Hey Fly Through, just a bit of a suggestion here. We in Area understand about the sector loading with/without a director (we don't like it like you but we understand). The problem we have is we are very rarely told when there is a director working, so we don't have any idea how many aircraft you can take on frequency until we are told to keep aircraft on our frequency or hold them as they are approaching DESDI/BUBIN. This means our workload goes up and if we hold, it makes us look incompetent as we have spent the last 10 minutes vectoring the ass off guys trying to avoid them holding. We have just got our 10 in trail and we get the traffic loading call from you guys.
Wouldn't it be better for it to be procedure to call us when Director is not there, especially during busy periods so we have some awareness of the situation arising before it happens.
Instead (as happened 4 days ago) the North controller transfers an aircraft approaching DESDI, and then gets a call to keep the aircraft on frequency. On telling the snooty Coordinator that the aircraft has already been transferred, he recieved a bollocking about the fact that we should know that there are too many aircraft on ARR frequency without a director working and so he shouldn't have transferred the aircraft???? 1. How do we know there is no director, and 2. When and how do we accurately know how many aircraft are on the ARR frequency. To top it all off the North Controller concerned was told that he is "just an Area controller" (even though he has worked 20 years as an APP controller before he came here!!).
These occurances only widen the gap between Dubai APP and Area and helps noone, least of all the Aircraft.