I know nothing about GA there. But it seems that they have (mostly?) American controllers and that GA seems to be roaming about rather freely.
Leaving aside the fact that the pilot seemingly was a bit clueless, at least he stayed very calm. Maybe he had much more experience than one might think? Would be interesting to know if he got Avgas there. Sometimes, in certain countries, it is more likely to get it at military airfields than at civilian ones…
Looks like a classic low on fuel issue [diversion, panpan, emergency] where the pilot was more concerned about lifting avgas for his next flight after landing? so maybe you are right that military airport is the only one with Avgas but hell ya how ATC could guess that? Probably he was not even that low on fuel after all? You wanna guess what a pilot have in mind when they just ask “to land out of thin air”, good luck even ATC should not try/push on that…
I had a friend who was diverting due to “doubts on weather ahead” but he was asked for ppr on RT by an AG (or no landing), as he was reluctant to declare a mayday, he just went into bad weather to his original destination and landed as planned but the encountred weather was way out of his comfort zone (he was VFR in IMC, not qualified instrument, not in RT contact for probably 10min)
Myslef, I did mess up on fuel one day coming from France, called ATC for mayday, landed at an airstrip, left aircraft there and sorted everything later by phone/email from home, the only bit I did not enjoy was “land owner PPR” user experience (everything went ok with operator, customs, atc, police…) but I will be happy to divert there again if I am not comfortable with flying let alone when the aircraft can’t fly
Interesting. I wonder why ATC told him to remain at the end of the runway, thus blocking the runway?
Peter wrote:
Interesting. I wonder why ATC told him to remain at the end of the runway, thus blocking the runway?
I read somewhere it is a standard procedure at a military airport, they can’t take the risk. The mayaday could be a diversion to then ram into a hangar or a parked plane with an aircraft loaded with explosives. This is of course worse case scenario, but they try to keep any unplanned aircraft as far from the buildings as possible, at least until the situation has cleared out.
Ibra wrote:
I had a friend who was diverting due to “doubts on weather ahead” but he was asked for ppr on RT by an AG (or no landing)
Sigh. Ridiculous PPR rules strike again. I’m sure this kind of thing has been a factor in fatal accidents.
Peter wrote:
I wonder why ATC told him to remain at the end of the runway, thus blocking the runway?
They will need to send those fire trucks somewhere no?
It does not hurt for the PIC to call for them while you are in the air (tough it does sound scary for pax on a GA aircraft, so a wise use of words is not a bad idea “we need assistance, probably landing long, can you send someone”….)
I think the controllers were American because they contacted US airbases.
Plane was a GIS company’s plane so probably commercial pilots.
They were down to 20 mins fuel, don’t think they lied about that. So probably didn’t matter to them if the airfield has avgas or not.
If the controller wouldn’t have asked for fuel remaining in minutes, I think the pilots would have wasted many more valuable minutes. It’s a Korean thing… losing face, trying to be polite, and respecting authority. They had some famous accidents because of that.
Both of my bird strike stories have been added to the appropriate thread.
HBadger wrote:
Plane was a GIS company’s plane so probably commercial pilots.
AFAIU private flying is prohibited in South Korea so it must have been commercial – or training.
