As LSL said, the rules on crew rest can get pretty byzantine. But I’ll comment on this part because I’ve been affected (as a victim).
What happens to crew largely depends on where they are “based”. Say I fly for Delta and my base is JFK. I’m expected to report for duty at JFK, regardless of where I actually “live”. So if I live in Brooklyn, great for me. If I live in Connecticut or Pennsylvania, not so great. The airline doesn’t care, it’s on me to report for duty at my base.
But now I’m out on a trip. We overnight at any other airport and it’s on the airline to put me up in a hotel and pay per diem for meals (this can vary, and even work differently in the charter / corporate world).
But let’s say this happens, as it did to me once or twice:
We’re in the middle of my work week. We land at JFK and are scheduled to fly somewhere else and overnight there. But the plane breaks! Or there’s a crew problem or something which means we are stuck at JFK. Because it’s my base, the airline says, “Thanks - see you tomorrow!”
“But… I don’t live here…”
“JFK is your base. See ya!”
No help with hotels. Now, I’ve heard that some airlines are making changes to this sort of policy and providing in-base hotel rooms under some circumstances. But I don’t think that’s anywhere close to being industry standard yet.
How does that work in a place like St. Johns or Gander? When a flight diverts there, there’s going to be a sudden big demand for hotel rooms. Would a big airline keep a room on standby, so they know they’ll have it for the few times a year that they need it?
I’m sure the airline knows the flight is diverting before the passengers do. Even if they don’t keep rooms available on standby, They can probably call and reserve rooms for their crew before the flight lands and passengers start calling for rooms.
I was on a United flight years ago that had the cockpit radio on one of the channels of the entertainment system. I knew we were diverting to a different airport about a minute before it was announced over the PA.
Then the airline tries to take care of the crew hotel rooms. This happened to me once in airline operations - we diverted to an airport we didn’t usually use and it was a last minute decision. The company arranged ground transportation for the passengers and we crew spent the night there.
I’m pretty sure no-one is going to discipline a crew that went over the limit because they had to in order to deal with an emergency. But I don’t think it is a good idea for a crew that has already dealt with the stress of an emergency and unplanned landing to then attempt to make it to the original destination on a tight clock. Especially considering that “a few minutes over” is assuming that absolutely everything from now on goes exactly to plan and there is absolutely no delay or bad weather at the destination.
99+% of the time it’ll be fine but if anything happens to that flight with a crew working extra hours, even like what happened at LGA with the Air Canada flight & the ARFF truck collision a few weeks ago (which everyone is stating is not pilot error) there will be hell (& big $) to pay because they were breaking established safety protocols.
Under US regs once you get airborne there is no concern about any legality clocks. After takeoff if the flight runs longer than planned for whatever reason that’s totally A-OK wonderful.
But … if the planned air time is 5 hours exactly and you commence take off with only 4:59 of remaining allowable duty day or allowable flight time you have committed a violation and can expect the FAA in your shit within the next week. The tolerance to the high side is exactly zero, and not one minute more.
In a situation involving a diversion, the flight ends when you get to the divert field. Your ability to fly onwards to anywhere, your original destination or someplace closer, depends entirely on how long that new flight is realistically honestly computed to take, and what time it is when you are actually just about to take off. Check the clock(s) then and either retreat to the gate or launch as the case may be.
In most long haul scenarios, the moment you commence an off-track diversion, the die is cast; you will not be able to legally continue past that point of landing without an intervening rest. By the time you’ve landed, refueled, replanned, etc., you’ve burned up all the slack there ever was in the original plan for your workday.
For short haul ops where you might be planned to fly in and out and in and out of a hub, you have lots of remaining slack time if something goes wrong on one of the first two or three legs. You just won’t be able to execute the fourth. If something goes wrong on the fourth leg there’s usually insufficient slack time available to carry a diverted flight on to a fifth leg to get it to wherever it was supposed to go before the diversion scrambled the plan.
The flight that started this sub-topic was a British Airways flight subject to British regulations. About which details I know exactly zero. I’d expect the broad picture to be similar, but any absolute statements I’ve made are US-specific.
How about a scenario where the plane in front of you takes 25 min for take off instead of 5 (for whatever reason) . I mean you can’t really turn around at the runway, can you?
Or would that be considered force major… Or considered “already flying” ?
Under US regs, the magic moment is when the controller says “Cleared for takeoff”. Which doesn’t happen until there’s nobody else in your way.
Every flight has an expected taxi time. Based on airport layout, time of day, expected traffic levels etc. Anywhere between maybe 10 minutes and 90 minutes. So you want to leave the gate early enough that your standard taxi time will get you to “cleared for takeoff” with time to spare. You can legally taxi out with less that planned time remaining. But you need to catch up by the “cleared for takeoff” moment.
If you are (or become) tight on remaining time during taxi then the entire time you’re out there you’re looking at your stop watch and counting airplanes and seconds between each launch and …
Often it becomes obvious it’s futile much earlier when pre-departure delays keep creeping in. Then we don’t even bother to close the door or leave the gate. Call that “quit while we’re behind.”
The only thing that pisses passengers off more than cancelling the flight during or just after boarding is cancelling it an hour later after locking up, pushing back, starting, and taxiing, perhaps in a long slow line towards a runway, only to cancel before taking that runway.
I misspoke here. Hard to believe, but this week is exactly 2-1/2 years since I retired and began to pleasantly forget all this niggledy stuff.
Anyhow, a couple hours after posting that it hit me: The magic moment is receiving clearance onto the runway with intent to take off. Which can be either “Cleared for takeoff” as I said, or “Line up and wait” which means enter the runway, turn to face towards the far end, and sit there awaiting subsequent clearance to start the takeoff roll.
In all likelyhood, no, you won’t be able to make a 180 turn at the point where the taxiway meets the runway. You can, however, if for any reason you want or have to, just get onto the runway and then taxi along same runway until you reach another taxiway to get off said runway. There’s absolutely no compulsion to take off just because you are on the big piece of tarmac.
Standard airline runways are 150 feet wide between the edge stripes. The actual pavement width is typically more like 175 feet, but there are lights and signs in that space between 150 & 175 that you don’t want to drive over with your wheels.
For something A-320 or 737-sized, a standard runway is plenty wide enough. Slide over to one side until your main gear is near the edge, then at a walking pace make a max tightness turn. Using the 737-8 as a specific example, the official book answer is it takes 80 feet of pavement width to do a 180. Leaving 70 feet of width to spare on a 150’ runway.
If you start with one main gear right at the pavement stripe defining the legal edge of the runway, a max effort turn will take just over 1/2 the runway width; you’ll be pointed back the other way with your nosegear having just barely crossed the center stripe. And once you’re fully pointed back the way you came, the airplane will be roughly centered in the half of the runway you executed the turn in.
By comparison, a 777-200 (the shorter model) can’t quite pull that trick off on a standard runway. Done perfectly it takes 155 feet of width, and standard runways are 150. Oops if you try. The longer 777-300 is worse: it needs 186 feet of pavement width to make a 180. Which is still darn impressively little room for a machine 213 feet wide and 240 feet long.
But unless you are at a small airport lacking taxiways (many such in the Caribbean & LatAm), if you enter a runway intending to take off then change your mind, you simply taxi aways down the runway to the next convenient exit and take it to return to the web of taxiways.
Airports which lack much in the way of taxiways will install wide spots at both ends of the runway(s) and perhaps a midfield wide spot so folks have adequate space to turn around. Here’s a decent such example:
The airliner ramp has 3 stubs that connect directly to the single runway. Which has a wide spot at each end for any airplanes big enough to need a wide spot to turn. Every takeoff and every landing involves a 180 turn on the runway then taxiing to/from the ramp area.
Getting all the way onto the runway then not even trying to take off and instead going back to the gate or pulling off to address some issue then getting back in line to try again is not all that rare. Most non-longhaul crews probably do that once every 3-4 months for one reason or another.
That’s odd. I read that article earlier today unpaywalled. Heck, I just re-read the article unpaywalled.
I guess paywalls are kinda random.
Briefly: pilot is ferrying a Piper PA-28 from Oman to Ahmedabad, India when the current Iran Conflict fires off. Gets intercepted by USS Abraham Lincoln’s combat air patrol because his flight path takes him directly over the carrier. He negotiates a shift in his route that allows him to not overfly the carrier, not fly closer to Iranian airspace, and not risk running out of fuel (but probably nibbling into his reserve somewhat).
It just boggles my mind how wasteful those 90 minutes seem. You are, as an airline, wasting 180 minutes of pilot time, as well as at least 90 minutes of engine time (admittedly at close to no thrust) and a non-negligible amount of fuel. Has no-one ever come up with something workable to shorten that time or at least the cost?
As long as airports & skies are crowded with planes there will be queueing. As long as marketing departments have a hand in scheduling, an element of fantasy will intrude because it sells more tickets.
The industry has been bitching at FAA for years that the time to fly the same planes from e.g. O’Hare to La Guardia is 20% longer than it was in 1980 but the airports haven’t moved an inch. It’s all down to congestion. And failure by our national government to invest in more and better airports and ATC systems. And growth in passenger demand that has, and will continue, to far outstrip the Fed’s ability to keep up. If they were trying, which largely they are not.
Same reason we don’t have 20 lane freeways in the suburbs of every growing city. But we should. At least if time-efficiency of transportation was an actual societal goal and priority, not just an idle wish.