Check this story out:

Friend of a friend is a VIP taking a trip into a certain airline's hub to do some business with that airline. Flight is delayed a couple of hours and it is otherwise a congested day.

Airline realizes this and has a direct line into the FAA Tower and gives that flight priority to land first. Further discussion on this topic reveals that airlines will do this for VIPs and if certain flights have an abnormally high % of full-fare paying customers.

Guess the moral of the story is to hope you have a governor aboard your plane or that you aren't trying to come from low-yield markets like Las Vegas into a congested airport.

Any other "details"?

A little hard to believe. Most big airports institute flow control when they are busy. Under flow control, an aircraft going from say JFK to LAX isn't permitted to take off until their slot is open at LAX. If slots were reassigned in the air due to VIPs on any kind of regular basis it would throw a wrench into the whole works disrupting flights literally around the country.

I heard that in LAX they give foreign carriers landing priority over domestic carriers. I was on a UA from Melbourne and the flight attendant mentioned that we will be backed up behind NZ and QF for landing due to internal management flow structures???

Flying is getting weirder every flight.

About 7 years ago in Atlanta, I was at the airport to pick up my friend. The airport was completely fogged-in and most flights were not being permitted to land until the fog lifted. When it did lift, my friends' flight was one of the first to land. I was told it got to land right away because their was a high priest or something similar on board. I know that there was a delegation at the gate to great the "special" passenger. I do not know for certain that the plane got special clearance, but that is what I heard around the gate.

VIPs are by definition rare. I don't want to make you think they're doing a bunch of these every day. It's probably every once in a while.

I also don't think slot controls are always initiated when a flight is still at its originating airport. I think a lot of us have been on flights that left on time then in mid-air were delayed due to congestion. Because they are often done on the fly, I don't think it's hard to move a flight up in line, just that the reason is a little more elitist than the normal weather or such.

Those are all the relevant details I have. I don't think the name of the airline/the airport/ the nature of this VIP are germane to this discussion.

davistev- Considering that many int'l flights into LAX have been going for 10+ hours, it's not surprising that they let them land right away.

In Boston, they prioritize landing order by where the flight is coming from sometimes. Long flights are let to land, presumably because they can 'take it' less than the shorter flights. All the time the Shuttles from New York are made to go in circles around Providence/Newport Beach. On the other hand, I have never been on a flight from San Francisco into Boston that was delayed on congestion.

There are international standards on the prioritisation of flights.

If a flight has a Head of State, senior politican or senior member of a royal family it can be given a 'red-route' - which effectively means ATC delays are minimised and landing priority is given (additionally certain radar and other installations along the route are taken off-line, but that is a whole different story).

A flight may also be given a 'black-route' if certain other criteria are met.

I was on a flight to Schiphol with a UK Cabinet Minister on board yesterday and we certainly didn't get priority routing or landing

Nick

Probably not a KLM flight into AMS either, eh Nick?!

The Concorde seems to get priority both for taking off and landing. Maybe that has something to do with its small fuel capacity, as well as its usual VIP passenger list!

Bruce

Doc: No, you can be sure of that. BA 8350.

I was assigned seat 3C as usual and Simone was assigned 3A. As there were only four people in Club and the configuration is 2x2, I swapped to 3D and Sim had 3C.

The minisiter sat in 6C. The other Club passenger was a rather pungent asian man in 4F.

Lunch consisted of Chicken and couscous, followed by a lemon sponge and an Elizabeth Shaw mint. The minister had fish instead. The asian made it be know he was vegitarian, but had not pre-booked a vegi mean, so the Purser (Roger Todhunter - usually does the later flight, arrived in from Dublin) gave him a crew meal instead.

Two drinks and two teas/coffees were served. I had two white Chardonnays and then a large Bailey's no-ice with my mint. Sim had two glasses of Champagne. The Minister had two red wines and the Asian chap had tea.

Upon landing Roger gave Sim a couple of cans of Heineken to take on the onward journey (he is a very nice man and always treats us well - I arranged an upgrade for him and his parter when they flew to Miami in February).

The seats were the new leather variety and they have also made some modifications to the cabin, the galley is now a little larger.

The Captain (sorry I didn't catch his name) made four PA's, and seemed like a decent sort of chap.

Sorry I drifted into that, I have never quite made it to the Trip Report forum yet, but have always had the longing to recall the details of a flight

Nick

Just wanted to clarify on this issue that the FAA WILL NOT give priority to one airline over another. An airline, however, can chose to have one of their own flights placed ahead of others of their own.

For example, if UA has planes A, B, C and D in holding and E comes along, they can tell the ATC to land E first. If A, B, C, D and E are all from different carriers, the FAA will not comply with any request from one of the airlines to land their plane out of turn simply because they have someone "special" on board. Many VIPs fly private jets and those receive no special treatment as well.

Priority is given to heads of state on official business, but even then when Japan's head of state came on JAL they received little special treatment and could not receive the altitudes/routings they requested.

I heard a story once of a UA and DL flights both on the way out to the runway, the Delta plane being behind UA. The Delta Captain radios the tower and using the UA call sign says he needs a 1 minute delay to check on something. Before the UA pilot can react, the tower gives the Delta priority in the take-off que.

In the movie, Tin Man, the controllers juggled the planes in the holding pattern by giving turn/direction commands and thereby reordered landing order. Sure seems plausible. Anyone from FAA watching this thread?

I believe the movie you are referring to is "Pushing Tin," which was pretty laughable in its accuracy regarding ATC.

Yes, ATCs have tremendous leverage in giving planes turns and different routes and altitudes, which can have the effect of causing delays and costing lots of money through fuel usage, etc. The primary goal, however is to provide good service to the users, which means direct routings, etc. whenever possible.