Here comes an ATC question:
AMX402 announced he would need to go to 6,000 on that hdg to avoid wind shear. Tower (the controlled of Air China 981-fame, if im not mistaken) says he couldn't clear him to that altitude. AMX then acknowledges, but the next pilot says "Tower he has a windshear warning he's fighting that, so he'll do what he has to do."
Sticky situation. Does ATC treat like a TCAS advisory? Do they say "Climb to 6,000 is at your own risk", or the obviously preferable option to coordinate with approach and try to clear him to the altitude he needs?
It's just a mis-communication situation. The controller isn't up there, and he doesn't know about the warning, and he obviously doesn't own the airspace at 6,000 so he needs to work with approach to figure it out, especially if there's another aircraft (or several) up there. So tower guy has to keep everyone in check, and probably because of the language/accent barrier, hasn't picked up on the fear in the AMX pilot's voice. Sounds like DAL707 stepped in because they were also getting windshear warnings (and decided to delay their take-off), and wanted to relay to the tower controller that the AMX pilot might be doing more than reassuring himself.
The AMX pilot could always say unable, and the regulations would be on his side if he needed to go higher and broke spacing, but you have to also remember that there have been situations before where pilots haven't taken such command out of fear, respect, cultural norms, or otherwise. In other words, the Delta guy is telling tower to lighten up.
Interestingly, they diverted to Bangor, and I saw a MXA flight (6 I think) divert to Montreal, and a UAE guy go to Boston. Crazy day at JFK. At one point I heard the tower say only about %50 of flights were landing.