[KennyBlanken]

And the flight is twelve hours, with a filed flight plan. None of the controllers were even on-shift when SFO knew they'd need to have an ILS slot for the flight. That's why the pilot is exasperated when he finds out there isn't one.

It's like calling a year in advance for a dinner reservation and showing up and having to wait 45 minutes for your table "because it's a really busy night."

[dodobirdlord]

It’s not the ATCs job to get the plane down at the primary airport, on the pilot’s preferred schedule, in accordance with the airline’s policy of using ILS for landing at SFO at night. Any two would be a satisfactory outcome, and it sounds like the pilot could in fact have picked any two (well, it sounds like Lufthansa policy prohibited just getting in the VFR queue). Nobody was ever in danger and the worst case scenario was that the plane lands at Oakland, which was always a possibility from the moment they took off. If landing at Oakland is such a disaster Lufthansa could have canceled the flight once it became clear that they were running 3 hours late, had missed their originally planned slot, and would be landing at night.

[jojobas]

Yes it is, according to FAA recommendations.

[vkou]

> It's like calling a year in advance for a dinner reservation and showing up and having to wait 45 minutes for your table "because it's a really busy night."

It's more like showing up two weeks late to your dinner reservation, on a Valentine's Day Friday night rush, and being upset that you don't have an accurate ETA to get seated.