Originally Posted by
PukinDog
The second, rebuttal video doesn't need to mention mitigations like other traffic, other airports using the airspace, noise constraints, etc... it's common sense unless you believe the Controllers are 1) incompetent or 2) in the habit of punishing aircraft for spite or 3) both. Another clue; the Controller told LH to "expect an extended delay" and, not surprisingly, the info taken from the link in safetypee's Post 308 confirms what common sense told us:
In other words, they were saturated, with streams from the East built and paired-up, other aircraft for SFO holding awaiting their gaps to be created, and LH's extended delay was exactly what the Controller told him to expect. To me, it sure doesn't look like LH was singled-out for a spite-fuelled spanking
From some of the comments in that video they're in the habit of punishing both the aircraft
and themselves.
"If they request something else we should accomodate them to the best of our ability, but they may have to take a delay. They view it the same as if you flew in requesting an opposite direction landing in 10 when the active runway is 28". The underlined part is baffling. It's the air traffic equivalent of deciding you need to buy 4 new tyres because your low pressure warning came on for a just single one, which only needed pumping up anyway. Probably not a great like-for-like approximation, but it would be like resorting straight to the total electrical failure checklist because your transponder failed. A runway change is a fairly significant event that will delay multiple aircraft. A single opposite-end arrival will cause huge delays. I'm not sure why they would elect to treat it in that manner. Why make so much more work for yourself?
Another comment made in that video was that the gap behind would "have to be 5-8nm", which is again, utter rubbish. If you're applying wake separation to a light behind it, yeah you'll need 8 miles. But you're delaying it - no-one has said the DLH should have received no delay whatsoever - so why on Earth would you then choose to stick it in ahead of a light?! Secondly, even if that DID apply, as far as I can tell when you use visual separation, wake responsibility also shifts to the pilot? (Not how it would work here, it would be on the controller all the way to touchdown, regardless of the type of approach you fly). As long as the aircraft behind is happy to be visual, all you need is 3nm radar separation for standard separation to be applied to the DLH. Why would you choose to put an 8nm gap behind it? As long as it's a minimum 3nm - which being a heavy doesn't seem too far off - then as long as the aircraft behind is happy to apply visual separation, you aren't actually losing anything behind it.
Honestly, if you were to tell me the SFO perspective video wasn't a controller at all I wouldn't be surprised. The language is odd "
They view it as...", why
they and not
we? The only provenance for it is "a guy I know from Facebook". I still find it hard to believe any practicing radar controller would seriously describe the application of headings and speeds as "adding risk".
Originally Posted by
PukinDog
Given the congestion, you strangely place little importance on the lateness of LH's notification to ATC of their restriction, which occurred just 16 miles NW of the airport over BDEGA, and dismiss any impact it would have on their delay [...] There was a gap already created for LH on the QB 28R to slide into, yet they couldn't. (that was a wasted gap, man, and someone out there in a hold could've used it).
According to the video, the notification was made at around 14,000ft, which using the 3nm/1000ft fomula would suggest at least 42nm from touchdown - however close it is to the airport itself as the crow flies. If they're 16nm from touchdown at 14,000ft you really do do some crazy stuff over there. I don't dispute if they've already been on an approach frequency for a while, it would definitely have made more sense to have told them much earlier, but 42nm from touchdown wouldn't seem insanely late to me.
If it's their peak (which again, I don't dispute in the slightest) and aircraft are holding, and you're packing planes into every gap you have, there will be another plane you can fit in with 40nm notice. If you can't, that is some exceptionally inflexible procedure design. Which leads to...
Originally Posted by
PukinDog
Now overhead SFO, to plug LH in somewhere else takes adjusting both streams from the east, not just the stream for 28L. Both have been built and metered so aircraft wind up side-by-side in pairs on the Visuals. Because LH can't "maintain" and therefore can not have an aircraft paired-up off his right wing, one way or another someone in the already-built stream for 28R has to disappear to create that gap for LH (another one wasted).
If the sequence is so un-alterable, what happens when there's a go-around? Genuine question, you obviously have experience of being there. What sort of track mileage/delay do you take at SFO before you're fitted back in again? Because all the same techniques used for that are what would be used to re-build the sequence around the DLH.