Banning Delta altogether seems disproportionate. Banning all 767s would be silly. Telling Delta they can’t fly this one particular plane to Accra seems to me like a perfectly reasonable response to a run of incidents involving that plane within a short period of time.<p>Honestly, the only thing that surprises me about this is that other aviation authorities haven’t followed suit.
Between 2010 and 2013, I used to fly to Ghana most summers. Delta would use old aircraft on this route. Inflight entertainment was the screen hanging in the middle of the aisle. Watching a movie on the flight was a challenge. You had to bring your own entertainment to pass the time.<p>Eventually I stopped using that route and took KLM instead. KLM to Schiphol and to Accra. KLM was in a world of it's own. Similar planes irrespective of whether I was in the US or flying to Ghana. Personal inflight entertainment. The service was way better.
I love it! Pretty funny story as no one was hurt and there was no material damage. This is also a great example of why your code will inevitably end up with a bunch of if-else blocks if it is popular and used for a long enough time XD. I would like to see how this is coded into Delta's flight logistics software.
A YouTube discussion between passengers on each of the flights turned around and a professional pilot:<p><a href="https://youtu.be/7PQTMx7TZ9A" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/7PQTMx7TZ9A</a>
Seems like a perfect storm of max length ETOPS flight combined with a seriously aged airframe, resulting in a vastly increased margin of safety needed to complete the flight. If you plot JFK -> ACC on Google Earth, you can see the flightpath perfectly threads the needle between Bermuda and the Azores, creating what is probably the longest overwater route with no diversions possible from the east coast.<p>The 767's are really only profitable on these "long fat" routes anymore, and I suspect this will probably be the start of Delta retiring them for 787s or A350s.
Aircraft is in the air right now:
<a href="https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a17b16&lat=54.936&lon=-36.880&zoom=4.0&showTrace=2022-08-27&leg=2&trackLabels" rel="nofollow">https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a17b16&lat=54.936&lon=-...</a><p>Back to back turnback:
<a href="https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a17b16&lat=42.330&lon=-70.893&zoom=7.0&showTrace=2022-07-25&trackLabels" rel="nofollow">https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a17b16&lat=42.330&lon=-...</a>
<a href="https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a17b16&lat=42.330&lon=-70.893&zoom=7.0&showTrace=2022-07-26&trackLabels" rel="nofollow">https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a17b16&lat=42.330&lon=-...</a>
It should be note that even if all these malfunctions were minor and non-hazardous having a plane divert multiple multiple times would still cause an administrative nightmare
This isn't about safety and doesn't need to be for it to be perfectly reasonable reaction. There are 2 daily flights from the US to Ghana; this one from JFK and a United flight from Dulles. In comparison, there are more than 15 flights daily from just JFK to Heathrow. Repeatedly losing a couple hundred passengers, mostly business travelers and wealthier Ghanaian nationals is a BFD. Unreliable service inconveniences their more connected citizens, and greatly increases the costs of doing business in Ghana. Ghana needs this to be a reliable connection, and this is them telling Delta to get their act together.
They did exactly fine. African countries are no “lesser countries” when security is concerned. I hope we see it more often, if airlines don’t keep up the standards.
Based on a bunch of comments and replies, it seems like many people might have missed this (or just going off the headline) they’ve banned a 767 of a specific registration number. Plenty of 767s flying there. As I write this a different Delta (DAL 156) has just departed JFK heading to Accara.<p>So yeah, them banning that one plane is not some clever political ploy to have newer planes fly to their country lol…
Heh, I flew Delta from SFO to ATL a few weeks ago and ended up diverting to ABQ. It's my first diversion in a commercial jet in nearly 50 years of flying. At the time I thought it was a fluke, but now it's looking like more of a pattern.
> “With immediate effect, Delta Air Lines is being advised not to dispatch the B767-332 with registration number N195DN for flights to Accra.”<p>That doesn’t sound like it’s banned to me; more like they’re just pressuring Delta to use a different aircraft.
If you don't like sovrignity, don't leave your country. Ghana should do what it thinks it needs to to protect it's airspace and citizens on the ground.
It's a shame the executives running Delta aren't hit with crippling fines. The ability of individuals to hide behind the mask of a corporation is perhaps the worst thing about modern capitalism.
My wife and I flew the ACC to JFK flight in early Aug booked via Air France (I believe it was AF8702) and the flight was delayed by 2hrs due to an issue with the brakes that was discovered at the very last moment and that needed to be fixed while we were minutes from taxi and take off.<p>This left us and our fellow passengers couped up on the runway for that whole period. I’ll check but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was this very plane.