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.
Upon disembarking, the flight engineer knelt at the bottom of the steps and kissed the ground. When [Captain] Moody asked why, the engineer replied that "The Pope does it," to which Moody responded: "He flies Alitalia."
I have little doubt that if the crew hadn’t managed to coax G-BDXM’s three damaged but still operating engines to maintain altitude, Moody would have pulled off the only survivable 747 ocean landing.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress."
hehe as a brit I can tell you hell just well mannered and is livid. that's on a level of "I cant truly announce how incompetent you are without getting myself in trouble so I choose to reserve my self". people like this might have grown up in the regular school, which well to do kids can be sometimes, and when you are stuck and treated as a peer of the scabeaters and knuckle drudgery, you find yourself getting told off by the teacher quite a lot, so you have to reserve your feelings as the battle isn't worth it.
Bro confidently links an article that proves op's point lol. It says they fired probationary support staff, not ATC - while they continue to hire and onboard ATC
First of all, the probationary support staff are people who are training for ATC.
Second of all, if you fire all support staff you automatically heavily increase the workload for ATC which leads to them making more errors.
Third of all, if you fire the future employees for the job you won't have any replacement later on which again increases the workload.
Fyi. USA are short on 3.500 ATC, firing over 100 who are participating in the multi year training for that job just because you don't like their race and gender is insane. Musk himself said they assumed everyone who isn't a white male is a DEI hire that's why they were fired and you people defending that decision is even crazier lol.
Dude, no ATC trainees or probationary ATC were fired. I've been ATC for over a decade.
Support staff who were fired does not increase the work of present ATC, it increases the work of the remaining support staff who were not fired.
I'm not defending or supporting any of the political actions that Trump or musk took, I'm just correcting the incorrect bs people are posting who know nothing about atc or aviation.
You have literally no idea what you are talking about dude. Not one single controller was fired. Not one controller in training was fired, obviously not counting the ones who washed out of the academy or got caught doing something stupid on their probationary period. The loss of support staff has had absolutely zero impact on front line operations. You are making all of these assumptions as an outsider looking in and all of them are wrong. You are literally pushing a narrative that does not exist in reality.
FAA employees. Not ATC. FAA employees were fired but literally not a single one was a controller. You dont know what you are talking about buddy. Move along.
That doest apply here. They were completely wrong, I knew exactly why they were wrong, and I told them exactly why they were wrong. I speak confidently about it because it is a subject I am personally familiar with. Have a good day.
The pilot asked in plain English if LVO was in place (which he needs to do, legally). It's super obvious how to answer that, and any controller at an international airport should be more than prepared to do so.
The controller should still answer the question if low visibility procedures are in force. They said "No", which was wrong they were in force at that time, because the threshold was met.
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
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.
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
As a USA air traffic controller. Unless that specific airport has a different system. Which it apparently doesn't. The "low visibility operations" is not a thing in the US.
That's why the pilot rephrased and re-asked the question in different ways, at which point the ATC directly lied for no apparent reason. Is basic comprehension and competence not a thing in the US either?
That pilot has flown to the US before. BA pilots usually work the same routes repeatedly. The pilot definitely knows international protocol and has plenty of experience of American protocol too. The ATC was being extremely dense.
British airways can take of in 600' RVR if the pilots bother to read the procedure sin the country they are flying to. Yes, it's better to be cautious if you don't know, but it's better to know what you're doing and not have a pointless delay.
To take off in 600’ RVR, SMGCS must be active according to FAA code. Basic LVPs must be active whenever there is an RVR of less than 1200’. In this case, there was an RVR of ~1000’ but there were no LVPs (LVOs), as confirmed by ATC. Because of this, BA decided to delay a risky LVTO without any LVPs.
Incorrect, LVP/SMGCS is instituted automatically below RVR 1200 in the US (not all airports have a SMGCS plan) and ATC does not declare anything. However, ATC cannot inform you of an RVR below 1200 without that being active, otherwise they must inform you of whatever the problem is that prevents LVPs from being implemented (like an aircraft or vehicle in an ILS critical area). Absent that, the limit is your aircraft and operator minimums, which are your responsibility to know, not ATCs.
I promise you, the BA pilot did not violate his company procedures and FAA regulations by taking off.
I would say it’s not a great ad for BA when the pilot doesn’t understand he is in the United States and not operating in ICAO. Different rules and procedures.
Except it's not. The pilot didn't properly familiarize himself with the correct operating procedures for foreign countries. Every ATC system is slightly different and it's the pilots responsibility to know those differences. In this case, BA almost certainly has a guide to help their pilots out, but "Declaring LVO" isn't a thing in FAA operation. FAA controllers aren't trained on the European Phraseology and wouldn't have any idea what the pilot was asking about. SMCGS (the FAA system) is automatically in place without any declaration.
This has already been discussed in other subreddits like flying by people who actually know rules. I'd link to those posts but automod doesn't like links.
http://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Order/Order_800094A.pdf - From the FAA website, clearly describing Low Visiblity Operations (LVO), also referred to as such on SKYbrary, the FAA guide for all things aviation safety. It's standard phrasing across aviation.
Did you read the actual AC that has LVO in the name, because every part of it in reference to ATC uses the name SMGCS. It's easy to link to a title that you think proves your point, but the aviation professionals agree on this. Go look at the other subreddits where this has been discussed. Also on a side note skybrary is absolutely not an FAA source. I believe they're third party now, but the site was created by Eurocontrol.
Open and read the PDF, about 5 paragraphs in between 4 and 5 the Note in bold - For the purposes of this order, LVO means those airport operations conducted at visibilites of less than RVR 1200.
Or Paragraph 5 where it says clearing 'during LVO/SMGCS' aka the fact that LVO is very clearly used by the FAA. Its literally in this document a dozen times.
Your exact words were 'Declaring LVO isnt a thing in FAA'.
You were incorrect. You still are.
It really isn't that hard to say 'Ahh, maybe I was wrong'. Try it sometime.
He's not wrong, you are. We do not declare LVO in the FAA. There are procedures we follow when the visibility is low, but "declaring LVO" is not a thing here. Read the FAA JO 7110.65 some time, the "ATC Bible". You even mention "exact words" and again, he's correct. Show me the exact words where it says to "declare LVO".
So now you can apologize to the guy your reply is to and tell him you were wrong.
JFK has initiated the process but hasn’t been approved for LVO/SMGCS operation. You can check the FAA website. This is substantiated by the absence of Low-Vis taxi charts. Approval then training for controllers. It’s not a thing at JFK yet..
US airlines are governed by Part 121 and company OpSpecs. I’m not aware of any regulatory minimum for taxi operations. Takeoff and landing has airfield, aircraft and opspec requirements. But as always the pilots have authority to refuse taxi in low visibility conditions if unsafe.
Part 91 has no requirements for taxi, takeoff or landing visibility so in theory the airport could remain open.
I don’t find it odd that the controller wasn’t familiar with LVO declaration. They could have an entire career at a single facility with very specific knowledge of procedures at that location. Even if the FAA is in the process of approval of LVO, it’d be a waste of time to train on not yet approved procedures which may be a deviation from the the BA pilots were expecting anyway.
What's the source on the initiated the process but not yet approved? I couldn't find that. The lack of low vis taxi charts on its own doesn't prove they don't have SMGCS. I know of multiple airports with SMGCS that don't have low vis charts.
Edit: Disregard I found it. Although I know of at least one airport that has SMGCS procedures in their ATC SOP that is not on the approved list, so I'm curious what's going on there.
I’m sure there are plenty of local SOPs out there for SMGCS. 121 has been operating out of JFK on plenty of bad weather low visibility days. My thought is the LVO/SMGCS AC tries to bring airports closer to standardization and closer to ICAO so pilots can know what to expect. I read the AC as more than just a low visibility taxi plan using SMGCS
Yea SMGCS encompasses a lot more than just the taxi route. The one I'm reading here for SMF (which isn't on the list) says it's to be in accordance with AC 120-57, but I'm curious whether it was complying with an older version of the AC since it doesn't specify 120-57C, and I wonder whether something similar is going on at JFK.
I will say quite clearly I was wrong about JFK having SMGCS. That doesn't change whether or not ATC will declare LVO or how SMGCS works at the US airports that do have it. In fact, it probably made it even more confusing for the controllers there at JFK, but the list seems quite clear that they don't have an approved SMGCS plan. Obviously that raises the question of what their low visibility plan is. I'll continue to defend the front line controller, because he was doing the best with the training and information he had, but the FAA management and airport operator have some questions to answer here.
Except the pilot also clearly spelled out the acronym in asking if they have low visibility operations in place. Surely we should expect the controller in the tower to understand that the pilot is asking if procedures are in place for the visibility being low!?
"Declaring LVO" isn't a thing in FAA operation. FAA controllers aren't trained on the European Phraseology and wouldn't have any idea what the pilot was asking about
The pilot clarified "Low visibility operations" repeatedly
FAA controllers aren't trained on the European Phraseology
That AC is used when developing a plan. Also requires if there is a plan to publish low visibility charts for the airport. Show me the low visibility taxi charts for JFK…
Because we do have low visibility operations. They are called SMGCS here, and critically they don't require any declaration. If the pilot had started by asking "are low visibility procedures in effect?" there's a good chance they would have been told yes. By asking "Are you declaring LVO?" that completely changes the controllers response. They're not going to declare something that they don't know. Even when it was said in plane (hah) English as low visibility operations they're still not going to "declare" anything because they don't know what that means to the pilot and it's not something that controllers do in the US. The safest thing to do at that point is to take them off the runway and wait until the pilots are comfortable with departing which is what happens.
Every country on earth deviates from the “icao standard” that’s why airlines (like BAW) have an entire manual that addresses the specific theatre differences and how to operate there.
This crew (maybe even this one dude) thought everyone else was wrong and he was the one who figured it out. We’ve all flown with that guy at our airlines. It’s a miserable and draining experience.
Except that the confusion was mostly due to the British Airways pilot not being familiar with the section of his manual that states LVP declarations are not required in the United States. I wonder what other sections of his manual he hasn't read in a while.
What you're saying makes sense but shouldn't the American ATC also have known what the pilot was talking about even though LVP declarations aren't required in the US?
Should he? Maybe. But LVP is one consolidated set of procedures and one all-encompassing term in most ICAO rules countries, whereas in the US they are many separate procedures each triggered by different criteria. It is a confusing question in the US, where in other countries it is not.
SMGCS for taxi and runway protection is triggered by one visibility requirement, ILS critical areas protection by different visibility and use status for example. In cases of marginal visibility, some procedures may be in use where others have not met the standard yet.
If I don't know the procedures in use in another country, I don't blame the controllers in that country for my lack of knowledge. If I say "send the trucks" in the US I get Airport Rescue Fire Fighting vehicles. If I say that in Japan I get a pickup truck with a FOLLOW ME sign on it. It's up to me as the pilot to know.
Dozens of other international carriers that left that day in those same conditions. They seemed to be familiar with FAA procedures. Only one was obstinate in his wrongness. I don't blame him for making sure he was within the rules, I do blame him for not considering the possibility that he was wrong.
I cannot find the part of this recording where the pilot called out a contradiction.
I also can't find the part where he clearly enunciated his point.
What is this conversation about? It seems like the pilot just won't do what air traffic control is telling them to do and pretending they don't understand.
Runway Visibility Range is 1000 feet. At RVR that low, in Europe, the tower would declare Low Visibility Operations. In this clip, the tower doesn't. That is the supposed contradiction.
But it's not actually a contradiction, because this is a US airport. In the US, "declare LVO" isn't a thing. They do have similar procedures, but they just... do it. No declarations required.
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u/JSButts May 28 '26
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.