Flight deemed unsuitable by Air Traffic Control
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#3
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The airline said once a flight is deemed unsuitable by Air Traffic Control there's nothing the airline can do about it. They told me they couldn't give me an answer as to why it happened, which could mean they knew and couldn't tell me or that they didn't know either. The plane was held for just over five hours, which I thought was weather related, but was corrected by the airline when I inquired.
Last edited by Arginine; Feb 20, 2017 at 10:14 pm Reason: I corrected the amount of time the plane was held.
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Many flights to SFO today were delayed due to weather conditions at SFO. Perhaps someone twisted that into the weather conditions were "unsuitable" for flights. Today's SFO conditions can cause SFO to be reduced to one active runway and many flights need to be cancelled due to the reduced landing capacity -- ATC restricts the number of flight arrivals / departures at these times.
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Flew in around 5 pm from EWR, visibility was just terrible . . . couldn't see anything but cloud until we were within a couple hundred feet of the bay.
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Not a lot of info but this usually just means that the flight was held waiting for an arrival slot to be assigned at SFO. This is quite common during any kind of cloudy or foggy weather when they institute a traffic management program:
Code:
1840/20FEB P PHX/OUT 921P L04.56 ☨ P PHX/OFF 933P P SFO/ETA 1032P L05.00 AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL D CRC/SFO/ POSS DLYS/CNCL DUE TO STRONG WINDS-RAIN D HDQ/PHX SFO PROT UNDER GG CN2 T66 SKED PHX ORIG 425P GTD 6B SHIP 3446 SFO 532P TERM GTA 90
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Many flights to SFO today were delayed due to weather conditions at SFO. Perhaps someone twisted that into the weather conditions were "unsuitable" for flights. Today's SFO conditions can cause SFO to be reduced to one active runway and many flights need to be cancelled due to the reduced landing capacity -- ATC restricts the number of flight arrivals / departures at these times.
It was raining cats and dogs today, especially this evening. I'm sure it was an ATC/weather delay.
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That is a very odd statement. The delay is directly attributable to FAA's air traffic management program, which limits landing slots at SFO during low visibility periods and thus requires that a certain number of inbound flights be held on the ground (or cancelled). ATC is thus the direct cause of the delay.
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That's a little bit of a flip in attribution. The ATC traffic management program only comes into play when there is a weather reason, so the weather is still the root cause of it and ATC is not to "blame". In fact, their actions mitigate the effects of weather related disruptions. What would planes be doing if the traffic management program weren't in place? Circling for hours?
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That's a little bit of a flip in attribution. The ATC traffic management program only comes into play when there is a weather reason, so the weather is still the root cause of it and ATC is not to "blame". In fact, their actions mitigate the effects of weather related disruptions.
"Cause" does not incorporate a fault requirement.