An air carrier Dispatcher delivered a scathing review of the failure of small station personnel to provide valid field condition reports during inclement weather.

2010-11 · NASA ASRS report 920765

Date: 2010-11 · Aircraft: Regional Jet 900 (CRJ900) · Phase: ground

Anomalies: deviation-discrepancy-procedural-far|deviation-discrepancy-procedural-published-material-policy

Synopsis

An air carrier Dispatcher delivered a scathing review of the failure of small station personnel to provide valid field condition reports during inclement weather.

Narrative

It had snowed all night at ZZZ yet the field condition report said mostly cloudy. I started asking for accurate information more than two hours prior to flight departure. I sent several computer messages; talked to a station agent and left two messages; and finally got a field condition report fifteen minutes prior to scheduled departure. I also had the Captain for the ZZZ2 flight and finally got a field condition report with braking action almost nil with readings in the low 20's. How is this at all a safe operation? Nothing [noted] about sanding in progress or what was being done to improve runway conditions. Also; personnel at ZZZ3 had no idea how to put one in today. I had to call ZZZ4 twice for information. ZZZ5 had a field condition report dated tomorrow. This is what we are dealing with everyday. I do not understand why this is not being dealt with immediately. I have provided multiple safety and operational issue reports yet field condition reports are not getting better. WHY?

NASA callback

The reporter advised that the company has begun attempts to address the shortcomings addressed in the report. Resolving the problem is complicated by virtue of the fact the airline contracts out all small station operations to a separate company and it is the people employed by the contractor who are responsible for producing field condition reports. The reporter questions the training they have; to date; received and still finds it necessary to seek out required information on a regular basis.

Source: NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (public domain). Reports are voluntary submissions and are not verified by NASA.

Loading the flight search…

Frequently asked questions

How do I search flights by aircraft type on FlightFinder?

Pick an aircraft model — Boeing 737, Airbus A320, A380, Boeing 787 Dreamliner and more — enter your origin airport, and FlightFinder shows every route that plane flies from there with live fares.

Which aircraft types can I filter by?

We support Boeing 737/747/757/767/777/787, the full Airbus A220/A319/A320/A321/A330/A340/A350/A380 family, Embraer E170/E175/E190/E195, Bombardier CRJ and Dash 8, and the ATR 42/72 turboprops.

Is FlightFinder free to use?

Search and schedules are free. Pro ($4.99/month, $39/year, or $99 one-time lifetime) unlocks the enriched flight card — on-time stats, CO₂ per passenger, amenities, live gate & weather — plus My Trips with push alerts.

Where does the route data come from?

Live schedules come from Amadeus, AeroDataBox and Travelpayouts. Observed routes (which aircraft actually flew a given city pair) are crowdsourced from adsb.lol ADS-B data under the Open Database License.