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by jaywalk 905 days ago
> your phrasing "Lufthasa is the one making this hard on everyone" just seems wrong, having more safety seems totally justified and reasonable here.

It's so "justified and reasonable" that nobody else does it. Maybe it's not quite so justified or as reasonable as you think.
3 comments
noxvilleza 905 days ago
> that nobody else does it.

Apparently some Canadian carriers do also have this as a SOP.

Around the time this happened I spoke to some friends who are ATCs (in the US) who all immediately agreed it was a very reasonable request, especially given that the request was made far enough out (so it wasn't like they'd have to quickly scramble to respace the incoming planes correctly in the sequence).

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xenadu02 905 days ago
Because Lufthansa left a few hours late they arrived during a super busy arrival window. AFAIK ATC had nearly 30 planes already in the queue for landing with spacing for visual. To get Lufthansa in any sooner they'd need to send updated instructions to a lot of planes to make a gap.

If Lufthansa had arrived two hours earlier or later it wouldn't have been an issue. Indeed they were able to depart OAK around two hours later and land at SFO via IFR with no problems.

SFO handles a lot of traffic for having just two active runways - one of the reasons they constantly operate in parallel. Much like other super busy constrained airports (eg JFK) they have very little room to accommodate special requests.

Ideally Lufthansa would have let ATC know of this need while still a long way out so they could build a bubble in the sequence ahead of time but I don't know if procedures even allow for that.

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lainga 905 days ago
What's the rationale? Maybe the jetstream reverses and the 2-hour delay leaving MUC gets erased during flight?
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mschuster91 905 days ago
> It's so "justified and reasonable" that nobody else does it.

Airlines are a cutthroat business and many will go for profit rather than for safety if they're allowed to. The large American airlines, for what it's worth, are actually loss leaders [1].

[1] https://happyrichadvisor.com/loss-leaders/

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lmm 905 days ago
According to other posts here it's something the FAA specifically recommends (but stops short of requiring).
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