Hey fly through, sometimes we need to pull out some really bizarre tricks out of the hat to achieve our ten miles, cos Muscat and Tehran decided to "help" us
The expats in Muscat are great but the locals seem to have a great attachment to their aircraft and therefore don't want to give them to us until they are all on top of each other roaring into Bubin. As far as Tehran.. well nuff said.
As far as the visits go. We have tried to make it a part of our training but at this stage we get a trip to Abu Dhabi APP (Woohoo!) and thats it. I certainly have made many trips to Dubai and met many of the Dubai App controllers, but that was strictly personal
There is no requirement to acknowledge a readback as being correct. Silence from the controller is acknowledgement that you got it right, and we'll respond only if something was readback incorrectly. The only time I would tell the pilot he got it right, would be for our Eastern European friends, who readback the clearance and finish with a big questioning upward inflection in there voice, and I will confirm he got it right rather than responding to the inevitable queries 2 minutes later.
We have no requirement to tell Muscat of the runway in Dubai, and I guess Muscat expects you guys can get the ATIS and find out for yourself. I do know this can be hard when Dubai change runway but the ATIS remains unchanged for half an hour
