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Comment by kiratp | Hacker News Reader

The FAA themselves recommend that foreign pilots do not use visual approaches at SFO.

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/faa-wants-foreign-...

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.

The flight's scheduled arrival time of 6:15 PM puts it well into darkness for much of the winter.

You know I thought you were right but apparently for that day sunset was 6:30PM.

https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/san-francisco?month=10

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.

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.

As the airport which assigned a landing slot. The airlines must apply for the slots and pay for them.

Ah I see, that makes sense.

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.

> 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.

* https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/faa-tells-foreign-pilo...

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.

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