Fun and Games in ZRH
This weekend at ZRH - always a pleasure to operate to/from - the new German appeasement rules came into effect, whereby approaches over the Black Forest (that means ILS approaches to the main runways 14 and 16) are banned at certain times of day / certain days of the week.
The result has been non-precision approaches in theoretically open conditions which actually proved to be worse than marginal. Several Go Arounds and several changes of runway led to big delays and short of fuel situations, while the nice ILS installations on 14 and 16 went unused.
The ZRH ATC has to contact the Germans to get exceptional permission to use these approaches and if the actual wx looks open to them, they don't give it.
As we mentioned before, this is what you get when you let politicians interfere in complicated technical matters - and as for appeasement, well that didn't work once before according to Basil Fawlty.
On the good neighbours front, local action groups south of the airport have been protesting that their houses are being overflown - to the amusement of the rest of the locals, who get much more traffic still.
As for the German reaction, they say it is the fault of the Swiss, who should have installed ILSs on all runways (lead time around 2 yrs by the way) way back.
So the scene is set for a jolly time for all but spare a thought for ATC and the Crews, who are trying to do a professional job in the face of farce.