BA2036 Orlando to Gatwick Nov 1st, 2018
 

BA 2036 Orlando to Gatwick Thursday November 01, 2018
Initially delayed overnight due tech problem
Airborne on Nov 3rd (2am)
40 minutes later diverted to JFK with landing gear issues, requiring fuel dumping

JFK hotels full due NY Marathon – many PAX slept (at least tried) on terminal floor.
Lots of PAX Peed off with lack of info
Any tech details ?

Here's a couple of reports, sounds like they had an indication of damage to a brake or gear (e.g. tire pressure zero and/or brake temp high). They didn't want to raise the gear again with possible damage but wanted to burn down to landing weight so they pressed on to JFK after looking at the gear down fuel burn numbers. At least, that's my best guess.

The BA Source ? British Airways News and Information

https://avherald.com/h?article=4bfd9449&opt=0

Thanks AirBubba

By the time they got to JFK with the already messed about pax (delayed departure, then cancelled 24 hours, then delayed departure again, finally getting going after midnight, and finally diverting to JFK) it would have been about 0330.

BA178, a 747, departs JFK at 0800 for LHR, does it not ? This would have been an appropriate way to move the delayed and distressed passengers, at the expense of cancelling, or severely limiting, the load of those booked on this flight. BA is a regular in straightforward cancellation and reaccommodation. Yet it's decided instead to further grossly inconvenience passengers for whom no hotel accommodation was available (or possibly, nobody was around to organise it) because the statistics would show not one but two groups of delayed passengers.

Hmmm, tricky decision, do we want one aircraft's worth of irate passengers or two ?

And one set of compensation payments or two?

Why go to JFK? Surely there would have been some chat between aircraft and ground as to what to do? Whoever would have to be looking after the passengers in JFK would surely have known that there was zero hotel accommodation and that going back to Florida would have been far better idea than dumping several hundred men women children and babies into a terminal building late at night with nothing to look after them. It might be a convenient place to get the brakes fixed, but surely that can't be the only consideration.

I suppose what I'm asking is, does a Captain's responsibility for the safety of passengers stop once they're on the ground, or does it extend to making sure that the bit of ground they're going to be dumped on isn't going to lead to medical problems (starving dehydrated babies, collapsed elderly, etc). Depending on who is on board, you could end with some serious consequences if there's literally nothing to support them. OK, JFK isn't quite as barren as the wilds of a Canadian wilderness winter, but when everything is closed a terminal building is an inhospitable place for frail people to be trapped in with no where else to go.

And if it comes to that, exactly how much attention was paid to rectifying the problem at Orlando? It does sound like it received comparatively little attention, perhaps the aviation equivalent of hitting it with a hammer that'll do. Getting it fixed properly in JFK might have been convenient for the pilots and ground crew, but piss poor for everyone else.

All in all, not a very impressive service offering. Three days Orlando to Gatwick is a shocking performance. Glad I've not flown BA for years. Last time was on delayed 777 to Japan, and it was filthy dirty. Never again.

The business model is to only apply the pain and inconvenience the the original group. Those people are already massively ticked off with you, so there's not much you can do to help. If you start bumping people off other flights, you just add to the number of people frantically writing to lawyers. You'll see it frequently with widespread weather cancellations, you don't keep bumping the problem down the schedule, you just draw a line and accept you're going to have a a group of angry passengers, but at least it's a controlled group.

Cloudtopper wrote:

[QUOTEWas the aerodrome in which was selected based on commercial or safety decision criteria.
Seems a long way to go with a possible brake overheat.][/QUOTE]

There is no requirement to land at the nearest suitable airport with a brake temperature warning. The requirement is to lower the gear. The higher you are the quicker the brakes will cool. The longer you take to fly to a destination then the cooler the brakes will be when you land. It is the people who elect to land immediately at a nearby airport over max landing weight with hot brakes that face the biggest danger.

I thought JFK was principally a 747 destination for BA. Do they have any more licenced engineer 777 maintenance capability or spares holding there than at Orlando ?

BA have always run for JFK from anywhere in the USA. I can recall them doing so on LAX-London that ran into issues when it was already up over central Canada, years ago.

Consider how many flights/day BA has into JFK and how many to MCO.

Lots of Eng support in JFK, and yes there will be enough 777 cover. Getting spare parts will be quicker/easier.

Redistributing pax through multiple flights back to LHR from JFK is preferable to squeezing more on already busy and limited MCO services.