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Comment by kokken | Hacker News Reader

I’m sure the industry has standards for assigning blame, but it looks to me that ATC is clearly being assholes here.

Even from this article that clearly seems to think Lufthansa is in the wrong I walked away with a feeling that ATC and small town cops are one and the same.

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The current top comment on the article explains the situation, and ATC are "not being assholes here":

>NorCal had a new interpretation of ILS approaches come down several months ago that tied the controllers hands with regards to ILS approaches during visual conditions... The controllers were issued guidelines that if it’s busy and an aircraft is unable to comply with the approaches advertised on the atis or maintain visual separation that its better to hold them until there is adequate space on final as it’s more unsafe to start vectoring 30/40 different aircraft to build the required hole for the 1 aircraft who’s company has a lame rule

The ATC should have just told them that, from the get go. They know exactly how many aircraft are headed their way, the pilot doesn't

> The controller clears the Lufthansa jet to make a visual approach, and the Lufthansa pilot advises “due to company procedures, we are unable visual approach at nighttime”

> The controller then advises that “if that’s the case, then it will be extended delays”

The individual controller won’t know exactly how many airplanes are ahead of this one, and even if they did they can only estimate the delay. In this case the estimate they gave the plane turned out to be optimistic, because the planes ahead of them were taking longer to land than expected. Certainly saying “This conversation is over” would be rude in most circumstances, but it merely reflects the reality that a controller can only spend so much time talking to each crew. The crew already had all the information the controller could give them, and simply needed to make a decision rather than ask more questions.

I'm pretty sure they did.. the article says controller told them there would be "extended delays". Sounds like the pilot just got impatient when ATC couldn't get him on the ground after 10 minutes.

No, the pilot got inpatient when the controller told them the next info will be in 10 minutes (reasonable, shit happens) and did not contact them at that point -the pilot even had to remind the ATC they were supposed to update the flight.

Just tell the pilots that the ATC in NorCAL is also bound to policies and they have to divert. No need to be a dick.

Norcal is an amazing bunch of people with a high stress life-and-death job. They're incredibly accommodating, but when the system is at capacity it's at capacity. SFO is a very special airport with a traffic flow much higher than its footprint would normally allow. Since there is pretty nowhere for it to expand, the only option would be to reduce the number of slot times, which for a business hub like SFO would be terrible.

ATC wasn’t been an asshole. The airspace was extremely busy and there wasn’t space between arriving flights for anyone to make an instrument landing.

In order to make instrument landing, dozens of other planes would have to be moved out of the way.

ATC was more incompetent than asshole.

Yeah but that's their job

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