Granny;
Okaaay, so the whole of Europe are doing it wrong eh
No, not the whole of Europe. MAESTRO is a European invention. You appear to only be aware of what happens in the UK. Which brings me to
to the bottom then they leave at 8,000 feet
Did you not understand what I said earlier? LHR has 4 stacks, feeding in up to 3 at a time from each stack, where the a/c have been holding long enough to be at the bottom. That won't happen at DXB. You need to come to the ACC and watch the holding. We essentially have only 1 stack, and the a/c aren't in it long enough (usually) to be at the bottom when they exit (especially the longer it runs- Area has so little airspace that there is no transition into the hold. It's 'on frequency, straight into the hold' at which point the a/c reduces both speed and ROD. We have a lot of problems pushing them down to free up the levels the ORSAR flyers arrive into our aispace at.)
Control of the stacks should be delegated to the airfield - it is virtually everywhere else
That isn't true. Holding isn't a TMA function. Controlling the flow out of the hold is.
Sequencing is an approach task
Agree totally.
Area trying to manage a stack on 100nm range settings. It's painful to watch
East and West manage the stacks on much smaller range. What exactly is painful about the way they are managed? What is painful is watching them come out of the stack then do another 50 track miles of vectors. I think what you mean is "it's painful watching the way the flow out of the stacks is managed". That is out of Area's hands.
In my experience it is very difficult to fill a stack so that area run out of levels unless there is a runway blockage.
In your experience has LHR ever run 30nm in-trail spacing? Or the LHR TMA get itself into such a bind that they put out a call "hold everyone until further notice". Happens once a fortnight here. I have seen the holds fill on at least 6 occasions here in the last 12 months. You can't tell me there is a lot of planning going on.
It doesn't really matter how they get from the hold to the ILS as long as they do it expeditiously
There is absolutely nothing to prevent that happening now, yet the "cross country" is a regular occurrence. Flowing to the threshold is a better way.
Finally
I'm not having a go at the area guys
You are. You obviously don't have much understanding of what Area does, so give it a rest. BTW, there are plenty of guys at Area who have loads of approach experience around the world (Toronto, HK etc) who shake their heads in disbelief at what goes on in the TMA- EVERY DAY OF THE WEEK. So why go there? We can sling arrows all day, but it won't fix anything.
Did anything come of the invite to the EK pilot meeting this month? That, I believe, might be the best way forward.