Each airline is required to audit the airport to determine if the risk is acceptable.
discountinvestigator - if you don't actually work for the UK CAA, quoting this sort of CAA-speak garbage certainly puts you in the frame for a job with 'em!! The only thing that airlines do is to determine whether the airport meets the relevant licensing requirements be these State or ICAO SARPS. What drives the airlines is commercialism and whether or not they can make enough bucks to justify flying into and out of an airport. As regards SMR being mandated for Category 2/Category 3 ops (which are NOT necessarily LVPs) as several posters here have said, it remains only a Recommendation. Amazingly, the SMR at Milan/Linate is STILL unserviceable, yet the airlines continue to fly there!! ICAO - like its parent organisation the UN (and the League of Nations before it) is toothless, and many state authorities are equally lacking in appropriate powers and intent. Even SESAR won't change the situation for European states.
Whilst there may well be a requirement to invoke additional ATC procedures if LVPs are present and there's no SMR or it's underviceable (unless you escort every aircraft, ATC becomes totally reliant on pilot position reports being accurate [always assuming that the vehicle driver knows where he/she is...]), Abu Dhabi's got the right idea
...RVR below 350m + SMR u/s = NO movements
and in the interests of passenger safety, it's about time that other CAAs, DCAs and DGCAs followed suit.
