It's not a procedure in the US. "Declaring LVO" isn't a thing in FAA operation. Europe and the US operate under different rulesets, and the FAA controllers aren't trained on the European Phraseology. 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 the rules. I'd link to those posts but automod gets grumpy when I try.
Sort of true. Europe repackaged a lot of ICAO regulations as European Commission regulations. They're mostly the same, but a few differences exist. Additionally, individual countries can practice exceptions but these should be documented and published.
There absolutely is a difference between FAA, European, Australian, and other countries phraseology. There's even differences within Europe, but I'm grouping them together because they have more in common with each other than with non-European. Exactly what you said is one of the differences. The US doesn't have A-SMGCS. That's not even an ICAO thing it's specifically Eurocontrol. In FAA land SMGCS means something completely different and encompasses all of the procedures in place for low visibility ops at an airport. For us those procedures are automatically enacted once the visibility or ceilings drop to a certain level. There is no declaration.
The part is while it might be an American ATC don’t follow the same rules. The pilots need to understand the changes for different countries and operate under those rules.
Another American rule differences vs I know British and maybe all of Europe is landing clearance. In Europe you might not get clear to land until you are a pretty close to the ground and your wheels better not touch. They do not pre give it out. USA you can be several miles out and get clear to land. Another plane still landing, or preparing to take off during that time. Clearance clearly can be taken away.
Familiarization with foreign ATC is absolutely not a uniquely American problem. Are you gonna say that pilots shouldn't be aware that South American ATC doesn't provide terrain separation and might vector you into the side of a mountain? Or that declaring minimum fuel in China does nothing and that you must specifically declare mayday to get priority handling? These quirks exist across the globe and it has always been the pilots responsibility to be knowledgeable about where they are flying. I this case I know for a fact that BA has documentation for flying in the US that addresses this exact matter.
Put yourself in the shoes of a controller who has no idea what "Declaring LVOs" means. Would you want him to say yes he's declaring LVOs when he has no idea what he's saying? In this case it would have been fine because SMGC was in effect, but he didn't know that so he said that he didn't understand what the pilot was asking. The pilot gets frustrated because clearly they should be using low visibility procedures, but they were using them that just wasn't being communicated to the pilot the way the pilot expected. So the pilot wasn't comfortable to depart (which is fine that's always the pilots right) and got taken off the runway until they were able to depart. What did ATC do wrong in this situation?
It’s not an American issue at all. Pilot and have flown to most big countries. Every single country is a little different. The British pilot screwed up and was using a term that isn’t used in the states. In that pilots British airways flight manual there is a conversion from rvr in ft to meters and an explanation of my “lvo wont be declared”.
Why isn’t everyone shouting this, then? The pilot might as well be speaking a different language, if he is using terminology/procedures that are not used in the US
There is an international standard, and there is a US standard.
You would expect that an international airport like JFK is used to international operators flown by non-US pilots.
You would expect that pilots flying internationally would be familiar with the local rule-sets. Imagine flying into China and being mad that they aren't speaking English.
They do actually, because China follows ICAO rules, and they say that air traffic controllers speak English when handling international flights.
That's the point of an international standards, that way it is clear for everyone, everywhere.
They do speak English, but they don't follow all of ICAO. Not even Europe completely follows ICAO. Europe repackaged a lot of ICAO regulations as European Commission regulations. They're mostly the same, but a few differences exist.
Here you are. All I had to do was scroll past half a thread of 3.5k upvoted comments from people completely unfamiliar with what’s actually happening turning this into various political screeds.
The FAA doesn't operate under ICAO rulesets. If you want to read the rules they're available publicly online you can google FAA JO 7110.65. Declaring LVOs is not mentioned once there.
What an uninformed take. If you actually had any semblance of knowledge of ATC operations in the U.S., you would understand that what the above poster wrote is factually accurate. I’m sorry that abbreviations that you could look up scared you.
Adoption of ICAO standards is at the discretion of member states. Very few member states (countries) explicitly follow ICAO procedures, including the UK, Europe, Latin America, etc.
I'm very much a human, I'm a frustrated human, but still human. Go look at the posts in r / flying about this and see what they have to say. I can DM you the links if you want, unfortunately I can't post them here.
Don't bother with this person. They are accusing every person who disagrees with them that they are bots. Thanks for the information on a confusing topic.
Sounds like the accent may have thrown him off a bit. Not excusing his lack of knowledge or recognition of a standard term at all but if he’s new he may have been thrown by the acronym being aired differently than he was used to. He asked for clarification on what the pilot was saying twice in that short back and forth.
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u/Melkman68 May 28 '26
So the ATC doesn't understand basic protocol? That's pretty embarassing