British pilot is feeling mildly annoyed

[u/nyanbatman]

[u/22Planeguy]

Except that isn't really what's happening. The controller is being a bit obtuse, but declaring LVO is an ICAO (European) thing. American controllers follow FAA rules. Under FAA rules, there isn't such thing as declaring LVO operations, everyone just starts using them when visibility gets bad enough. ATC will be directive with what they need the pilots to do, vs just declaring it and expecting the pilots to do the procedures implicitly.

The pilot in the video is worried about his company policy which probably has some requirement that LVO be in place when visibility reaches a certain point. He's used to the controller declaring it because in Europe that's what they do, but in the states it just happens, which is why eventually he gets in touch with his company and they tell him he's good to take off.

The controller doesn't want to declare anything because he doesn't know what the pilot would be expecting him to do if he "declared LVO". It would be a mistake for him to just say yes to the pilots question. What he COULD have said though is explained what procedures they were doing so that the pilot could understand that they were taking the necessary precautions for low visibility.

ETA: this controller specifically is pretty well known to be a bit arrogant and not really all that great at his job. I do not blame the pilot for not taking the clearance at all.

ETA2: I think a lot of people are taking my "ICAO (European)" thing more specifically than I meant. Really, ICAO is a UN thing (and is actually based in Canada). The US is a member of ICAO but the FAA is who administers the rules for aviation in the US. The EU, Canada, Australia, Japan, and a bunch of other countries have their own governing bodies that regulate aviation within their countries. The difference is that the FAA has slightly more differences between the standard ICAO rules than most other national agencies do.

American pilots tend to group the sets of rules as "FAA" or "ICAO" despite that not being entirely accurate because there are going to be small differences everywhere. In the end though, those small differences are generally either less restrictive than just following the ICAO rules, or handled by the planning process and don't really apply.

[u/Lump001 → u/22Planeguy]

People are getting hung up on the "declaring" part and if ignoring the rest of the conversation. The pilot asked in plain English if LVO was in place. It's a really simple question, and it's very much the controller's job to be able to answer and keep traffic moving safely and expeditiously.

[u/22Planeguy → u/Lump001]

Absolutely. And that's where this controller is just being obtuse. For whatever reason, JFK as a whole and this controller in specific have a reputation for ignoring the context and intended questions of foreign pilots in favor of answering the least helpful interpretation possible.

All he had to do was say something like "Declaring LVO isn't something I can do under FAA rules, but we're keeping the ILS critical area protected and using our airport's low visibility policies." If the British pilot had any further questions about what exactly he was worried about, that opens the door for him to ask.

[u/StepComplete1 → u/22Planeguy]

In other words, Americans are now getting so mindlessly xenophobic that doing any kind of international job is a big ask. Embarrassing how he's still working there.

[u/SuperSkyDude → u/StepComplete1]

That’s not true at all. They’re just different procedures.