An Alaska Airlines flight from San Francisco to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, was forced to divert to Salt Lake City on Thursday after the pilot told the passengers that he wasn’t qualified to land while the plane was already on its descent into JAC and the flight attendants were preparing the cabin for landing.
The ‘weird’ incident occurred during flight AS3491, which is operated by Alaska’s regional partner Skywest, on August 8, and one passenger says everyone had to wait on the diverted Embraer jet until a replacement pilot could be found to take them to Jackson Hole.
Sharing the story on Reddit, the passenger said the flight attendants were busy preparing the cabin for arrival when the pilots suddenly came on the public address system to tell them they would be diverting to Salt Lake City.
“Hey, I’m really sorry folks but due to me not having the proper qualification to land in Jackson Hole, we need to divert to Salt Lake City Utah. We’ll keep you posted on the next steps,” the pilot said, according to Redditor ‘babecityrecords’.
“We then landed in Salt Lake City, they again apologized and gave us no other info, waited on the tarmac for about an 1.5 hours, and then the pilot got off the plane (in a walk of shame since his bag was in the overhead in the back of the plane lol) and then a new pilot from Salt Lake City got on the plane and we flew into Jackson,” the passenger explained.
Something VERY weird happened on our Alaska flight yesterday: our pilot was unqualified to land??
byu/babecityrecords inAlaskaAirlines
“This time, we did land in Jackson, but it was perhaps the bumpiest landing in the descent I’ve ever experienced. Overall we landed about 3 hours later than we were supposed to, because of an unqualified pilot?”
The question is, though, how did the Captain end up on a flight to an airport that he wasn’t qualified to land at in the first place?
The first thought is that this was some sort of scheduling error, although the more likely explanation makes a lot more sense and actually means that the checks and balances designed to keep passengers safe were working as they were intended.
Jackson Hole can be a particularly tricky airport to land at, given the fact that it is located more than 6,500 feet above sea level and is surrounded by the Teton Mountains.
To make flights into Jackson Hole even more challenging, the airport sits in a valley with highly variable weather, which means that aviation safety authorities can set so-called ‘minimums’, which simply refers to the lowest altitude at which a pilot can descend during an instrument approach without having the runway in sight.
Sometimes, newer pilots or crew who haven’t had specific training to land at more challenging airports will have ‘high minimums’ imposed on them by their airline or regulators.
For example, a newly trained Captain could have a ‘high minimum’ set, which would exceed the minimum set by authorities if there was reduced visibility at the time at Jackson Hole.
If the weather had been fine at the time of arrival, the original pilot of Alaska flight AS3491 would have been able to land at Jackson Hole as intended. In this case, however, it looks like the weather conditions worsened while the flight was en route and the ‘minimums’ exceeded the Captain’s limits.
That would explain why a new pilot had to be tracked down before the flight could fly onto Jackson Hole and also why the landing was so bumpy.
This morning’s Swiss flight from ZRH to CPH got diverted to HAM. But not for the reason that diverted the Alaska Air flight to SLC.
I’m betting that the weather went below minimums as that would be the determining factor. If he had “high mins” and the weather changed, then he had no choice but to divert. If he was unqualified to fly in to Jackson Hole to begin with then the mere fact that he accepted the flight puts his career in jeopardy.
why is that Alaska Airlines doesn’t train pilots to land in any conditions (e.g. low mininums and high minimums, etc?)
High minimums are required by regulation for pilots with less than 100 hours’ experience in a given aircraft type. All pilots train to published minimums, but they have to adhere to higher minimums for the first hundred hours.
No true.
Granted, this article was not well written to explain the situation.
The gist of this that the guy was a low time captain.
Once he has some more total hours under his belt, he will be allowed to land under those WX conditions.