London Information today

[touch&go]

How do you put up with the poor RT ?
I was on a flight today and had the services of London information, I sat there and listened in disbelief at the poor RT discipline and conduct, people were constantly stepping on each other all the time, the poor controller had to keep saying your number 2 standby, and to top it all off, the controller asked if we were ready to take our clearance to enter the Manchester zone, and in the nano second before I could reply, someone jumped in with there call sign, why don’t people just listen and wait until it appropriate time to talk.

Does this just happen at weekends or is it like this all the time in the open FIR, if so I take my hat off to you lot for putting up with it.

Thanks to the lady controller today, gave good service in the face of poor RT discipline.

[Vlad the Impaler]

Although I have no direct experience, I understand that they do a fantastic job in the FIR and no doubt have to put up with a hell of a lot. You might be interested to know that they are not actually air traffic controllers but air traffic assistants who have been specially trained for the task. So although they may pass you a clearance from a controller you can recieve information and not instructions from them. Many pilot's have been known to mistake a flight information service for some kind of control service which it most definitely isn't. The only traffic info you might receive is that based on an aircrafts time estimate for a position in your area.

[Fallows]

I was on duty today with the lady controller concerned. The problem is that although there is only one controller, he/she is monitoring three different FIR freqs. She/He may be speaking to an aircraft on for example 125.47, but the pilot on 124.6 is unaware of the other aeroplane as it is on another freq, and sometimes on first contact believes that the controller has replied to them. Incidently, commercial aircraft calling for joining clearances, weather, etc, tend to get priority as we know that they are probably calling us on the No2 box whilst being controlled by the radar sector.

[chiglet]

Fallows
One Controller, Three Freqs...
"Management" must be really Chuffed
we aim to please, it keeps the cleaners happy

[eyeinthesky]

Just worth pointing out that to call them 'Controllers' is perhaps adding to the misconceptions as to the service offered.

They are Flight Information Service Officers, and has been said before, are Air Traffic Service Assistants specially trained. They do a great job with a map with pins marking all the airfields and their frequencies, some paper strip holders and a headset!

[BDiONU]

Fallows:

Why do you not cross couple the freqs so that everyone can hear everyone else??

[FWA NATCA]

Take3,

At my facility when I work radar combined I'm transmitting and receiving on eight frequencies. Two of these are remote satelite airport frequencies that we use to issue clearances and to vector to several satelite airports in our airspace.

The majority of the time we try to keep all the aircraft on the same frequency but because of coverage limitations this isn't always possible.

Mike

[BALIX]

Cross-coupling? Luxury. If only we could have cross-coupling for just half an hour every day...

I don't know if London Information can cross-couple but up here in the frozen north we can't. Not possible with the type of circuits we have, they say.

When we band-box sectors, we can have up to eight frequencies selected. Some controllers have them on receive only, selecting the appropriate frequency as and when required. Most though just have them all on receive/transmit. It is amazing how often two aircraft on different frequencies transmit at the same time, even if they are the only two aircraft in the sky:rolleyes:

[BDiONU]

London Information use the standard LACC Voice Comms system they can select up to 12 freqs and cross couple 10.
3 freqs in use at one time due to geographical reasons.