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0 pointscycomanic2y ago0 comments

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.

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5 comments · 3 top-level

dmurray2y ago· 2 in thread

> 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.

konschubert2y ago

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?

psd12y ago

Where did you get "automatic"? "ILS" means the pilot flies on instruments.

minitoar2y ago

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.

ExoticPearTree2y ago

> 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.

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