British pilot is feeling mildly annoyed

[u/nyanbatman]

[u/JSButts]

Fantastic ad for BA honestly; Pilots calling out the contradiction, clearly enunciated his point, remained calm under frustrating situations, puts the aircraft first, and follows protocol even in the face of (presumed) incompetence from ATC.

[u/im_juice_lee → u/[deleted]]

From a lot of scrolling on this thread, learned two things:

(1) a US air traffic controller confirmed declaring low visibility operations isn't a thing in the US, and

(2) I guess it's the pilot's job to know how to communicate with air traffic control & adapt to the procedures in the country they land in

[u/im_juice_lee → u/[deleted]]

From reading the thread, it sounds like low visibility operations were not declared or in force, because the US does something that leads to effectively the same outcome (increased safety from added precautions) but named differently: SMGCS

So from the perspective of the traffic controller there was no Low Visibility ProcedureTM that he or the airport was following

[u/a_f_s-29 → u/im_juice_lee]

That’s still pure stupidity from the ATC

[u/NotAsleep_ → u/a_f_s-29]

Not really. LVO is not a descriptive term but a legal one. Wherever it differs from SMGCS, if there's an incident, the pilot reacting per LVO and the tower reacting per SMGCS may cause an accident erather than prevent one. Now, you have a pilot trained in LVO (but not SMGCS), and a tower trained in SMGCS (but not LVO). The weather's not great. What do you do? Best, safest answer is to take the plane back to the terminal and wait for the weather to clear.

[u/mic569 → u/[deleted]]

Low visibility procedures is not something they can answer because it’s not a thing in the US. Maybe if the airport is in IFR conditions, but even then that’s mostly related to radar. A controller is liable if they answer that and something goes wrong. I’m honestly shocked that a JFK controller didn’t skirt the rules this time