Originally Posted by
Capt Fathom
This has got nothing to do with anyone's ability to fly a visual approach. It's about maintaining your own separation from other aircraft visually at night. The SFO metar at that time was FEW 500, SCT 700.
I can understand LH reluctance to follow anyone in. They went to Oakland.
I think the 2 layers you mentioned were less of a factor than they would appear for 2 reasons:
1. The METAR is just a snapshot. The conditions could've improved quite a bit since the observation, or really weren't that bad to begin with.
2. Other planes seem to have been getting in just fine. If the clouds were a factor, they wouldn't be doing visuals. People would be complaining, and they'd switch to the ILS.
If you read what the NORCAL controller wrote above, they weren't trying to be difficult, but having a heavy need an ILS in that particular situation was almost as disruptive as needing to use the opposite direction runway- they'll accommodate you if you need it, but there's going to be a delay. For the record, given the situation they were in, I'd probably have diverted to OAK as well.
Again, I'm not faulting the crew for following their SOP, but the SOP prevented them from executing a perfectly mundane approach that is safely done by hundreds of airplanes every day.