Originally Posted by
RetiredSFOATC
Having been involved in planning for many of these disruptions "back in the day" I can assure you that these things are not taken lightly by anyone. The FAA used to have sort of a "get-used-to-it" attitude, and to a degree it still does, but since the 1980s, there was a definite shift to stakeholder input. That largely came from congressional inquiries into how/why something bad happened that cost the users money and some not-so-fun aftermath dialogue. Now, there are lots of conversations and planning meetings, etc. for these kinds of things. All that said, this is an airport operator (City/County of SF) call, and everyone else, including the FAA, has to make it work. But, again, there is lots of conversation and exchange about it ahead of time.
Yes the airport must at somepoint make a decision and do something to take capacity offline. I work in a business that factory runs 7x24 all days but there are times one take the main software or power down but we plan everything around that.
If the airport decided to that capacity is going down, then FAA is in the best position to plan for how many takeoffs and landings are realistic then force a capacity cut. To let all planes come as usually and stack them means all along the west coast delays will mount as likely international and east coast incoming get priority and everything backs up. Those outbound that have connects will possibly miss connnects causing all sorts of un-predictable collateral fall out. Seems interesting that FAA, city and airlines all prefer the random chaos that will result from letting it go with a known bottle neck than force a more controlled capacity cut. Pretty much means no guts IMHO at the leadership level everywhere.