>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?
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.