Corfu Nov 3rd a few questions

[ian23]

I was in Corfu Sunday Nov 3rd waiting for a FR departure to EMA. The weather was not great, heavy rain at times, and our inbound plane EI-DAP made a couple of approaches before flying off to SKG, ( I was following on FR24) where it landed and I think it offloaded all its passengers. (not sure about that bit). It then returned to Corfu and we boarded and flew home. I'm interested to know why the original inbound flight did not land, as other planes were landing at the time.

I consider myself lucky to have left on the day as the inbound FR flight from Southend also made a few approaches, then flew off to PVK, again it may have been the weather, but I'm intrigued to know. After about an hour it took off heading for Corfu, made a few circles in the area of Corfu, but didn't land and then flew off North and the Southend return flight from Corfu was announced as cancelled in the airport and the pssengers asked to collect their bags whilst the agents sorted out overnight accommodation for them. Presumably it flew home empty, or did it offload its inbound passengers at PVK?

Any shared intelligence will be gratefully received.

[Capt Scribble]

Sounds like FR were limited to the VOR approach which has a higher decision altitude (around 2000 ft) than the GNSS approach (around 800ft).

[PAXboy]

ian23 If you track the registration of the aircraft that diverted, you should be able to find where they went next - and on subsequent days. There are several well known web sites that track aircraft but advertising is restricted in the forums - so just search.

[ian23]

PAXboy thanks. I was tracking the SEN to CFU flight on FR24. What just seems odd to me, simply as SLF, is that the SEN to CFU flight diverted to PVK. It then appeared to try to return to CFU, with or without its outbound passengers, couldn't land, and then returned to SEN. So did the outbound passengers offload in PVK? If yes, presumably at great expense to FR as they would have to then transfer them to CFU at a later date, and the aircraft EI-GJK returned empty to SEN. If the SLF were not offloaded at PVK, they simply got a round trip from SEN to SEN, whilst those in CFU hoping to return to SEN had their flight cancelled and again incurred expense for FR. Even by MOL logic this seems strange.

[PAXboy]

My guess is that you will never know!!

[ian23]

I think you're probably correct PAXboy....but if you never ask....... Thanks for your input

[Red Four]

I believe that the CFU-SEN flight had 0 pax on board.

[ian23]

The economics of that decision seem crazy to me. Deposit CFU bound passengers in another airport, with an expensive transfer to pay to get them to their final destination. Then leave SEN bound passengers isolated because of a cancelled flight and more expense to the airline as they had to stay overnight. Yet within an hour of that flight my own EMA bound flight, with the same airline, did land at CFU and we did get home, although the CFU bound passengers were left high and dry in PVK, with more expense to FR. I'm glad I was one of the lucky ones.

[Gulf Julliet Papa]

Think big picture here... The aircraft from SEN is likely allocated only a small amount of leeway in the schedule. The aircraft if on the morning shift still has 2 or 4 sectors to do in the afternoon shift, about 45 minutes after landing from CFU. It’s a LCC so likely no spare aircraft in SEN. If these flights are delayed on the PM shift then you start ending up in a world of night curfews and crew hours. Thanks to EU261 the priority is to delay as fewer pax as possible, (and not delay everyone on that aircraft during the day) and maintain schedule robustness. This leads to relatively few passengers delayed a lot, where as lots of passengers not delayed at all.

Best way of keeping a robust schedule with a diversion is exactly what they did. If CFU not likely to be available in the short term (note you are dammed if you do and dammed if you don’t), then offload pax at diversion field, get airborne from PVK-CFU, see if it is available and you can get in to pick up CFU-SEN pax, if not then divert straight back to base so aircraft is back close to schedule for late shift and the potential 750 pax using aircraft later.

If you kept passengers on for the PVK-CFU to go and see, those pax would not be so happy when you told them they are now flying back to SEN, and next flight available is next week...

[ian23]

GJP it's beginning to make sense now..."the bigger picture" in the overall economics of LCC operations, thanks for taking the time to explain