PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Qantas jets in near collision
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Old 18th Feb 2004, 10:08
  #85 (permalink)  
Ausatco
 
Join Date: Sep 1998
Location: Sydney, Australia
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Can I ask some of the "senior contributors" (amos, D.Dingo) and Ausatco and others what you guys think about the French system of giving a clearance to land on first contact with the tower. In over 3 years of receiving this type of clearance I never had a go around. Some lads did from time to time if the crew in front missed the appropriate twy. However I never witnessed this type of situation we have here in Oz. Last second clearances just did not happen.
Paul, I'm not sufficiently familiar with the French system to be able to critique it specifically.

The situation that prompted your question on the 1st page of this thread - ie, the ABC News Online report of the QANTAS aircraft arriving late on TWR freq and being unable to get a word in for a landing clearance when the runway was apparently clear - would be far less common, I would think, than the routine situation where you arrive on freq in good time and the runway is to be used or crossed by multiple movements before it's your turn.

It is true, the French system would fix the former, less common scenario, the one that you're querying.

But for the life of me I cannot see any logic in applying it to the second scenario, which, at the airport where I work, applies to almost every aircraft that calls on final.

I cannot see the value in a landing clearance when the landing area is clearly not clear, if you see what I mean Ie it's going to be used or crossed by many other aircraft before you use it.

Do the French (and the Yanks, for that matter) issue landing clearances on first contact when the landing runway is also used for departures? Or when crossing runway operations are in progress? Or when aircraft routinely have to cross the runway between movements to get to the holding point - eg all domestic jets to get to 34L at Sydney? I see all those as limiting factors in the French/US procedure, and I'd be interested to know what they do in similar circumstances.

Cheers

AA
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