A view
RH you would only understand what people are talking about if you have operated in to JFK and BOM and I have and do. There is nothing racist going on here. BOM is a s**t hole but ATC are doing there best and it generally works but you have to be ever vigilant, especially on the ground when you might come across people and stray animals anywhere. As for JFK, just as HS mentions, recently given a Canarsie (visual curved approach to RW13L) rolling wings level below 400 feet in a 747 with no ILS, VASIS or Approach Lights…just a piece of concrete with some lights down the sides. Obviously doable but not what one would expect from an International US gateway. It is worse than third world destinations that I have flown too like BOM,LOS,LUN etc.
And just to add insult to injury on arrival at the stand I was informed that the immigration computer had crashed in that terminal and after the bags had been off loaded I got pushed back and had to start up and taxi to another terminal where the pax could deplane.
JFK also holds my taxi time record before take-off…. 1:41 !! Set on the same trip.
I have to say that sometimes one can get the distinct impression that JFK controllers are not on your side. The movie ‘Pushing Tin’ was an eye opener to me. I have been on vectors at JFK for the ILS 22L when ATC let us get too high, was then cleared for the VOR/DME approach so that we had to sort out our own height out, which was way too high…… I politely declined and insisted on the ILS which obviously required more vectoring to get the height off to intercept the G/S.