Dubai ATC

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Two totally unrelated questions to the DXB controllers from of your frequent controllees:

Firstly, EK, (and, I imagine, every other user of DXB), has an engine out procedure for R/W 12 that reads: “continue straight ahead, take up the hold at OSTIN, climb to 3000’ ” (or words to that effect). Some of us controllees have on occasion questioned the commonsense of this procedure, for a number of reasons, and have been told that it is the ICAO procedure for DXB and ATC won’t change it.

From the point of view of us controllees, winding a heavy 777-300 up to 3000’ on one engine on a 42 degree day (which, thanks to the inversion that’s frequently there in summer, could be even more than 42 degrees as you ‘climb’) in a tight holding pattern seems to be a really good way to end up observing an oil temp overheat on the remaining engine.

I know this is probably of little interest to you controllers – at least not until you receive a rather high-pitched scream advising you of the fact – but I would have thought that from a controller’s point of view, the absolute worst place for an aircraft that’s just suffered an engine failure would be in a holding pattern 15 miles on the extended centreline of the busy departures runway. Surely you’d prefer him out of the way, maybe out to sea (where he can jettison the fuel he will almost surely have to jettison) and be nicely set up to commence an approach – maybe even in a hurry if his malfunction develops into something time-critical?

When I’ve asked that the procedure be changed, I’m told that ‘on the day’, you obviously wouldn’t carry out the full procedure, that ATC would almost certainly vector the aircraft off somewhere long before you got to 3000’, maybe even before you entered the hold. Which leads me to my question: if that’s the case, why not have a procedure in place that details what a would actually happen in such a circumstance? It would reduce the workload for the controllees suffering the engine failure enormously if they could plan, pre-takeoff, exactly where they will go in the event of an engine failure. What would be of particular advantage would be a designated fuel jettison holding point somewhere off the coast, preferably not too far from land. Ideally, any engine failure procedure (for all runways), would end with “track to XXX (the designated jettison hold) and take up the hold”.

It seems to me something like this would make life immeasurably easier for both us controllees and you controllers, reducing the verbiage after an engine failure to almost nothing. (As has been mentioned by others on this thread, calls from ATC requesting information or intentions after a go around or failure can be more than a little distracting for the crew.)

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My second question is in regard to the Cat II conditions DXB suffered on the morning of the 19th. From just before 6:00am local, the viz was rapidly reducing (at one stage, the ATIS changed four times before the previous info got through one reading, which I know, considering how *** long the DXB ATIS takes for one read through, might not sound too unusual).

12L, as the only current Cat II runway, was obviously made the active, but the low cloud was so localised that the south eastern side of the airfield and the approaches for R/W 30R were in the clear – you could have done a visual onto 30R and been at taxi speed before going under the low cloud (where, believe it or not, the viz was still relatively good), while aircraft were missing out on 12L.

I know this wasn’t immediately obvious to someone in the Tower, which was swathed in the low cloud, but when it was pointed out to the Approach Controller, he said, (and sounding very frustrated, I thought), that they were bound by the rules to use 12L in the current conditions.

My question is this: are the rules so set in concrete that the controller on the spot isn’t allowed to use his best judgement to make the best use of the facilities available to him and the conditions prevailing at both ends of the field? Aircraft were diverting (or at least one did that I heard) while the other, non-Cat II runway was wide open, at least for a short time, certainly time enough to get the gaggle of aircraft in that were in the approach sequence at the time. (30 was also into wind.)

It’s not as though this was a one-off situation. It’s quite often when fog/low cloud affects Dubai that you find one end of the field at zero viz while the other runway is in the clear. Years ago, I missed out on a Cat II to R/W 12 and then did an immediate turn back and landed on 30 off a visual approach. It would seem, from what the controller said on Thursday morning, that thanks to the rules now in place, that option would no longer be available and I would have to divert – unnecessarily – because in Cat II conditions, the rules say that 12L is the only runway that may be used.