Originally Posted by
dr dre
I was reading the reaction of some posters, almost certainly Americans, to the Lufthansa SFO incident where they refused a visual approach, on the thread for that incident on this forum and some other aviation forums:
You really cannot expect to operate into a busy US airport with that sort of restriction.
Lufthansa and all their daughter airlines still uses SOPs born in the 60s, it's godawful.
This whole thing is just ignorant on the part of LH. The SFO ATC is busy and can’t baby these unnecessary special requests
I get the no visual approaches at night policy but the no visual separation from other aircraft at night is asinine. Keeping visual from other a/c is easier at night cause of all the blinky stuff.
The answer is if Lufthansa are unable to comply with local procedures then SFO should initiate an approach ban on operators who cannot comply or withdraw their operating permit.
There does seem to be a bit of a “we do things differently over here because we’re (quote/unquote) better pilots” attitude. Maybe this will be a wake up call, but given the reluctance to change culture I doubt it.
Spotting the blinky stuff ahead is one thing, especially all going in the same direction on approach
However this incident is crossing or converging traffic
People outside aviation, such as Donald Trump as quoted, don't understand that the helicopter is not looking straight ahead at the airliner in the centre of its view for several seconds. Other people think that the other moving across the field of view should make it easier to notice.
But neither is true. One possibility that represents a collision risk is the one a bit out to one side that keeps the same relative direction in the view of the other, just getting bigger
From pictures I found, this helicopter type seems to have four vertical bars in the frame of the front screen, two at the edges, two nearer the middle. So it might be possible for a collision risk aircraft to be hidden behind one of these for some time