Basically, SFO normally does VFR parallel approaches at night. Approach sequences these approaches miles beforehand, so there can be a chain of 10-20 aircraft all sequenced to land before responsibility is even transferred to SFO's tower. The incident happened during a particularly busy landing time at SFO, so there was indeed a massive chain of aircraft coming in to land.
Lufthansa was the only aircraft asking for ILS. Because ILS needs greater separation, that would require breaking the chain of approaches, sequencing a single ILS approach, then resuming. The chain of landings already sequenced takes priority, so Lufthansa would have to wait 30+ minutes for a gap to appear. By the time that gap appeared, Lufthansa had just decided to divert to Oakland. If Lufthansa had arrived a bit earlier or a bit later, they would have been sequenced just fine.
ATC could have been a bit more accommodating in rerouting their divert to SFO as soon as the a gap appeared, but Lufthansa was also the only airline requesting ILS, and they're already dealing with sequencing 20+ aircraft during a busy time. It's not clear who's in the wrong here; just an unintended consequence from many well-intentioned decisions.
I think the FAA leadership is ultimately in the wrong for allowing their area of responsibility to deteriorate to the point where a controller and a pilot were put in this situation.
They have a controller shortage that they are not doing enough to fix, and they have a troublesome airport with limited capacity to accommodate traffic, that they are being too bureaucratic about fixing. The controllers at SFO have used a number of tools to address the handicap, but the FAA recently put a lid on that by forbidding side-by-side IFR/VFR approaches while also failing to authorize custom precision landing procedures like SOIA.
The request for ILS is entirely reasonable in this context, and the decision to hold the flight out of the sequence is also reasonable in the context, but to hold the flight with no updates for half an hour is not reasonable and to require it to divert is not reasonable either. The FAA should be held responsible for planning things better than this.
No, Lufthansa should not be dispatching flights to arrive at SFO at the busiest time of night if their pilots aren’t prepared to do the approaches everyone else is doing. This isn’t a foreign vs. domestic carrier thing. British Airways, Air India, EVA, etc. etc. all have pilots prepared to execute night visual approaches and do so every night at SFO.
- "their pilots aren’t prepared to do the approaches everyone else is doing"
Is this is a fair framing? My read of it is that Lufthansa's enforcing a minimal standard of safety—one that's higher than both other airliners' and the ATC's. They're not incapable of doing visual landings at night; rather, they have a policy banning it in non-emergency situations. It (naively) seems reasonable to me not to budge on this kind of thing. (Unless the inflexibility creates new forms of safety issues, in which case I have no idea).
Also, I'm mindful there was a recent near-disaster at SFO with exactly the issue this Lufthansa policy mitigates: a non-ILS landing attempt at night, which attempted the wrong runway due to confusion over visual markers,
Airline pilots can lose their jobs if they do not follow the airline's SOP (Standard Operating Procedure). SFO controllers have gotten a shitty rep, with good reason, it appears. This wouldn't have happened at any of the other many busy airports in the US. This seemed to be the majority opinion on a couple other forums where this has been discussed.
> This wouldn't have happened at any of the other many busy airports in the US.
I'm not aware of any other busy airport in the US that has the same parallel runway situation SFO has, with two parallel runways only 750 feet apart both doing landings. Plenty of other large US airports have parallel runways, but they're further apart and they're staggered between landings and takeoffs.
Sure, Lufthansa can make up whatever rules they want for “safety”. Safest would be to not venture 7 miles above the arctic at 500mph at all. But if their rules are obviously in conflict with the standard operations at an airport, it’s on Lufthansa to adjust not everyone else. You can’t barge in and expect to get ATC priority on account of “company policy” or suddenly there’d be a lot of company policies requiring only direct routings with straight-in approaches.
Let's keep in mind that SFOs "standard operations" is purely economical, it's about making more landings so the airport earns more money. Now you might be happy to compromise your safety so others can earn more money, I think many others are not.
It's also not like SFO doesn't have other LH flights arriving who all have the exact same rules, so it could've hardly come as a surprise.
Finally, the pilot was in some ways quite considerate. He could have just waited and declared a fuel emergency that would have really screwed things up for ATC.
He would be in the wrong to wait and then declare a fuel emergency. He’s supposed to divert once he reaches a certain level. Only if he then had some problem diverting would declaring a fuel emergency become a real option.
> Let's keep in mind that SFOs "standard operations" is purely economical, it's about making more landings so the airport earns more money.
Having more, and more regular, landings is also in the greater public interest, so long as you agree with air travel at all. If SFO changed their rules and could accommodate fewer landings, fewer people would get to travel to San Francisco and more of them would be delayed.
It seems bizarre to blame the airport for being profit seeking for having two runways and wanting to use them both to their maximum safe capacity. You might as well blame Lufthansa for the same thing - if they only operated one airliner, this issue would likely never have come up.
Why do automatic landings require wider separation than visual approaches? If anything, shouldn’t it allow for more dense approaches, since the computer has more situational awareness?
> Finally, the pilot was in some ways quite considerate. He could have just waited and declared a fuel emergency that would have really screwed things up for ATC.
Not really, he would have been sent packing very fast to OAK which is just 10NM from SFO.
They didn't "barge in" or expect any priority. They arrived just like everyone else. As a matter of fact, they travelled farther than probably most arrivals that day so ATC had much more warning they were approaching than, say, a flight from Denver or Atlanta
As I understand the sequence of events, the flight crew informed ATC that they couldn't execute a visual approach...when ATC cleared them for a visual approach. If they really couldn't do a visual approach due to company policy, one would think they would inform ATC of this earlier, to at least give some time to try to accommodate them. (Other commenters have said that this information might be filed with the flight plan, which if true would put more of the onus on ATC.)
If I recall from listening to the ATC conversation back at the time, the ATC acknowledged that they had received this information from Lufthansa in a phone call far ahead of the arrival.
Does ATC know your flight plan? My recollection from the Channel 9 days was that pilots requested whatever landing clearance they wanted when they pinged the appropriate ATC, but I’m neither a pilot nor ATC, so don’t know if there were processes I wasn’t seeing.
ATC knows the flight plan, but in the US (as opposed to Europe) the last few steps to the ground are generally not filed as part of the flight plan, but are negotiated when closer to landing. There are pros and cons of this, of course.
Describing this as "barging in" is rather strange to me. The aviation industry is neither a charity nor the average software engineering shop; not only is air traffic control something that airlines pay for, this is far from the first or the last time that Lufthansa will fly into SFO.
Now I am confused - I have no actual knowledge on this but on the post there is a comment from an experienced pilot saying the opposite:
> [...] But IMO ATC was absolutely not doing what they are supposed to do. Air traffic control is literally a service provided to and paid for by the airlines.
Let’s revisit this comment in 3 years when one of the increasing number of near misses has resulted in an accident.
I am usually the first to point out the cost of safety measures. But the increasing number of near-misses in the US suggests that it’s maybe not the time to brush off the risk.
You might be interested to know that the FAA doesn’t follow standard ICAO procedures for visual approach clearance. So when SFO “rules” are in conflict with how the entire rest of the world handles visual approach clearances, perhaps the FAA is the one that needs to get their act together.
In order to drive this point—What kind of arbitrary safety policies are ATCs to expect and service?
If there are 200 airlines landing at SFO, you surely cannot expect ATC to make exceptions and argue about this or that. We need upfront, transparent and written procedures and policies.
Luthansa should notify SFO of their requirements before departing. SFO would have the right to reject their "safety" policy. And we wouldn't have this sticky situation.
The air Canada issue can still be mitigated, even on a visual approach, by programming the plane for the runway’s instrument approach (ILS or otherwise) assuming one is available.
Many pilots do this, and you don’t need a special ILS clearance or its corresponding separation to do so.
I dunno. If everyone is doing 75 on the freeway, "safest" might be 65, but you can also create more unsafe conditions by not matching the speed of all the other traffic.
This is a very popular argument. I run into it a lot. I have been criticized for following the speed limit when there were six vehicles spaced across five kilometers. It seems I am expected to speed up to match the one vehicle that passed me.
If nobody obeys the speed limit and it is in fact safer to exceed the speed limit, why do we have speed limits? Why does the government make it illegal to do the safest thing? And why does the public put up with it? Why is there no MADD-like organization protesting the insane government policies that put everybody at risk?
I don't have any data to show that 65 is safer than 75, or to show that 75 is safer than 65. I don't know if speed limits are based on any real safety data. But I'm pretty sure that your rationalization is not. This is my little (misguided) campaign to combat that argument. Even if 95% of the population embrace it as a plausible excuse for breaking rules and to malign rule-keepers.
You are right to a certain point, but all you are required is to follow the airplane in front of you and land. It's a dumb simple requirement. If it was such a big issue, FAA would have put a stop to it at SFO, but just because one Air Canada flight tried to land on the taxiway does not make it a safety critical issue. Mistakes happen all the time.
Asking for an airport to break its arrival sequence because your airline has a different policy than the airport is bonkers.
Yes, mistakes happen all the time. One aspect of the aviation industry that I have always noted is the reluctance to adopt this as an excuse for failure. When a pilot pushes Button X instead of Button Y, it isn't just chalked up to pilot error. Somebody asks why Button X and Button Y are arranged right next to each other to begin with. Why was a situation created in which "pilot error" becomes so easy? Then things are changed so that such pilot error becomes harder and less likely.
It's an admirable thing when somebody has to go out of their way and go through some contortions to make critical mistakes.
Commercial pilot here. The Lufthansa prohibition on night visuals isn’t a new thing. Proper flow control when that airplane entered US airspace could have ensured correct spacing long before the aircraft entered ZOA (Oakland ARTCC) airspace. That NorCal approach expected to give the Lufthansa a night visual is puzzling because anyone that has worked in an approach control at night would know that it’s common for many operators especially biz jet operators and Lufthansa to have a operational prohibition on night visuals (many operators also have prohibitions on night circling approaches, but these aren’t common in large airliner airports.)
Flow Control is also part of the problem: they knew that aircraft was en route many hours before, they should have sequenced the airplane correctly. But this is also a result of staffing and priorities at the FAA. Buttigeg is essentially incompetent. A small town mayor of debatable accomplishment in even getting road potholes repaired being elevated to lead the U.S. Dept of Transportation was mind-blowing. If he deserved any cabinet role, HUD would have been the closest fit, but we all know that all presidents have a tendency to appoint people as political favors rather than subject-matter excellence.
Ask controllers and pilots who have been in this business for more than a few years and the giant belly-flop of the FAA is profound. Controllers are far less experienced and greatly overworked than they were pre-2020.
And interestingly, the FAA does not follow ICAO rules for visual approaches — the international standard requires consent of both the pilot and ATC — it’s not something that ATC initiates unilaterally. For those interested, here is a helpful document on the consequences of the FAA/ICAO differences: https://ops.group/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/21atsbl04-...
And here is an article that is significantly more informed on this incident than some frequent flyer blog written by backseaters rather than aviation professionals:
"The flight was initially supposed to leave Munich at 4:20PM, but only departed at 6:30PM
The flight was supposed to arrive in San Francisco at 7PM, but ended up landing in Oakland at 9:43PM, after a 12hr13min flight"
Don't think they intended to arrive at the busiest time
FAA is completely asleep at the wheel in most areas it governs. Youtube is filled with ATC simply refusing to do their jobs, and under no circumstances should exchanges like this should be allowed to happen.
There's an ATC shortage, but so what? There's an even larger shortage of safety which needs to be addressed, and FAA are doing nothing at all.
From what I've read last week [0], the main problem is that there's not enough (qualified) candidates being hired, and current ATC employees are routinely working 6d x 10h weeks.
Stressed & overworked employees doesn't seem like a great solution to critical life/death situation either.
“I found the
diversity in hiring air traffic controllers increased after the termination of the AT-CTI. However
applicants in underrepresented groups are more likely to be lost through attrition in the FAA
Academy Air Traffic Controller Training Program.”
Pilots and controllers who are already in short supply? That’s the problem, the individual actors are helpless in a system optimized against them.
Certainly, the FAA is a contributing factor through wages and working conditions leading to controller shortages, but airlines can also do more to better accommodate pilots.
This is a system headed to failure, with those responsible not making responsible choices and who won’t be held accountable when failure occurs (hundreds of passenger air transport deaths).
The FAA (and specifically Transport Secretary Buttigieg) hold all the cards here. That they're not doing more to address the issues speaks volumes about the FAA's mission and abrogation of it.
Congress holds the purse strings but FAA makes the rules. And their rules are strict, limiting both populations. There is an ATC shortage and FAA’s rules make it difficult to hire/train enough ATC. There is a pilot shortage and FAA’s rules make it difficult to hire/train enough pilots. We need to either reduce our demand of pilots and airline travel, thus reducing the load on ATC, or train more controllers and pilots.
ATC has ridiculous age limits for onboarding and retiring staff, and there are a lot of things (aeromedical and otherwise) that can disqualify your from becoming a pilot. I think they can lighten up and still maintain aviation’s good safety record.
This is just another instance of the long set of Shittification and Shrinkflation happening everywhere, brought about by us holding our collective heads in the sand over the real rate of inflation. I'd bet it's a lot more than the official numbers.
FAAs 3B shortfall in funding is not appearing in the extra cost of running a government. They're "shrinking" or rather "shittifying" the service that the government provides by not hiring enough personnel required.
Aye. Increasing taxes is basically the only way to ensure the system is funded sufficiently to:
(1) hire enough people to perform the ops
(2) hire enough people to update and modernize the policy
Any other solution that doesn't emphasize building up the human capital is easy to argue against, IMO. You simply cannot draw from an empty well, and you really really don't want text GPTs attempting to land you no matter how well-intentioned the fine-tuning.
>> Increasing taxes is basically the only way to ensure the system is funded sufficiently
Making no judgement either way, its worth pointing out that there are other ways.
Firstly one could prioritise this over some other budget item. Perhaps, for example, the military budget (currently 766b) or the TSA budget (currently 11.2b, up 1.6b over last year.)
Secondly, one could restore taxes that have recently been cut. While this is indeed a "short term increase" it can also be framed as "a restoration of tax income recently removed."
Removed incidentally by a govt that was already running a deficit.
Again i make no judgement. All budgeting (at a personal or govt level) is about setting spending priorities. It just appears that safe air travel in the US is not a priority right now.
Because ATC has nothing to do with airports. The only people directly involved from the airports are GND/TWR. APP is not directly related and Centers cover large swaths of territory and just make sure planes fly safe.
The two runways that run in parallel are too close to each other to land side-by-side in bad weather (because they only allow using Visual aka VFR landings).
"SFO operates on two sets of parallel runways. On fair weather days, SFO can accommodate approximately 60 arrivals per hour. During periods of low visibility, current FAA safety regulations allow aircraft to arrive side-by-side only if runways are at least 4,300 feet apart."
There's a bunch of reasons but it's primarily the popularity of the airport combined with the runway layout and the noise abatement procedures all made worse by the Bay's weather.
SFO has two pairs of parallel runways and the pairs are very close together, with the runways in the 28L/28R pair only 750 feet apart. That's really close for an A350 with a giant 200ft wingspan and the noise abatement prevents the use of a standard step down approach where the pilots have much better visibility.
If I remember correctly, this Lufthansa flight usually arrives during the day, when the company permits visual approaches, but had a delayed departure, which is what let to their policy prohibiting visual approaches and the bad timing with the huge chain of other arrivals.
Sure, but my point is that this flight arriving in darkness is not something they never would have considered when planning the route and setting company policies prohibiting visual approaches at night.
The article is incorrect (no surprise, considering it's a blog hawking credit cards that offer bonus frequent flyer miles written by people who are not aviators or controllers or anything related).
The issue isn't the visual approach. Lufthansa can do visual approaches at night. What they can't do is maintain visual separation from other aircraft at night. They mentioned this is exactly what isn't allowed for them. I think perhaps they could have been accommodated better at SFO, but the plane landed in Oakland and everyone survived so it worked out.
There as nothing in the Lufthansa plans or policies that would make this flight or landing impossible, unreasonable or unsafe. I imagine this landing at night is not a first either.
> The FAA themselves recommend that foreign pilots do not use visual approaches at SFO.
In 2013, temporarily:
> They also can use an instrument system called a glide slope indicator, although that has been out of service in San Francisco since June 1 because of ongoing runway improvements.
> The FAA said all foreign carriers should continue to use alternate instrument approaches until the glide slopes return to service in late August.
Was that referring to the Primary Glide Slope Indicator being out of order at the time though? I find the article a little unclear if that's a general recommendation even if all the aids are functional for a visual approach.
One useful part of that video is how they play clips of ATC telling flights to “join the localizer”.
SFO has two published visual approaches (https://www.airnav.com/airport/KSFO, scroll to the bottom): Both visual approaches have pilots fly to intercept their runway’s localizer, the part of the ILS equipment that provides lateral positioning, relative to the localizer’s centerline (which is generally coincident to the corresponding runway’s centerline).
So, by flying the published visual approach and remaining “on the localizer”, you have separation from the planes on the parallel runway. What’s missing is careful monitoring and separation, and that’s what Lufthansa wanted.
You're leaving out that they had a filed flight plan which for an international flight means controllers had many hours of notice as to when the flight was scheduled to arrive and that they would be looking for an ILS approach and it was the responsibility of approach controllers to have a spot in the pattern for them.
They arrived in the area on time, and controllers had not allocated it a spot, which is why the pilot sounds a bit peeved when told there isn't a spot. When he asks for one and they tell him that they can't give an estimate, that's the second strike.
Strike three was telling him to fuck off ("what's your alternate, sir?")
Controllers pulled a power play to bully him for wanting an ILS approach that reduces airport traffic capacity (larger separation distances) and in the process created a risk compounding another risk (a fatigued long-distance flight crew.) This is how crashes happen. All because the airport and airlines want to shove more flights through the airport to make more money.
The sad thing is that they'll get away with it because we have a massive shortage of controllers right now (because they're underpaid and overworked. Thanks, Reagan.)
The flight plan factors into flow timing, which is used to manage capacity, but there's no reservation of a landing time. Flight plan timings aren't accurate enough for that to be feasible when you have landings at close to one a minute.
The flow timing rate used for approaches to SFO during visual conditions is based on visual approaches, so this particular aircraft didn't fall into the expectations used for that planning mechanism. Even then it's not a forward looking plan, just a rate limit on arrivals that causes departure clearances to be delayed. I'm not even sure if it works for international flights.
Are controllers expected to manage the details of the take off and landing queues and also expected to be be looking quite a bit upstream to see what's coming up and check the details of the flight and company policies?
I suspect the controller assumed this flight would use visual separation, like everyone else, when it entered the landing queue; and the pilot expected to use ILS, like everywhere else given the conditions, when it entered the landing queue. The difference in expectations became apparent only when clearance was given, at which point there's not enough flexibility to accommodate an ILS landing, and it's hard to guess when there will be a place to slot it in. Diverting to Oakland and repositioning later is a reasonable, if not optimal outcome.
My guess is, if either side had mentioned their expectations when the flight entered approach control, and it had been cleared up then, it would have been quite possible to get an ILS landing on the first go round. (ATIS recordings did say simultaneous visual approaches)
Now granted there is usually a second planner controller that does not talk to traffic but is responsible for looking ahead, perhaps that was affected by the shortage
I think the real issue is they promised 10 minutes max then once 15 minutes elapsed and the pilot complained, tower told the pilot to GTFO. It just feels wrong.
I keep seeing this repeated, but it's obviously not true. ATC does not work on any such basis.
ATC's job is to safely and efficiently route the traffic. Different traffic may have different needs, and if unexpected needs arise, ATC has broad discretion on whether or how to accommodate them. But being the first in line, or anywhere else in line, doesn't mean much if you're holding up other traffic - as demonstrated in this incident!
they were ready. "fly heading XXX, vectors for visual 28R", is them saying, "i'm ready for you to land". What norcal (not SFO) was not prepared to do was accommodate the extra wide gap that lufthansa's company policy would've required.
it was up to lufthansa to tell approach that they're not going to be able to accept the approach in use. It's being advertised on the atis that they would've been able to pick up in the air long before they got near the airport. (well, 10+ minutes before this interaction started anyway, they can probably get d-atis anywhere).
i'm sure it was said in the follow up video, but lufthansa knew what they were offering at SFO and if they needed something different they should've spoken up much sooner.
> i'm sure it was said in the follow up video, but lufthansa knew what they were offering at SFO and if they needed something different they should've spoken up much sooner.
How are they supposed to know that an ILS approach - a completely routine procedure - is not available? If the problem is them not giving ATC enough warning, what process is there for telling ATC ahead of time? What was SFO going to do if it clouded over, close the airport?
All of that information is published ahead of time by KSFO (and every other major airport) including runways in use, traffic patterns, minimum separations, available approach types, and how things will change in bad weather. Everything is available to the pilots and dispatchers ahead of time and in updates during the flight.
> What was SFO going to do if it clouded over, close the airport?
No, land planes at a slower rate (about half) because they can no longer land two planes side by side on the parallel runways. On a day when the weather is known to be cloudy and that is factored in up front, that's not a huge problem.
On a day when the weather is clear and planes are landing at the higher rate, it is a huge problem.
> On a day when the weather is known to be cloudy and that is factored in up front, that's not a huge problem.
> On a day when the weather is clear and planes are landing at the higher rate, it is a huge problem.
But it can get cloudy any time in SF. So suddenly needing to switch over to ILS operations should be something they're set up to handle pretty routinely.
They would normally have warning from weather forecasters about upcoming cloudy weather so they would have time to switch over to ILS operations in an orderly manner. Switching in the middle of a clear evening because of one plane is something quite different.
again, the ILS wasn't unavailable, but ATC for hundreds of miles had been planning on every plane taking the visual, with its reduced separation requirements. if a plane needs an approach with increased requirements, they need to tell ATC early so ATC can put them in their plan.
> How are they supposed to know that an ILS approach - a completely routine procedure - is not available?
it's not that the ILS wasn't available, it's that the atis would've said
"VISUAL APPROACH, RUNWAY 28L 28R IN USE"
and the lufthansa crew would say, "huh, we need something different than that". in aviation if you want something non standard, you need to let air traffic know so they can put you in their plan. If you don't tell them different, they're going to plan for you to do what's being advertised.
> What was SFO going to do if it clouded over, close the airport?
then SFO would've advertised the ILS (checks atis) like they're doing right now ...
> and the lufthansa crew would say, "huh, we need something different than that". in aviation if you want something non standard, you need to let air traffic know so they can put you in their plan. If you don't tell them different, they're going to plan for you to do what's being advertised.
So they should have, what, called them when they were back over the east coast? Genuine question. They filed the flight plan, they requested the approach they needed when they got there (which again, is a completely routine one that SFO uses every week), it sounds like they were sending all the communication that's expected?
the flight plan doesn't have any bearing here. norcal approach isn't (and shouldn't be) expected to know the SOP's for every company in the world. the flight's clearance limit was to SFO and they were being given the approach that their requested airport was advertising.
> called them when they were back over the east coast?
depends on who they were on with when they found out SFO was advertising an approach they couldn't take. At the very least they could've told oakland center; that's who they would've been talking to before being transferred to norcal approach, and is probably the one sequencing a good chunk of those other planes coming in.
You misunderstand the problem. APP did not say they they don't have ILS available, it said it will take some time before a long enough gap exists between incoming traffic so they can allow for LH to insert themselves for landing.
In aviation, times are almost always estimates, not hard figures. Just like when the captain announces every 15 minutes there will be 15 minutes more delay, the same happens when controllers have other things to do, they route you over a holding pattern until they can deal with you.
And seriously, you don't delay 20-30 flights because one non emergency flight can't do visual approaches at night.
I wonder if there is any mechanism that reconfirms landing slots (and other aspects of the flight plan) still being available after a delayed takeoff for cases like this.
Is it really just a matter of taking off and hoping for the best, or did somebody in the chain of granting a take-off clearance miss something?
I've had flights that were delayed, and then during the start of the boarding process, we had to stop and switch to a different aircraft, because the delay meant we'd be too loud for the noise curfew when we arrived, so we needed to take a quieter plane. That was a domestic flight into a small airport (LGB), but I imagine there's something to manage total flight volume in general; there's certainly exception handling to delay or cancel departures when the destination airport is unlikely to be available due to weather.
That’s a static rule that the pilots can (and have to) comply with based on information available to them, though.
I wonder if an updated (international) flight plan is checked for projected congestion levels (based on other flight plans?) at all and can be declined for that reason?
The flightplans get shared and updated with every involved area. Usually those can say no ahead of time and always at the time of airspace entry (entering US airspace for example)
What checks the FAA does to those plans, I doubt we'll ever know
The original "Thanks Regan" comment makes no sense to me.
To be clear, President Regan fired all striking air traffic controllers in 1981. The same Wiki article says: <<The FAA had initially claimed that staffing levels would be restored within two years; however, it took closer to 10 years before the overall staffing levels returned to normal.>>
So that means, FAA had enough controllers by 1991. What does that incident have to do with today's shortage? Nothing.
Deeper: I tried to Google why is there a shortage of air traffic controllers in the United States. The root cause appears unclear to me. I found this article[1], that says: <<Secretary Buttigieg did have some promising news right after Labor Day, when he announced that 1,500 air traffic controllers had been hired this year after an aggressive recruiting campaign and a raise in starting salary to $127,000 a year.>>
That is a huge salary in the United States. I'm surprised this is not attracting more qualified candidates. This tells me that this requirements to become an FAA-certified air traffic controller are incredibly strict. Does anyone know why EU / Japan / Korea does not have the same issues? (All highly-advanced, wealthy nations with lots of air travel.)
“I gave them a choice. Continue this and I will by every means at my disposal teach you and get the people of Singapore to help me teach you a lesson you won't forget.
Took them 65 minutes and they decided ok it isn't worth the fight.
Why? Because they know they'll lose.
They know that I'm prepared to ground the airline. They know that I can get the airline going again without them.“
I'm confused here. Were the Singapore Airlines pilots unionized? If yes, was it illegal for them to strike? These types of "strong man" posts do so little for me. Zero useful context provided and lacking in any nuance.
For example, some light Googling tells me:
Mr Lee had in 1980 taken the pilots' union to task for staging an unofficial work-to-rule protest in November, to demand a 30 per cent basic pay...
To me, "work-to-rule protest" isn't illegal. Annoying, yes, but legal in most places. 30% increase in basic pay: Maybe their current pay was far too low? Again: No deeper info provided in your post.
Singapore is not a representative example of... anything, honestly. Certainly not of "EU / Japan / Korea" which was the original question. So I have no idea what you're getting at.
"On 20 July 2023, the Korean Metal Workers' Union (KMWU) took another strong stand against trade union repression in Korea, calling for an end to the heavy-handed tactics employed by the government."
The idea that workers in unions in Asia suddenly have robust worker protections is false.
The very fact that these fights are happening in 2023 demonstrates that there are, or at least were until recently, strong and active unions. Maybe the Korean government's 2009 law really did depower the unions, and maybe Korea will see a corresponding shortage of workers in air traffic control and similar safety-critical jobs gradually develop as the effect of that works its way through.
Most US airports are not located inside large cities. They are located 15-30km outside large cities. Normally, there is plenty of much cheaper suburban housing available.
Also, in your view, is 127k as a starting salary not enough for a "life and death responsibility job"? If no, are you willing to pay higher airfares to cover the cost? If yes, by how much in %?
I love these types of reactionary, emotional HN posts. This term: "life and death responsibility job": Do bus/train/truct drivers, crane operators, ER nurses/doctors, firefighters, police, military group troops qualify for that same phrase? I am sure all except medical doctors have a starting salary much, much lower than 127k.
Why are we thanking Reagan (sarcastically)? The mandatory retirement age for air traffic controllers is 56 and he fired them all 42 years ago. Presumably none of them were prepubescent, so they wouldn't be working today.
it's not about arriving "on time", it's about telling approach what they needed early so approach can fit the request into their plan. and, at least according to the initial video, they didn't until they were being given vectors for the approach.
A small nitpick: the other aircraft were doing _visual_ approaches, not VFR approaches. A visual approach is a type of instrument approach operated under IFR regulations. Practically, this has no affect on your comment. Just pointing this out in case its interesting to you or others (if you didn't know this already).
Does this mean controllers still have a responsibility of separating aircraft under a visual approach? (A comment in a sibling thread mentioned that Lufthansa pilots are allowed visual approaches, but are not allowed to be responsible for visual separation at night.)
Edit: sounds like visual approach means ATC do not have responsibility for separation. I thought the entire point of IFR (which – according to you – visual approach falls under) was that ATC is responsible for separation!
From what I understand, despite the tower not being able to create a gap for 30+ minutes,which although extreme may be understandable due to SFO being the way it is, another major factor was the fact that the tower was unable to provide a realistic estimated time to enter the circuit. That is completely unacceptable.
As for not being able to give an accurate estimate, that is not for the on-the-radio approach controller to calculate, given their view of the airspace. The video posted by parent shows how long the inbound flows were (at least on the east side); approach wouldn’t have seen that.
I meant for the ATC to provide a descent estimate of when Lufthansa should be expected to enter the AERODROME TRAFFIC CIRCUIT (since you want tolink the FAA glossary) in order to land (they had them on a hold pattern for 35+ minutes). This is independent of whether the approach is IFR or VFR. A TOWER controller has all the information necessary to calculate that estimate, and should be expected to do so, the same way a stock trader is expected to calculate PnL of their positions on the fly given the current stock price.
Most of the queue would have been with approach, not tower. The aircraft sequenced to land were split across at least two controllers, tower and approach, and possibly more than one approach controller depending on how SFO splits them up. I would expect approach to be able to provide a reasonable estimate but it seems like in this case the estimate was found to be four minutes off, which seems totally within the bounds of a reasonable estimate from an approach controller.
The traffic pattern (US term) isn't really a factor here either way, airliners flying visual still usually use charted routes (like the instrument procedures) or radar vectors rather than the pattern. Remember that the pattern is only about one mile out from the field. By the time airliners are that close they're probably cleared.
> but it seems like in this case the estimate was found to be four minutes off
No, I don't think you are being at all accurate about characterizing that; maybe you lost count of the delays. After being told to wait ten more minutes, the pilots waited an extra four minutes before pressing for an update, and got told to wait another 10-15 (or f off).
Aerodrome traffic circuit is the ICAO term for traffic pattern, which is it what it is called in the US (it may be in the glossary but the point is that manual uses "traffic pattern" repeatedly). And this "traffic circuit" you refer to is almost always a VFR thing, as IFR approaches use specific charted procedures that generally do not end with a traffic circuit.
Aerodrome traffic pattern is completely different from holding patterns. And this is what LH was instructed to do, keep holding. Holding patterns are published for all airports and usually planes are stacked on those holding patterns and they are emptied FIFO style. Busier airports have multiple holding patterns to accommodate a large number of aircraft in case of on ground emergencies.
Sure, but GP stated wrt traffic patterns, "This is independent of whether the approach is IFR or VFR." which is not the case. For IFR, as was the case here, the LH was looking to execute an IFR approach, not ever enter the aerodrome traffic circuit.
That's why it is called an estimate. It is how much you think it might take, not the exact amount of time.
When asked about how long something it is going to take, everyone is given an estimate, not an absolute value. And this is because a lot of things can happen in between that are out of everyone's control.
I found that part delightfully ironic, because it's basically a meme that whenever a flight is delayed ground staff/pilots will always tell passengers "we'll just be off in just a few minutes" over and over again regardless of how long the delay is going to be.
The controller tried to give an estimated time, but that original estimate was blown out of the water by the other planes in the queue taking longer than expected, and the controller didn't have time to keep trying to give an updated estimated time to the one plane in the queue that wanted to do things the hard way (that also, due to circumstances within its own control, departed its original airport late and arrived outside of the window where SFO could have accommodated its silly request without any delays).
Your framing here is weird and doesn't match the facts. The airplane didn't want to do anything. Its pilots were following a mandatory company safety policy.
My framing here is literally based on the transcript of the conversation between the pilot and ATC.
Its pilots were following a mandatory company safety policy.
This is not true, because if it was true the pilot would already have diverted to Oakland per "mandatory" company "safety" policy when he was first told that they would not be able to accommodate his non-standard request to disrupt the twenty plus planes that were already in the queue.
It's not the ATC's fault the pilot didn't manage his plane's schedule properly.
> first told that they would not be able to accommodate his non-standard request
Now you are just making things up. Please go take a chill pill and stop spreading misinformation.
Edit: You may not be aware of the international differences in views on visual approaches. Requesting ILS is far from the "silly request" you seem to be trying to mock. This doesn't mean that ATC was wrong to make the decisions that they did, but it does mean it is a reasonable safety request to make. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/47638/why-are-v...
The key bit of information missing here and from all these replies is that Lufthansa’s no SFO night time VFR policy was a reaction to and SFO and NorCal notice requiring this limitation from inbound international carriers after a few incidents but the requirement of how to implement this was ambiguous and Lufthansa is complying as best they can
>It's not clear who's in the wrong here; just an unintended consequence from many well-intentioned decisions.
Attention should be given not just to what was said, but how it was said. It is obvious the controller was frustrated. It conveys the impression that at least part of his decision-making was influenced by spite and not good intentions.
I don’t think this makes much sense in the real world. Shit happens and plans change. What if an aircraft needs to do a go-around, do they suddenly face 45m of delay or immediately need to divert, because The Sequence is immutable?
No, they’d move things around a bit. SFO decided that this plane wasn’t going to land there as soon as they asked for ILS, instead of doing their job and making a gap.
> What if an aircraft needs to do a go-around, do they suddenly face 45m of delay or immediately need to divert, because The Sequence is immutable?
You would be surprised, but if it is a busy time, they will not be put in the sequence right away and will be put at the back of the line, which will take as long as it is going to take.
If you do a go around, you will be passed to APP which will decide what to do with you.
I listened to the first YT video from VASAviation and then the followup video that is very long with a lot of explanations.
I think Lufthansa was in the wrong here:
- they knew SFO does visual parallel landings, and ILS is provided if able and it does not interrupt the flow of planes
- pilots attitude was not very professional and they started on the wrong foot with "you told us 10 minutes that ended 4 minutes ago"
- then they told ATC they're gonna fuck up their sequence
- then they started complaining again that why is everyone sequenced before them even though ATC told them that they will be cleared once there's a hole in the arrivals sequence long enough to accommodate an ILS landing, and the new estimate was 15-20min more
It is a requirement for pilots to know how an airport operates and what to expect when they get there or depart.
I guess in the end Lufthansa needs to send pilots with better manners to SFO and put more fuel in their airplanes in case they need to wait for a gap in the arrival sequence to accommodate ILS.
I don't understand why what seems like such obvious common-sense about this flight is so controversial. Is it the lack of deference ATC gave the pilots, treating them like equals instead of superiors?
A bit of an aside, but: I live and drive along 101 south of SFO, and you can literally see this chain of landings- typically if I can see the plane flying between San Mateo Bridge and SFO, I can see the next pair of planes, and at night/clear weather, I can see one or two more pairs.
I went to check flightradar but I can see right now they are landing planes in the opposite configuration (approaching from the northeast instead of the south east), I guess because of wind conditions (see Operational Flow, https://www.flysfo.com/about/community-noise/noise-office/fl...).
Another important detail: they did this because it was company policy, not because it's what the pilots wanted. The pilots would have been more than happy to do a visual approach.
IMHO the blame lies with the Lufthansa corporate office.
I agree that Lufthansa has to accept the repercussions of their policy, and if somebody asks me for a favor and says they need to because "it's their policy", I'd squint pretty hard at them, that's not really the jurisdiction of policy.
For all the people who believe that the policy is the safest and safety comes first, that's a fine opinion, but if other people don't agree to that tradeoff (absolute safety versus demands on a crowded airport timeslot) you have to accept that, you can't impose your opinion about safety on everybody else's schedule.
I can also see that the air traffic controller might have messed up. Perhaps they intended to squeeze Lufthansa in when they told them to wait, and maybe they forgot and didn't, and then when pressed they got irritated, that's how overworked people typically would react; but still it was their call.
Perhaps this flight is never late so they never encountered this situation before. We can't expect everything to go smoothly all the time, so we don't necessarily need policy changes because of what happened, simply adjust what expectations we should have. And if Lufthansa expects future conflicts, now is the time to work it out with the appropriate parties (i.e. not the whole internet)
Basically, SFO normally does VFR parallel approaches at night. Approach sequences these approaches miles beforehand, so there can be a chain of 10-20 aircraft all sequenced to land before responsibility is even transferred to SFO's tower. The incident happened during a particularly busy landing time at SFO, so there was indeed a massive chain of aircraft coming in to land.
Lufthansa was the only aircraft asking for ILS. Because ILS needs greater separation, that would require breaking the chain of approaches, sequencing a single ILS approach, then resuming. The chain of landings already sequenced takes priority, so Lufthansa would have to wait 30+ minutes for a gap to appear. By the time that gap appeared, Lufthansa had just decided to divert to Oakland. If Lufthansa had arrived a bit earlier or a bit later, they would have been sequenced just fine.
ATC could have been a bit more accommodating in rerouting their divert to SFO as soon as the a gap appeared, but Lufthansa was also the only airline requesting ILS, and they're already dealing with sequencing 20+ aircraft during a busy time. It's not clear who's in the wrong here; just an unintended consequence from many well-intentioned decisions.