Originally Posted by
Tomaski
British Air said they were unable to maintain the requested airspeed. Fair enough. At that point, the controller needs to either slow everyone behind BA down, possibly causing a domino effect back to the previous controller, or pull BA out of the sequence and reinsert them with additional spacing. That decision had to be made in fairly short order, however, the radio calls to work this out could have been handled a bit more diplomatically by both sides.
No, at that point what the controller needs to do is ask them, if they can’t maintain the assigned speed, at what point they will need to slow down from 180 to final approach speed, which is exactly what she did, but all she got in return was bla bla big airplane stabilized approach, bla bla. Even when she said that they weren’t answering the question the crew failed to come up with their requirements, so her choice was slow everybody down to160 ten miles out or break BA off the approach. Nothing wrong with saying ‘UNABLE’ but keep it to that and come up with your own plan instead of blocking the frequency during rush hour at one of the world’s busiest airports with a major runway shut down for the whole summer.