Originally Posted by
galaxy flyer
The reason is… traffic. KSFO has an inbound flow of traffic that won’t work unless the pilots accept visual separation. .
And that is indeed the root of the problem : Declared capacity. For economic reasons the acceptance rate into SFO has been increased to such an extend that to make it work you had to bend the normal rules. Now if someone asks for the rules to be applied the numbers can\t be reached , The issue here is that ATC, a
safety service provider has been turned into an economic enabler, the numbers being more important than the separation standards . , and with time ,perhaps with the help of their local management, some of the local controllers were led to believe that it was their duty to provide numbers instead of applying the basic safety service they were initially trained for .
The rest are just details.