Originally Posted by
ATC Watcher
and from island air photo :
Spot on, but there is no EU or EASA IFR there are IFR rules and agreed global aviation standards ,Period What is ( or should I say was ) done in DC , or in SFO or with LAHSO, etc are all deviations to allow more traffic outside of the rules. Expedition taking over our good old "safety first" mantra .
Now , is delegating visual separation to an Helicopter ,at night ,( with pilots wearing NGV ) on an aircraft cleared off the ILS doing a circle visual NPA at 500 ft with 4 eyes most probably locked on the PAPI something safe ? with a 150- Ft margin of error designed on the chart ? But it is how the system was built and local controllers trained on doing this , since years. Normalization of Deviance.
I wish good luck to the NTSB and the FAA is trying to reverse this .
"I wish you good fortune in the wars to come"
The “single point of failure” thing has been around forever. Reminds me of when ATC decided it was OK to start using land and hold short procedures at major air carrier airports. My airline immediately put out ALL CAPS memo that we were not to accept LAHSO clearance under any circumstances. It wasn’t long after that I was operating into BOS landing 27, when controller says “______ 123 you are cleared to land 27, ________ XYZ will be landing 22L and holding short of your runway.” I politely said we can’t accept that clearance. Controller got PO’ed a bit and wanted to debate it, but in the end he removed the LAHSO clearance from the other aircraft/cancelled our landing clearance/told us to continue then subsequently cleared us to land after the other aircraft landed. The gist of all that is that ATC was miffed because everybody else was going along with their questionable tactics until I came along. In my mind it was clear: technically we would not have been accepting a land and hold short clearance, but we would all be cemetery dead if the other guy screwed up. We would be “dead right.”
Over the course of the next few weeks/months I queried every check airman/chief pilot I came across and got differing opinions from nearly every one. The majority of them leaned towards the “ it’s ok you are not landing/holding short,” idea. When I would point out the “dead right” concept they would just look at me like I was speaking Mandarin Chinese.
It seems like most pilots (myself included) have a can do attitude and are willing to help ATC out whenever they can so long as it’s “legal.”
There was an old captain I flew with years ago that said “We get paid the big bucks to say no.”