A Condor A320 aborted its Frankfurt landing seconds before curfew, diverting to Cologne and forcing passengers onto a long overnight bus ride.
Well, well, well... looks like those passengers are probably eligible for EU261 compensation and duty of care. In this case, looks like +3 hours late with that diversion and bus ride, travel distance under 1,500 km, so €250 per passenger. Condor can try to claim 'extraordinary circumstances,' but, the burden is on them to prove that, and it likely would fail as a defense to claims, because the delay was from their own scheduling issue, not 'severe weather' or something out of their control. Hmm.
You can rest assured that Condor will do whatever it can to tell those passengers that it's 'beyond their control' and 'based on airport restrictions' and so on. They won't pay unless they're forced to do so.
I have had the right of compensation dozens of times, but got it in less than half the cases. Simply because airlines are arrogant and know that an individual probably won't go to court over it.
Why that detour over the Ahr river? Was the pilot trying to draw a middle finger?
What they should do is have a hefty fine to discourage this but allow airlines to land within say 5 minutes of the curfew if they agree to pay x amount. It would be a win-win.
Oh, me thinks they’re already gonna be paying plenty in compensation to those passengers… thanks to EU261!
Honestly, this is a case where "rational illegality" might kick in. The fine could be EUR50k, but EU261 compensation alone could eat up most of the savings there - 180 pax @ EUR150/ea would cost 27k alone. Throw in extra fuel, crew time, and the plane being out of position and if I were the airline I'd be tempted to just take the fine, hope I didn't get maxed out on it, and if I get yelled at point out that I'm literally choosing between violations (noise vs EU261) at that point.
As others have said, though, there should be a buffer at the end of the grace period where planes aren't allowed to "try and make it" - calling it a "grace period" really makes it sound more like it's there for in-flight diversions (e.g. planes having to go around weather) and the like, not flights that are already that far behind.
This was DEFINITELY a more environmentally-friendly alternative than just letting them land.
Isn't that 'curfew' less about the environment and more about noise abatement? Either way, yeah, they both burned more fuel and the low-altitude missed-approach was probably loud-ish, too.
You need to update the post. FRA has an actual curfew of 11pm and a grace period for late flights until midnight. The Condor flight wasnt seconds past the curfew, it was seconds past the grace period and over an hour past the curfew.
@ BeeDazzle -- Whoops, you're absolutely right. Just updated the post to reflect that, thanks!
You should update the headline too, as it's currently misleading.
Any criticism here should be directed solely at the airline for trying to land over an hour after curfew, having taken off only 20 minutes before the curfew. They ought to have known at take-off that they weren't going to make it.
Functionally though I think it's a bit potato, po-tah-to. If folks are going to be given clearance to take off to try and make it in time for "the grace period curfew" then it's functionally the curfew, no matter how it's legally defined.
Your point, I think, is that they never should have been allowed to even take off to "try and make it" if they never had a shot of landing by the 11pm curfew in the first place (or at least, I don't know, within the first half of the grace period?). Or why is ATC even routing a flight like this to FRA to try and make it with seconds to spare - have more of a cut-off of 11:50 or something like that for routings.
But this just seems like the worst of both worlds - ATC accommodating the routing and the pilots flying really fast to try and make it, they end up seconds from the airport, and then having to divert - what is the point of that? At that point they should be able to land regardless of what time it is.
I've said it last time something similar happened:
They shouldn't have curfews based on landing times, instead of e.g. final approach fix (be at position X or Y miles out at 11:55). That way the decision would be made earlier, saving fuel and sparing residents the noise.
I'd go a step further and say it should be based upon takeoff time. The flight release has a planned flight time on it... if the flight takes off in time to fly the planned flight time and land before the curfew, but then encounters en route delays, it should still be allowed to land.
In the US, at least, that's the standard we use for crew member duty limits... you have to expect, at the time of takeoff, to arrive before your duty day limit. It's a reasonable standard in both situations.
You can’t fix stupid.
More germans gonna be germans. It’s the rules. And cannot do the right thing….
How about they fine the $hit out of the airline and not screw all the passengers? Oh wait, Germany.
The curfew is not meant to benefit the government, it's to benefit the 100K+ people who are trying to sleep beneath the flight path. So what amount of fine would you suggest? If each passenger gets 250 euros, at least 100 euros for each person on the ground?
I had never heard of Olbia, and I will probably never hear of it again.
Weird to brag about willfully ignoring Olbia when its one of the main gateways to Sardinia. Delta and United both fly there.
There is flexibility. Up to one hour, which is quite generous. If you offer additional 5 minutes, then someone will come in at 5:05 minutes and people will be asking for "more flexibility" again. You gotta draw the line somewhere.
I always hope there's one lucky pax whose final destination was Cologne and he's celebrating tonight that he didn't have to get the bus from Frankfurt 🙂
Yeah there should be fines for this, increasing the more a curfew is overstepped.
Also extension of curfew shouldn't be something that you can do before starting, the 1-hour grace period should be for cases where the plane intended to land at 11pm but due to issues is a bit delayed, it seems to me that Condor interpreted this as "Frankfurt is open until 12am")
I was also once on a flight that missed the curfew by seconds (3000 seconds to be precise) and had to divert. So infuriating.
You've made this kind of post before. It is a legal issue, countless lawsuits have been fought over the aviation noise.
The current system is the one which survived in courts. No administrator has flexibility here.
ATC has authority to override the curfew for delayed flights. At many airports this is common: LGA has a midnight to 6:00am curfew, but ATC regularly allows planes to land or depart later, sometimes much later if there are cascading delays from thunderstorms. There are no legal repercussions.
I'd point out that this is in Germany, not the US. In the US, I think there's more flexibility - common law vs civil law makes a difference, and I think the US also has a far more casual relationship with the letter of the law. Rishi Sunak's seatbelt incident comes to mind for the latter - I think in most of the US the reaction would have been "So what?" rather than it being a big scandal.
Put differently, in the US I think the airline would be more likely to risk the curfew violation with the expectation that the fine would be far below the max and with no expectation of public outrage.
I think the most fair compromise would be hefty fine if the airline absolutely needs to violate curfew and loss of slots if it becomes a habitual offense.
Set the fines linked to the amount of seats in the plane scaling up around 60 to 80 percent of E621 compensation and go from there. This would discourage close calls like this plus rerouting while making sure airlines don't get in the habit of always paying the fine.
If an airline is frequently paying fines on late flights they lose the rights to the slot.
Yes! Punish the actual bad actor - the airline - rather than the passengers who paid the airline to get them from point A to point B but otherwise had no control over the timing.
Why did ATC clear them for approach when there was no time to land before curfew? Is it FRA's way to screw the neighbors? You restrict our operations with your silly curfew, now enjoy the go-around noise - we are following the rules to the letter?
Lol, Germany. Such effective and reasonable policies
“What they should do….” is as helpful as… “If I were president i’d…. blah blah blah.” Well you’re not, and what makes 100% sense in our tiny part of the world wont work or be possible everywhere else.
I do appreciate the german system for taking out the middle ground of uncertainty in many situations.… it can be cold and uncaring, but at least you know what you’re going to get…
It does surprise me that this happened with a german airline. clearly they felt the only thing to loose was some very unhappy customers… so why not try it?
But I guarantee you they weren't surprised with the outcome.