Pilot was bluffing. If they call an emergency, they can do whatever they want. But they can't just call a fuel emergency if they have enough fuel to divert to a viable alternate - that's not how the system is supposed to work. They're supposed to divert if they get close to minimum fuel and can't land at their primary airport.
Of course, if it's a real emergency they can call any emergency (weather at alternate preventing them from landing there for example), but not threaten a controller to call an emergency just to get priority handling at their primary.
The controller knew that and just called it. A diversion is a major annoyance but not a safety issue.
Communicating to a controller that they are close to a fuel emergency is not a threat, it is good practice. People have died because their pilots did not communicate their fuel situation sufficiently to their controllers [1].
This was communicated in this instance, and the controller maintained that to land at SFO, they would have to risk running out of fuel, since the controller refused to give a time-window for landing, or to declare an emergency.
If the pilot declared an emergency the ATC would make room for them, whatever the inconvenience to the airport and the other planes on approach. But after the fact there would be an investigation, and the pilot would be at fault if they falsely declared an emergency or deliberately caused an emergency by flying around in circles until they had to land just because they didn’t want to divert.
If the pilot’s being serious, he’ll declare an emergency and then the ATC will take him seriously. Otherwise he can continue to hold or he can divert to Oakland. There’s not much point in arguing about it over the radio, so I can see why the ATC ended the conversation.
American Airlines (at JFK) proved you can call emergency just because you feel like it with no repercussion.
And really the pilot in command is the one in control. For the attitude that controller had he should have declared an emergency and told him what he was going to do and have him clear all airplanes around them.
Bullying attitude don’t belong in a game with 500mph (~300mph in this case) objects. If you’re going to be a bully expect others to play the game in the same manner.
> American Airlines (at JFK) proved you can call emergency just because you feel like it with no repercussion.
I don't think it's that simple. In the AA case you refer to, the pilot was concerned about the high crosswind on the runway ATC wanted him to land on, so he declared an emergency so he could land on a safer runway. Crosswind landings are dicey at the best of times, and I suspect that if the AA pilot didn't get any repercussions it was because in that situation his action was considered a reasonable judgment call. Yes, technically it wasn't an "emergency" since nothing was wrong with the plane, but it was in the sense that the pilot did not think he could safely land on the runway ATC wanted him to land on, so it was a safety issue.
Following along that logic. Nobody would fault the LH pilot for a similar judgement call requiring an immediate landing at the closest suitable airport, namely SFO.
ATC was in the wrong here and the attitude displayed was neither called for nor professional.
> Nobody would fault the LH pilot for a similar judgement call
Bad analogy. The LH pilot's reason for asking for an ILS approach was company policy; he made no claim that he was unable to make a visual landing safely because of actual conditions, only that his company wouldn't allow him to make a visual landing as a matter of policy.
> ATC was in the wrong here and the attitude displayed was neither called for nor professional.
Many other posters in this discussion have pointed out aspects of the situation that make it clear that it wasn't that simple.
And this is (should be, at least) good practise. When there's an emergency, you don't want pilots second-guessing that radio call because they are worried about repercussions if they understood the situation wrong.
It's a safety issue when the plane is getting low on fuel and the crew are fatigued from a long international flight, and the only reason they're being told no is because of policies designed to maximize airport/airline profits.
Controllers had hours of notice the flight would need an ILS approach. They petulantly ignored it because ILS approaches take up more space in the pattern, which means less landings per hour, which means less profit for the airport operator.
In the EU visual separation at night is not permitted but it's routinely done in the US because airports and airlines can run more flights in and out of the airport due to closer separation distances and it also reduces controller labor.
Airlines are pushing the system to the breaking point.
Crew fatigue is not an ATC concern. Long haul flights like this carry relief pilots and have crew rest facilities so fatigue shouldn't be an issue in the first place.
Controllers mostly work for the FAA. They have volume goals to meet, but they aren't accountable to airport or airline management for profit targets.
Crew fatigue really isn't an ATC concern. The FAA and airlines set rules for crew fatigue management. Flight plans are designed to keep the crew within limits even if they have a delay or diversion. It is simply not a controller's job to assess a flight crew's fatigue state, or second guess whether they need an alternate plan due to fatigue. Controllers aren't trained or qualified to do that.
>They petulantly ignored it because ILS approaches take up more space in the pattern, which means less landings per hour, which means less profit for the airport operator.
Can you explain this? Do planes have choices over where to land once in the air? If not, all the landings needed to happen, so why does delaying some by a few minutes affect the total income for the airport on that evening?
I'm just questioning how an airport's overall profit motive would affect an indiviual air traffic controller's decision making like that.
The total number of landings is not fixed. If landings can be more frequent, airlines will schedule more landings so they are more frequent. Just like adding lanes to a highway induces more cars to travel on the highway.
I'm talking about the the situation on a given day when the planes are already in the air. All those scheduled flights are presumably going to end up landing at that airport and paying the agreed fee, no?
>Controllers had hours of notice the flight would need an ILS approach. They petulantly ignored it because ILS approaches take up more space in the pattern, which means less landings per hour, which means less profit for the airport operator.
That would also mean it's really incredibly difficult to declare a fuel emergency around SFO, since Oakland and San Jose and (I guess, if it were really urgent) Moffat Field are all a five minute flight away, right?
The distance to the alternate really doesn’t matter much, because you always load enough additional fuel to divert to your alternate and land, plus more fuel called the “final reserve” which is enough to fly for another 30 or 45 minutes (depending on the airline and region). That amount of fuel is called the “minimum fuel”. If you get down to your minimum fuel and you aren’t actually landing at your destination yet, then you radio the controllers and tell them that you’re at minimum fuel and are diverting to your alternate. It is only time to declare an emergency if you get down to your final reserve, by which time you should already be at your alternate airport.
Also, you can’t really use the straight–line distance between airports to figure out how much extra fuel to bring, because you never end up flying that line. For one thing, you have to approach the airport from the correct direction so that you line up with a runway and so that you’re headed into the wind. For another, you have to get down from the altitude you were holding at to ground level. Between the two you need to go not towards the airport, but towards a spot far enough away from the airport that you can fly a gentle slope down towards the runway. You might even end up flying completely around the airport while descending before actually turning in and lining up with the approach runway.
You can't do it that quickly. You have to look at the charts, set up the airplane, brief the other pilot(s) about the approach and landing, etc.
You can have mayday fuel situations where attempting to divert is more risky. But in this case they had plenty of time to prepare to divert to Oakland.
Of course, if it's a real emergency they can call any emergency (weather at alternate preventing them from landing there for example), but not threaten a controller to call an emergency just to get priority handling at their primary.
The controller knew that and just called it. A diversion is a major annoyance but not a safety issue.