(Aviation) A350XWB’s holding in Lansing?!

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David Collins
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(Aviation) A350XWB’s holding in Lansing?!

Unread post by David Collins »

The other day two Airbus A350XWB’s (A350-1000) held at FL320 around the Lansing area, First one was a Qatar airways A350XWB (performing QTR68E) and then a British Airways XWB (performing BAW11A). They eventually descended and to continued toward Chicago. What I don’t get is the fact they held at LAN but other heavy aircraft (747’s, 767’s and a United 787-10 Dreamliner) landed in Chicago while the whole time the visibility was 8 1/2 miles. According to Airbus the minimums for the A350-1000 is 2 mile visibility, clearly this wasn’t minimums.
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Re: (Aviation) A350XWB’s holding in Lansing?!

Unread post by DaveO »

Some aircraft have different capabilities based on what was ordered.
Pilots have different capabilities.
Some airlines have more restrictive manuals regarding landing conditions.
How many runways were in use at ORD? Did they have too many planes arriving at the same time?
Holding them above LAN was obviously the smart choice.
If they couldn't get into ORD within their restrictions then they could divert to DTW.

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Re: (Aviation) A350XWB’s holding in Lansing?!

Unread post by David Collins »

DaveO wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 6:30 pm
Some aircraft have different capabilities based on what was ordered.
Pilots have different capabilities.
Some airlines have more restrictive manuals regarding landing conditions.
How many runways were in use at ORD? Did they have too many planes arriving at the same time?
Holding them above LAN was obviously the smart choice.
If they couldn't get into ORD within their restrictions then they could divert to DTW.
They were landing and departing 10L, 10C and 10R. There weren’t many aircraft and like I said visibility was 8 1/2 But they didn’t give a reason as to why they held… maybe Cleveland center made them do it?
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Re: (Aviation) A350XWB’s holding in Lansing?!

Unread post by Jetlink »

The issue is almost never weather minimums. Almost every airliner flying is certified to CAT II or CAT III landing minimums. Basically zero/zero or 300 RVR so long as the all the navaids and lights at the landing runway are working. Worst case is a handflown CAT II down to 1200 or 1000 RVR but that is usually only in small commuter planes. The weather is almost never worse than that.II've flown 2 Cat III's in the last 3 years and probably a half dozen cat II's in my career and I've been flying since 1993. Any pilot flying for an airline is ALWAYS trained to the airlines lowest landing minimums. The problem is usually traffic saturation. When the weather goes down the spacing requirements between aircraft increase. Planes clear the runway and taxi out of the way slower. Everything slows down at the same time the margins of separation increase.

But still this doesn't explain the holding described. Likely the issue was saturation in the approach vectoring area or the STAR arrival corridor. Another (and most likely case) is they "turned the airport around". IE went from landing 27's and 28's to 9's and 10's or vice versa. Local ATC needs a gap to do that and it often requires the enroute centers to slow the arrival feed for a few minutes to clear out the arrival and departure corridors for the turn around swap. Smaller terminals it isn't an issue at all; but airports like ORD with 3 and 4 simultaneous arrival runways and upto 8 different STARs all feeding the same complex need a hold from center to make the switch.

Even though it is airspace the terminals are often managed like the routes in and out are on rails. You pretty much have to fly the depicted routes in or out. Not much room for vectoring. If your route in our out is blocked expect a hold or a changed route to another STAR or SID. You won't get 30 degrees left for 20 miles as it will just conflict with another route.
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