Oh Lufthansa….or Oh SFO controllers?

I watched both videos; the controller version was laughable! That tool compared what happened here to an opposite direction landing. Apples & Oranges….

Controller was way out of line. I think the word “controller“ gives some a false sense of invincibility. Hope this controller gets sent down.
 
scooter2525 said:
I blame the morons meowing on guard. They are probably the same ones missing radio calls.
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The amount of times I have to repeat myself has gone up 20x in the last 2 years. Several times a day I literally have to make every transmission 2-3 times to multiple aircraft. And not just at times you’d expect a pilot to be busy with other things, I mean like approach clearances. 3 miles from the localizer on base is not the time to stop listening.
 
I will say there seems to be potential missing information here. For example.

1. We don't know what Lufthansa's SOPs actually say. The pilots could have been mistaken or they were written poorly so they took the conservative approach. They could also be 100% accurate. No way to really know without someone showing us the procedures.

2. What has Lufthansa been doing in the past? Is this a new SOP that SFO controllers were unaware of? I am willing to bet that if it were common for them to require a full ILS with maximum spacing at night the controllers would likely space them appropriately on the way in to SFO. It isn't like Lufthansa is new to the airport.

Yes I do believe there were mistakes in the scenario. For example, giving a delay estimate that wasn't remotely close to being accurate is a problem.
 
NovemberEcho said:
The amount of times I have to repeat myself has gone up 20x in the last 2 years. Several times a day I literally have to make every transmission 2-3 times to multiple aircraft. And not just at times you’d expect a pilot to be busy with other things, I mean like approach clearances. 3 miles from the localizer on base is not the time to stop listening.
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Which I would expect less of as CPDLC rolls out.
 
tcco94 said:
No one was arguing about the wait. Did you bother to watch the video? When they waited almost 20 minutes and asked for an update ATC said “this conversation is over” then forced them to divert because they can’t be bothered outside of their bubble of expectations. I don’t even understand how an actual pilot could defend ATC on this one. But if there was a person - I assumed it was you
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Good. Their job is to control traffic, not carry out explanations of why something is. Take a phone number, and call them on the ground. Never understood pilots who demanded to know something in the air, that involves questions about how ATC is doing their job. LOLz.


Key takeaway, foreign carriers need to put their big boy pants on, and adopt what we have here at some airports due to complexity: a nighttime visual approach is required to be backed up by an instrument approach (not an actual requirement to get vectors for the full approach with separation).
 
It isn’t just Woofthansa. There was another foreign carrier (Turkish I think) that was coming into San Fran and I heard them say they’ll need an ILS. Luckily for them, controller said he can’t do 28R, but could they take 28L and about a 10 minute delay? They said yes. They landed after us.
 
Cherokee_Cruiser said:
Good. Their job is to control traffic, not carry out explanations of why something is. Take a phone number, and call them on the ground. Never understood pilots who demanded to know something in the air, that involves questions about how ATC is doing their job. LOLz.


Key takeaway, foreign carriers need to put their big boy pants on, and adopt what we have here at some airports due to complexity: a nighttime visual approach is required to be backed up by an instrument approach (not an actual requirement to get vectors for the full approach with separation).
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Did ATC do their job or send a heavy over the ocean until it ran low on fuel because they didn’t want to do their job.


View: https://youtu.be/LQCU36pkH7c?si=5rqtYpLhK2wWPLa_
 
It was mentioned a few pages ago, but FAA ATC is hanging on by a thread. We are all being worked 6 days a week, many times 10 hours a day, without the proper staffing, working multiple sectors combined when they shouldn't be, because there isn't enough staffing to have all the sectors open. We're all seeing every month with every new close call or crappy scenario, that the holes in the swiss cheese are getting very close to lining up. The good news is that absolutely nothing is being done to fix it. The head of the Air Traffic Organization just testified to congress with a straight face that the FAA is "better staffed to handle the holidays than last year". We have less than 10 more CPC's nationwide than we did last year.

They need more spacing to get the guy in on the ILS, there was a solid line of guys coming in on the DYAMD as well as multiple from the south on the SERFR. It's easy to watch a youtube video and say "Oh NORCAL sucks, SFO Sucks, ZOA Sucks, why couldnt they just get the guy in?". The reality is theres 50 more A/C coming all spaced out based on every single one accepting a visual approach. Should ZOA go into holding for 10-15 minutes to allow Lufthansa to go in on the ILS? Its not as simple as just, Oh they shouldve figured out a way to get Lufthansa in. Crappy situation for sure, but I just wish people wouldnt assume its just controller incompetence. Its a complicated system. One thing I havent found is how much notice did DLH give that they cant accept the visual? It was advertised on the ATIS AFAIK. If they had told ZOA early on the STAR, they could've called down to NCT and gotten the ball rolling to build a hole for them.
 
Cherokee_Cruiser said:
It isn’t just Woofthansa. There was another foreign carrier (Turkish I think) that was coming into San Fran and I heard them say they’ll need an ILS. Luckily for them, controller said he can’t do 28R, but could they take 28L and about a 10 minute delay? They said yes. They landed after us.
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*still doesn’t know the context of the video*
*has nothing to do with the incident*
*Lufthansa was never offered this, and this was quite simply what they wanted*

#impressive
 
Inverted said:
There was no mention of parallel traffic or pairing traffic to keep visual off. They simply said they could not accept a visual approach and when asked if they could maintain visual separation with traffic ahead, they said no per company policy. They were punished for it IMHO.
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Hopefully I’m not saying the quiet part out loud here, but SFO is not a “normal” airport in this regard. Normal ops is parallel charted visual approaches, relying on visual separation to exploit a technicality and get aircraft side-by-side to parallel runways that are too close to allow for parallel approaches per the regs. The Quiet Bridge, Tip Toe, FMS Bridge Visual (and any other company specific ones I might be missing) don’t actually care if you have the airport in sight and are engineered to get the pilot to fly an RNAV approach while also getting aircraft closer together sooner using visual separation (hence Chasen’s comments about clouds between the bridges and the airport and them running the approaches anyway).

The entire system is contingent on everyone playing the game and accepting visual separation, and as soon as someone doesn’t it all breaks down, so I’m sure you’re correct that they were punishing Lufthansa. NCT should really know better though, especially after the Asiana accident, that they can’t treat international wide bodies the same as SFO based domestic crews on their go-home day.
 
tcco94 said:
*still doesn’t know the context of the video*
*has nothing to do with the incident*
*Lufthansa was never offered this, and this was quite simply what they wanted*

#impressive
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I watched the video. ATC clearly asked them if they can take the ILS approach and just accept their own (visual) separation from traffic.

Pilot responded back “that’s precisely what we are not allowed!”

So now you expect controllers on a nice clear night, to give you IMC separation at a busy time when everyone is doing visual approaches? Good luck. Good for SFO controllers. Hopefully this will get Lufthansa and other airlines to change their procedures.
 
inigo88 said:
Hopefully I’m not saying the quiet part out loud here, but SFO is not a “normal” airport in this regard. Normal ops is parallel charted visual approaches, relying on visual separation to exploit a technicality and get aircraft side-by-side to parallel runways that are too close to allow for parallel approaches per the regs. The Quiet Bridge, Tip Toe, FMS Bridge Visual (and any other company specific ones I might be missing) don’t actually care if you have the airport in sight and are engineered to get the pilot to fly an RNAV approach while also getting aircraft closer together sooner using visual separation (hence Chasen’s comments about clouds between the bridges and the airport and them running the approaches anyway).

The entire system is contingent on everyone playing the game and accepting visual separation, and as soon as someone doesn’t it all breaks down, so I’m sure you’re correct that they were punishing Lufthansa. NCT should really know better though, especially after the Asiana accident, that they can’t treat international wide bodies the same as SFO based domestic crews on their go-home day.
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Sorry, but Asiana was an absolute joke. A bunch of button pushing clowns where the aircraft got ahead of them and their button pushing abilities failed them. Not just San Fran, but at most airports, you need pilots flying planes. Not button pushers.
 
Cherokee_Cruiser said:
Sorry, but Asiana was an absolute joke. A bunch of button pushing clowns where the aircraft got ahead of them and their button pushing abilities failed them. Not just San Fran, but at most airports, you need pilots flying planes. Not button pushers.
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No defense of Asiana from me - but I’m saying that as long as international carriers with ab-initio backgrounds and 200 word radio vocabularies are allowed to land there then there’s going to have to be two standards. Lufthansa isn’t fair to lump into that category necessarily, but they clearly have SOPs that are incompatible with the (non-standard but standard) SFO status quo.
 
nabbyfan said:
They need more spacing to get the guy in on the ILS, there was a solid line of guys coming in on the DYAMD as well as multiple from the south on the SERFR. It's easy to watch a youtube video and say "Oh NORCAL sucks, SFO Sucks, ZOA Sucks, why couldnt they just get the guy in?". The reality is theres 50 more A/C coming all spaced out based on every single one accepting a visual approach. Should ZOA go into holding for 10-15 minutes to allow Lufthansa to go in on the ILS? It’s not as simple as just, Oh they shouldve figured out a way to get Lufthansa in. Crappy situation for sure, but I just wish people wouldnt assume it’s just controller incompetence. It’s a complicated system. One thing I havent found is how much notice did DLH give that they cant accept the visual? It was advertised on the ATIS AFAIK. If they had told ZOA early on the STAR, they could've called down to NCT and gotten the ball rolling to build a hole for them.
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This is a great post. The charted visual approaches have been on SFO’s arrival ATIS for as long as I’ve been alive, it’s not a new thing. I’m sure the ZOA TMU has baselined bare minimum separation on the arrivals for the charted visuals, so if someone needs an ILS *AND* can’t accept visual separation from traffic on the parallel that means center slowing down/holding multiple STARs to make a hole.

My point before is that it’s a fragile system. All it takes is one non-participant and the whole house of cards falls down.

Maybe they’re exercising brinksmanship diplomacy and Lufthansa flights to SFO will become Lufthansa flights to OAK/SJC/SMF until they change their SOPs haha.
 
Cherokee_Cruiser said:
I watched the video. ATC clearly asked them if they can take the ILS approach and just accept their own (visual) separation from traffic.

Pilot responded back “that’s precisely what we are not allowed!”

So now you expect controllers on a nice clear night, to give you IMC separation at a busy time when everyone is doing visual approaches? Good luck. Good for SFO controllers. Hopefully this will get Lufthansa and other airlines to change their procedures.
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The procedures Lufthansa have are literally what the FAA suggested to foreign carriers do after the Asiana crash but okay this isn’t worth the energy or time. You are right and we are all wrong.
 
nabbyfan said:
It was mentioned a few pages ago, but FAA ATC is hanging on by a thread. We are all being worked 6 days a week, many times 10 hours a day, without the proper staffing, working multiple sectors combined when they shouldn't be, because there isn't enough staffing to have all the sectors open. We're all seeing every month with every new close call or crappy scenario, that the holes in the swiss cheese are getting very close to lining up. The good news is that absolutely nothing is being done to fix it. The head of the Air Traffic Organization just testified to congress with a straight face that the FAA is "better staffed to handle the holidays than last year". We have less than 10 more CPC's nationwide than we did last year.

They need more spacing to get the guy in on the ILS, there was a solid line of guys coming in on the DYAMD as well as multiple from the south on the SERFR. It's easy to watch a youtube video and say "Oh NORCAL sucks, SFO Sucks, ZOA Sucks, why couldnt they just get the guy in?". The reality is theres 50 more A/C coming all spaced out based on every single one accepting a visual approach. Should ZOA go into holding for 10-15 minutes to allow Lufthansa to go in on the ILS? Its not as simple as just, Oh they shouldve figured out a way to get Lufthansa in. Crappy situation for sure, but I just wish people wouldnt assume its just controller incompetence. Its a complicated system. One thing I havent found is how much notice did DLH give that they cant accept the visual? It was advertised on the ATIS AFAIK. If they had told ZOA early on the STAR, they could've called down to NCT and gotten the ball rolling to build a hole for them.
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I'll begin by saying I am truly sorry that those are the conditions you are being put in. That's no good for anyone, and I recognize these are factors completely outside of your control.

I can't speak for anyone else, but my specific annoyance with this particular incident is the apparent unwillingness to provide an EAT. Even if it is 45 mins from now, I need to be able to plan for that. Totally agree that controller was probably doing the best he could with a "one of these planes is not like the others" kind of scenario. Lufthansa should definitely expect unique handling for their unique request and unique own company rules/SOP. But, at the end of the day, they need to be given some idea how much more fuel they can expect to burn while they wait. Not 20 mins, then a flippant update of "yeah its gonna be another 10-15". At that point, I have no confidence that they will not just continue delaying me indefinitely. And It starts to eat into the time I'd need to arrange a diversion if needed, contact dispatch, tell the people in the back, let the company arrange the plan for once we get there, etc. All things that take time, and things I wouldn't want to be worrying about in a rush when suddenly it becomes apparent that we have to go and we need to focus on more immediate things like flying the airplane and probably hand jamming a bunch of stuff into the FMS/ACARS/etc. I say this as if I am the CA, but I'm just saying that for discussion purposes......they don't pay me the big bucks yet (at least in my civilian job) :)
 
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