The best reply to LAHSO in the USA is "Unable".

Do controllers not use 'land after' any more?

I can't speak for what happens at every unit, but where the rules permit it, & it's a viable option, I would imagine they do.

Personally I don't see the point. Half the crews don't understand it / query it / read back "cleared to land"

If things are so tight that you can't get a landing clearance in, maybe the unit should review their spacing procedures :)

There IS a 'point' if it's still in the Mats Pt 1 although I know a lot of controllers were scared of using it.
It was frequently used when I was training at Glasgow with a 'light' following an airliner; we were taught 'land after the (Trident/737)' if the light aircraft wanted to continue into a touch and go and there would be sufficient room before the airliner vacated.
Alternatively 'expect late landing clearance' could be used.

Nothing scary about it. Just not practical.

Maybe it had a place in a world of Tridents and light aircraft doing touch and go's. In the current european commercial scene it has little use.

I've used it a few times. The replies:

Say again

Cleared to land

Confirm cleared to land?

A lot of controllers say 'execute missed approach' if it gets to less than 2 miles between landers.

Nope. Just sit up a bit straighter in the chair.


BTW, 'Execute Missed Approach' is only used when carrying out an approach to a military airfield. (according to CAP413).

I don't like "land after..." because it is not universally understood, but it can achieve a safe landing at times when I am unable to issue a landing clearance and it is a useful tool for me used at least a few times a month. What the pilot does with it is up to them and sometimes they send themselves around, which is absolutely fine by me, but more often they land because the scenario fits their safety margins or SOPs. Why wouldn't I offer this when appropriate rather than instructing a missed approach?

The confusion might be resolved if we stopped using UK-specific procedures like ‘land after’ and just applied a type of Doc4444 reduced runway separation minima. Military aircrew don’t know what ‘land after’ means either, so they tend to read back ‘cleared to land’ or ‘cleared to land after’ since it only exists in the UK civil scene.

This links into the post about abolishing MATS part 1–why don’t we just use Doc 4444? It’s actually far more comprehensive and more up to date in many aspects.

Because the UK used to be in the vanguard of development, of positive change which went beyond the minimum standard stipulated for the rest of the world. ‘We’ broke new ground, led the pack, and were credited with achieving significant improvements.

That’s all changed, to the point that simply bringing the UK in line with the lowest common denominator now seems beneficial.

We’re making an appalling job of being the human race, generally, and specifically in the UK (see my remarks previously about the ludicrous idea that the disparate peoples on this miserable rock are ‘united’ and that we are all subjugated to a ‘king’ whose obsession with feminine hygiene products was world news), we could not be doing a more contemptible job of supporting our forebears achievements.

While I can't claim to be fully up-to-speed with either 4444 or MATS 1 (particularly the EASA and Brexit years) I find it hard to understand the suggestion that the ICAO doc is more comprehensive or up to date than the UK manual.. When I was involved, much of MATS 1 was a reproduction of 4444 with supplementary, interpretive and amplifying material added where experience, often gained through incidents, showed that it would be beneficial. Having grown up with, applied, and subsequently written bits of MATS 1, I can't help feeling that relying on 4444 alone would lose a lot of hard-won and beneficial extras. I don't know how much might have been lost with the introduction of SERA, maybe much of the additional stuff has already been lost, but as CayleysCoachman says, the UK does seem to be heading for the lowest common denominator.

Maybe it's a generational thing, I remember being a young trainee controller and hearing the old hands complaining that things used to be better when they started out in the business. Of course, some things need to change as the world evolves, and I'm sure there's an element of rose-tinted glasses in places, but we seem to be taking backward steps in the aviation business at present in some ways. [/OLD CODGER MODE OFF]