SWISS 777 Diverts To Kazakhstan, Taxies Into Grass

One thing that could be helpful is that Swiss, EU, and Japanese passport holders do not need a visa to enter Kazakhstan. So if they're stuck overnight they can at least get a landside hotel.

Also, I have heard that Kazakhstan is "very nice!"

At least it wasn't some remote place. Swiss is a mediocre airline.

Having a medical emergency in Kazakhstan is potentially problematic. When you get old, travel is not as easy. Not all medical emergencies involve old people.

I wonder how the plane got out of the grass. Did a tow go into the grass? Some planes can reverse thrust and go backwards. DC-9's could do that but Delta prohibited doing that. Northwest allowed that and often did that.

Americans also don't need visa to enter Kazakhstan.

“Swiss is a mediocre airline.”

Not in first class.

I've been there recently. Astana is certainly very nice. St Regis for under $300 USD a night? You can stay at a brand new Hilton Garden Inn or Hampton Inn for as low as $60?

The main runway at Astana is only 150 feet wide. The wheelbase - distance from main landing gear to nosegear is 102 feet with a turning radius of 114 feet.

It would have been very difficult to have executed the u-turn correctly but it wasn't impossible. A ground spotter would have helped immensely.

Very mediocre in Business....

Curious why the Austrian plane would have stop in Vienna first when was not in original plan

I believe this incident is called a "Swiss Miss".

Used to commute to Astana back in the day! Unusual architecture though watch out for horse meat!

@Tim Dunn

Good comment/info.

What catches my eye is the angle of the nose gear. It's straight, not angled, as in the process of turning. It's up to the aviation agencies to evaluate.

I correct myself. The nose gear was angled as it entered the grass, then straightened, by that point too late. Your comment re ground marshaling seems to apply??

@Tim

As you said, difficult but not impossible. The 777-300ER can perform a 180 degree “pivot turn” with a minimum pavement with of 143.2 ft, however that requires locking up the inside main gear and creates a lot of wear and tear on both the pavement surface as well as the aircraft. What baffles me is that the crew would be making use of the ground maneuvering camera system in that case and should have called it quits when it became apparent the nose wheel would not clear.

Was the pilots name Borat?

777-300 requires, it’s in the operation manual, 185.5 feet of pavement width to execute a 180 degree turn. The flight crew should know this, or at least be able to look it up in their manual. Additionally they had ground cameras at their disposal to watch the nose gear go into the dirt.

In truth I am not knowledgeable about what SWISS 777 pilots are proficient at. I will guess that once flying a 777 pilots rarely come across an airport with no taxiway, thus requiring a 180 on the runway.
I used to fly into smaller airports in Italia that routinely had MD88 and 737 executing 180's on the single runway/taxiway.

Seems like Swiss almost always flies the polar route, over Alaska and Greenland, between NRT and ZRH. Quite the coincidence that this medical emergency occurred when they were taking the Central Asia route instead.

NQZ's sole runway is the standard 45 meters wide... so a hair under 150 feet.

Mediocre to its customers.
And Mediocre is very nicely put...

This is exactly why I don't know why more airlines opt out of a nose wheel camera for the 777. Probably only costs a few more thousand as an option and could potentially save hundreds of thousands in incidents like this.

I happen to be sitting in NQZ right now, The 777 is still parked in the middle of tarmac.
Caused quite a bit of delays yesterday

What about US passport?

Not particularly great handling of IRROPS: Rescue flight to VIE instead of ZRH. From there another rescue flight to ZRH. Both rescue flights delayed by several hours. Likely many pax connect beyond ZRH and will arrive 2 days late to their final destination.

Actually, the Boeing published minimum width of pavement for a 180deg turn with a B777-200 is 155.8 feet. This turn was not possible. The Swiss dispatcher should have been aware of the taxiway closure and chosen a different divert alternate.

Yeah doesn't really make sense -- it would have taken 2-3 hours more to drop off pax in ZRH and then fly plane back to VIE. LH Group should make their planes more easily interchangable.

Also, VIE has a smaller range of destinations compared to ZRH, so some passengers would need to travel to ZRH or MUC and then to their final destination.

Thats interesting -- I couldn't find a single date on flightaware where they didn't use the polar route, except for the flight that was diverted. I'm curious how much shorter the polar route is compared to the transasian route

First time I can say been there, done that. Unfamiliar airport. At night. It was a Cessna though.

The 22 YO Austrian aircraft operates a 2-class configuration with 32 Business seats only. Must have been a fun lottery in Astana for those originally seated in the 8 First, 52 Business seats onboard the 777...

Being amazing in first class doesn't really help the what, 97%?, of passengers who don't get to experience it.

If a passenger has a medical emergency, is the airline doing them any favors by dropping them off in Kazakhstan, of all places? What kind of medical treatment are they going to get there? Unless it was a real life or death situation, if it was me, I'd tell them to keep on going the 5 hours to the final destination.

They needed the guy from the movie Airport.

The entire thesis of this site is focusing on the perceived service to the 1% to the exclusion of what the majority of passengers experience.

Maybe LX does provide a good premium experience most of the time but operational issues like this ruin the day and week for everyone.

the real irony of this event is that LX usually flies Tokyo to ZRH via a polar route over the North Pacific, over Alaska and Canada and Greenland.
For some reason, this flight went via Central Asia; there are far fewer opportunities to divert on a polar route but they do exist.

It is also noteworthy that it is generally not economically viable to fly from Asia to Europe via a western hemisphere polar route for any country other than Japan which just highlights how difficult Russia airspace restrictions are for airlines.

This assumes the Swiss flight was more than 32 premium passengers (though indeed anyone in First definitely received a downgrade).

That was my first thought.

While some may recur to assumptions, I prefer basic logic. 319 passengers on a 320 seat aircraft.