Singapore Airlines flight diverted

[boing]

You fail to see the crux of the issue, Scooby5. You are missing out on the bigger picture.

I believe the SQ flight would have been allowed to land immediately in Changi if the pilot had declared Mayday or Pan Pan for fuel emergency.The pilot had that option available and rather opted to fly to the alternate airport. If the pilot did declare emergency and his request to land at Changi was rejected, then that would be an issue.
As I mentioned earlier, advisories were given out in advance regarding this closure and they should have made the necessary arrangements to prevent this exact screw-up. If this flight was allowed to land without any emergency declarations, then what is there to stop the numerous other a/cs following the directives and waiting for their turn from requesting a landing. There would be completely no respect for the rule of law. It would make a complete mockery of the NOTAMS and AIP supplements. And mind you, there are quite a few airspace closures in Changi per year.( NDP, militiary exercises). It would also be grossly unfair to the other a/cs who did their preparations, took the extra fuel and are patiently waiting their turn.

CAAS has built a reputation among the airlines for its impartiality to its clients and its strict enforcement of rules, among its other pluses. Even SQ has mentioned openly that it gets no special deals from CAAS. It is one of its biggest advantages among the other airports in the region who are waiting to overtake Changi. Jetstar recently mentioned this when it chose Singapore as its hub.

It's simple, you don't follow the rules, you pay the price. End of the day, rules were followed like they should have ought to. I don't see what's the big deal in this issue.

[cscs1956]

Some might have seen the following in the local paper




Okay so the pilot diverts to Batam, fair enough, but who at Singapore ATC didn't take the responibility to Fast Track an incoming bird running short of fuel???

I have no problem with the pilot making a decision to divert like this but it is obvious he got little in the way of help from anybody else. Let's face it, the crew also got home more than 6hrs late so we know they didn't take the decision easily.......given the original flight itself is even less than 4hrs.

Sue the airport authority for poor management?

[sqdazz]

scooby5 - this crew decided, or the airline directed this crew, to take off from HKG, knowing the arrival may coincide with airshow displays at Singapore. These airshow time slots were made available WELL in advance. It is not the fault of ATC, or the airport.

It is barely worth arguing the points, as it really is a non-event.

[scooby5]

A non-event....... lovely and so wrong! I will remember that the next time somebody screws up so badly and makes me 6hrs or more late for a connection that makes me miss it to the next day maybe...... or for a taxi back to my family!

There is a BIG picture nobody seems to see but okay, C'est la vie, I'll run things the way I see fit and leave everybody else to screw up without repercussions. I really wish I could screw up so badly, but alas........

[flyguy]

Clsoing the airfield for 6 days for the late morning and larger part of the afternoon for a International airport like Changi is not really a good thing - as altho CAAS have issued advisory and NOTAMS - but as a major foreign airline manager have told me that its difficult to reschedule the times as its aircrafts used for SIN flights are part of only one sector of the aircraft's flight pattern/schedule and hence it involves delays or much earlier departures for the other sectors and alot of time wastage for the aircraft to be on ground in SIN or at their departure stations. 6 Days is quite long for an airline to reschedule and even deploy additional aircraft to take up the delay and costly too.
Perhaps CAAS can work out shorter airport closure time for the next air show to minimise airlines schedule and costs and also thatof its pax.

[MAN Flyer]

Something doesn't quite add up with this. I know they issue notice of delays etc during the air show as I have encountered this numerous times myself. Once inbound from CGK when we circled for a good while south of Changi before landing, and another leaving BKK when there was a notice on the check-in desks at Suvarnabhumi explaining that there were air space restrictions and as a result we would be leaving late, and we did, about 20-30 minutes IIRC.

So why didn't this flight either stay on the ground at HKG longer or have enough fuel to circle before going in rather than divert ?.

I have to say if I was on that flight and I missed my connectiing flight or meetings up just so an F16 could loop the loop I'd be rather p*ssed to be honest.

Of course, I am aware that the air show is on at the moment and knowing it casuses delays I would not risk any short connection or meeting at this time, but many people won't even know it's on.

[snowman]

Hi everyone
It's been interesting to read all the comments and the news report about this delay issue that happened to SQ863 on 2 Feb.
As a passenger in this affected flight, and having some knowledge of changi airport operations, I would say that the news reported for this incident is factually inaccurate and misleading as the report left out certain details which will affect the readers' perception of the incident.

Firstly the flight timing is wrong. This is a B777-300ER aircraft type ETD 1330hrs (singapore time) from HKIA and ETA 1730hrs at Changi Airport.

Notam and AIP supplement has been promulgated by AIS, CAAS on the closure of Changi Airport and the airspace from 0430 - 0800 (timing in UTC) several months ahead of this date.

But since the ETA of this flight is 0930 UTC, it is not fair to say that SIA have to retime for this flight since the closure should cease by then.

When we are waiting to land in Changi Airport, the pilot announced that there are 20 over flights waiting in queue to land before us. This queue might be due to unforeseen circumstances, in which the pilot decided to divert to Batam for refueling.

What was not reported in the news was that whilst the refueling should estimated to take around 1 hr, whereby the aircraft should be able to depart for Singapore by 1900hrs. What really caused the longer delay was the technical and electrical problems that affected the aircraft as it was preparing to depart.

There was some electrical tripping and the emergency lights kicked in. The pilot tried to restart the electrical system at least 4 times but to no avail. There was some error messages in the program as stated by the pilot. Eventually the pilot asked for the passengers' patience and that he was going to do a full reset of the electrical system which would mean putting the cabin into darkness for several moments. Finally the issue was resolved after nearly 2 hrs.

Fortunately the passengers were understanding and did not kick up much fuss due to the delay and we had to remain inside the aircraft throughout. There were of course some passengers who were concerned about their connecting flights at Changi Airport and some were hungry as well, as it was way past our usual dinner time.

However, kudos to the cabin crew for being patient and their reassurance to passengers who were concerned. Some refreshments were served. The pilot was also responsible in updating the reassuring the passengers. The crew's effort had made the delay more bearable in some ways.

When we finally arrived back to Changi Airport T2 (with applause from the some passengers), there were staff to direct transiting passengers to Transfer E. When we exited the GHR, a SIA token (passport holder) was given to us as a form of service recovery and apology for the inconvenience. Let's hope the transit passengers have a smooth connecting flight and the SQ863 crew have some compensation for their extra work.

And I think SIA owe us a dinner each

[feb01mel]

Snowman,

Thanks for clarifying, your account of the incident is definitely more logical than what the rest have stated earlier.

[hsf]

I would say they owe a lot more than dinner! Rather pathetic exercise overall.

[sqdazz]

Thanks for the update and correction snowman. I wonder why there was 20 aircraft awaiting landing clearance. A case of poor scheduling from the airlines, or airshow timing not being correct, or something else?

[boing]

From what I heard, the a/c was scheduled to land after the airspace closure and all NOTAMS were complied with. But it was told by ATC that it was no 27 or 28 in the landing sequence. It also had abt estimated slightly more than an hour's worth of fuel on board. The pilot after considering his other alternates decided on Batam.

I do not know what happened in Batam though. The airspace closures are only an hour each from 1130-1230 hrs(SIN time) and 1500-1600. At the moment, I don't there is any other site in SIN that could host this event. Moreover, it is only held bi-annually, so the inconvenience is a small price to pay for the money raked in and the tourism draw. I believe HKG experiences the same thing when Asian Aerospace is held as it's very close to HKG airport.

What puzzles me though is why only dis particular SQ a/c had a fuel emergency and divert of all the a/cs that had to circle and wait in the past 6 days. And I do think that CAAS should strongly consider allowing Paya Lebar airport to be an alternate in events like this to minimise the delay. Heck, the pax could be bussed by road to Changi faster than flown back.