work.

JCX BXC

Yes but you seemingly aren't allowed to suggest these things, without apparently being a keyboard warrior or various other insults.

Although 7 years is a long time, you think proper protocol and training would have been put in place since the 2010 fiasco. While I don't doubt the work ethic of the staff (frankly I don't know), the communication and plans last night were clearly not working whatsoever.

If a proper estimate had been put in place originally, you wouldn't have had flights holding for over an hour to just ultimately divert.

drdeadlift

I guess the staff are over precautions as this scenario does not happen often.Management are siding on the edge of caution and rightly so.
Dont compare Dublin to Oslo.Dublin finds itself in a pickle as a few other airports do.They just dont get enough practice in dealing with snow.
Maybe once a month they should have snow drills just to keep staff well sharpened.
As for the immigration issue,i would love the job of straightening out that problem.

Tabnabs

Does Dublin airport have this kind of equipment and manpower? Plenty of delays in Oslo with this weather.

https://twitter.com/Oslolufthavn/status/953360227595898880

https://twitter.com/Oslolufthavn/status/953165692710391808

https://twitter.com/Oslolufthavn/status/953150907805560832

https://twitter.com/Oslolufthavn/status/953139335691456512

Gaoth Laidir

Friction coefficient was reported as only 0.11 (11%) in the metars at the time. 7 mm of wet snow can cause serious aquaplaning compared to say 20 mm of dry snow.

How long does it take to mobilise the runway clearing crews and get them in position after the runway friction test and results are in ? They were likely on the airfield all day however and were ready, but it still takes time to start and position themselves correctly.

How long does it take crews who haven’t cleared a runway,in at least 6-7 years, and associated taxiways to clear said runway and taxiways ?

How long does it take to get the crews and equipment going to clear 13+ stands plus walkways (it is Ryanair so no air bridges) of contamination at midnight ?

It is easier to have to explain away to an airline the reason for a slightly extended closure than to explain a half assed job that ended up with one of their aircraft buried up to its ass in snow and mud off the side of a runway or taxiway or why several passengers slipped and fell and injured themselves.

Considering the time of day and the length of time since their last snow event they did alright last night. I’m also a fan of doing a job right the first time and not half assedness. 90 mins is a very good time, considering in 2010 four hours was closer to the norm. This is NOT Norway or anywhere that gets snow regularly so stop trying to compare Dublin/Ireland to their, compare it to a peer nation like the UK for accuracy.

Irish Steve

I'd be reluctant to praise DAA, their track record in a number of areas is abysmal, but the problem that they face with snow is a bit like the problem we hear about with the trains when the leaves fall.

In a nutshell, there are unfortunately different types of snow, and clearing them requires very different machines.
Somewhere like (say) Denver, that gets significant snowfall on a regular basis, it's relatively easy to clear, even though it's deep, in that most of the time, it's powder snow, at very low temperature, and it can be moved very quickly and easily by snow blower type equipments, as it doesn't clump or form big heavy damaging clumps of ice that won't safely go through a snow blower.

Last night, with the temperatures marginal for snow, it very easily forms large and difficult to move ice lumps, and moving that requires completely different machines and methods, it won't blow, and in some cases it will block the machines that are clearing it. Most of the time, the snow in Dublin is the "difficult" sort of snow that is not readily or quickly moved, in over 25 years here, I can only recall one occasion when we've had powder snow, and when it happened, there were huge problems in Dublin City, as the traditional snow ploughs couldn't deal with it, as they tried to plough it, because it was powder snow, it just moved aside, and stayed on the road, then the wind and traffic moved it back into place again, and this went on for close on 3 days.

I suspect that the issue last night was the number of people available to do snow clearing, given the time of day that the peak snowfall happened. Having people available for snow clearing is a judgement call, and realistically, even up until relatively late on, snow was not expected in significant quantities, and you don't have people rostered a week ahead for snow, so getting enough staff to deal with the snow at 2300 was possibly problematic.

Hopefully, DAA will have reviewed what happened last night, and won't be caught so unprepared if we get any form of repeat performance in the remainder of this winter.

In passing, what really did annoy me last night was the SNOWTAM that was put out referring to BREAKING action. I thought there was a standard of English required for aviation services, and for a non English speaker, that could have been very confusing. It's a common and regular irritation in the motoring forum, but it really should not be happening in the aviation arena, unless things like Snowtams are being prepared on smart phones with dubious auto correction spell checkers these days.

Gaoth Laidir

A basic level of English is required for many things, but unfortunately the standard out there is awful in many cases.

JCX BXC

FR9895 (RYR7GB) LPL-ORK diverting to Shannon due to crosswinds at ORK.

Meanwhile FR905 (RYR3HV) ORK-STN is waiting for winds to drop in order to takeoff. EI845 (EIN84K) AMS-ORK nearing Cork, unsure of their intentions. Edit: Landed

rushfan

Irish Steve wrote:

In passing, what really did annoy me last night was the SNOWTAM that was put out referring to BREAKING action. I thought there was a standard of English required for aviation services, and for a non English speaker, that could have been very confusing. It's a common and regular irritation in the motoring forum, but it really should not be happening in the aviation arena, unless things like Snowtams are being prepared on smart phones with dubious auto correction spell checkers these days.

Specifically what was the issue with the Snowtam? Was there a communication issue with ATC?

rushfan

rushfan wrote: »

Specifically what was the issue with the Snowtam? Was there a communication issue with ATC?

The misspelling of braking as BREAKING.

rushfan

Deleted User wrote:

The misspelling of braking as BREAKING.

Yeah, that I get, but that's something you see a lot of. But it had to be more than that .

Irish Steve

rushfan wrote: »

Specifically what was the issue with the Snowtam? Was there a communication issue with ATC?

It's possible that the quote that was posted on Boards (Can't find it right now, it might have been in the weather forum) was not the original, but as posted here, the specific wording stated "BREAKING Action", and it should have been BRAKING action. It's a very common and thoroughly irritating error that gets made on a regular basis in places like the motoring forum, but in aviation, which has very clearly laid down standard words, to a pilot who does not have English as his primary language, breaking and breaking could mean 2 very different things, and possibly cause significant confusion.

I'd like to hope that the error in the report was due to a mis type here, but given the complexity of the report, I would be of the opinion that it was a cut and paste from the original report.

drdeadlift

I don't think serious confusion could arise from that spelling error.It's not correct but I wouldn't get my knickers in a twist over it.

JCX BXC

Two recent Go-Arounds at DUB.

Lost4Life

JCX BXC wrote: »

Two recent Go-Arounds at DUB.

I was on the 10pm Aer Lingus from LHR. Very bumpy coming in. Was sure a go around was on the cards.