[daedalus_f]

Like in the youtube video's comments section, I suspect everyone on HN is going to assume that the ATC was simply being petty, and perhaps that was the case. But...

We don't know what the approach into SFO looked like that night, but you can bet it was busy. VASAviation videos are often highly misleading in this regard. Most of the talk on the ATC frequency is cut (sometimes explicitly, sometimes not) leaving just that relevant to the videos content, the time is compressed and they only plot a few of the planes involved, making the airspace look clear.

My understanding is that SFO often has two closely spaced parallel runways taking arrivals. The visual approach is preferred because then the pilots on parallel approaches keep visual separation from each other, allowing more frequent landings. An ILS approach requires more space between planes (because ATC remains responsible for separation). Hence, the Lufthansa had to wait for a gap big enough to fit that ILS approach in, or the whole stack of planes lined up for the approach would have to be juggled - how feasible that would be I don't know.

[antonjs]

VASAviation has a video on this incident with commentary from a NorCal controller, showing the (large amount of) inbound traffic. [1]

[1] https://youtu.be/4zHxdn8oz20?si=6ENIvIot7Q3LSJHO

[aworks]

Interesting.

I live in West Menlo Park and often see planes overhead coming from the West or Northwest to the Bay. I didn't fully understand they may need to slot into a really long flow from the East and even the South.

The prior Philippine Airlines flight did get ILS due to a temporary gap. Lufthansa wasn't as fortunate. The guy on the video didn't think anyone was at fault based on his interpretation and the comments from his insider.