I find it pretty hard to believe that a controller can decide locally
who to provide service to or not. The first time this happens to me,
I'll be talking with my representative and senators. Folks need to
remember who is the customer and who is paying the salaries.

Matt

It has not been proven that the controller made a unilateral decision
here. If they have an operating practice that says "contact approach
first" they can fall back on that practice and choose not to make an
"exception". Newps is right. Any local controller COULD accept a pop up.
But are they required to? Again.. if the arrival procedures are
described on the ATIS, your friend has nobody to be miffed at but
himself, for not being able to "make himself aware of all pertinent
information regarding his flight".

I've known of two separate instances in my short stint in flying where
someone didn't want to talk to approach, and was directed to contact
approach for sequencing. One was into Savannah, the other Beaumont.
Neither was the exact type of airport described by the original poster,
but that was how they operated.

I remember explicitly Savannah approach telling someone who was VFR
inbound, who didn't want to take sequencing vectors VFR and was going to
go "around" to tower "Sir, if you are landing at Savannah, you will be
going through me" Given the exchange, that actually was pretty direct
and effective.

Dave
Not an ATC guy, but I did sleep in a holiday inn express once..