[inferiorhuman]

If this is their standard procedure surely it made its way into the flight plan they filed. A Lufthansa requirement for an ILS approach should've come as no surprise to anyone at SFO.

If the ILS was unavailable for some reason there should've been a relevant NOTAM, in which case the crew would've either diverted or not performed the flight.

And lastly, even among domestic airlines nighttime visual approaches are not always allowed by SOP. e.g.

https://www.pprune.org/archive/index.php/t-368284.html

[dilyevsky]

This flight has been around for at least 10 years, Id assume anyone working sfo atc should also be aware of their procedures