I blame the unit management and the CAA. You might think that this critical part of the data display, vital in every traffic situation from busy VFR to LVO, would be specified precisely in all MATS 2 (it is in some) and the significant elements be common to all units?
A few years ago, I conducted a straw poll on this subject with former colleagues at several regional airport ATCUs (not NATS, who have got their act together). The responses varied from one method to the complete opposite, from specified in MATS 2 to nothing specified, plus a sprinkling of personal preferences and variations and “we were always taught to do it like this” and “personally, I always do it like this.”
A frequent factor seemed to be lack of clarity about what information needed to be displayed and the most logical way of displaying it, plus a frequent confusion with what might be described as a procedural approach control format. I related this to a CAA Inspector and suggested that was a subject that warranted regulation, including the fact that at the time, ITOs were advocating different methods. Allegedly the subject was going to be raised at some forum, but the net result was an apathetic zero.
I would suggest that a basic principle ought to be that the data display, whether EFPS, manual strips or pinboard, reflects the reality of the relative positions of aircraft and vehicles as seen directly from the control room as well as on any ATM and SMR, plus any significant clearances that have been issued, e.g. landing, take-off, line-up only, conditional crossing, number three to follow…, holding visually etc. Having said that, if we were to start with a clean sheet and cleared our minds of any preconceptions, there is no reason with a strip display why all the strips could not progress up the board, I.e. as if the “pilot’s eye” view of events.
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