Bagso:
If you are going to quote me please do quote the full facts and not selected items in isolation......
ok then, how about taking a leaf out of your own book.
based on the undoubted "commercial" pressures that are forcing more and more traffic into the South East.......
where is your evidence that this is happenning? Only a finite number of a/c can fly in and out of the South-East, and when demand is high, flow control protects the sectors. Is this just your media hype creeping in at the start of your post?
Surely you would concede that Stansted could have been put anywhere in the UK, 80% of passengers are being sucked in from other regions, so why on earth add to the inherent pressures by positioning the airport in the South East ?
Yes it could, but Essex has proven its worth due to the amount of traffic that is using it - if it was ill-placed, then there just wouldn't be many flights from there.
..that however is NOT the fault of NATS or the hard pressed air traffic cntrollers who simply have to put up with what is thrown at them. I certainly was not critical of any LATCC controller.
errr, no we don't "put up with what is thrown at us", if we don't like what we see, we learn, and occasionally supply facts causing an investigation to make things better in the future. As for other organisations, see the thread about Bournemouth controllers.
I am not against expansion in the South East, I do feel that we should have had one major airport with 4 runways in one place, with room for further expansion. Instead of one major airport like Eg Frankfurt we now have a wide range of airports dispersed in a relativly small area, with crossing traffic at or about 8000-20,000 ft, that is a dangerous mix....!
I would count 5 major airports - Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and London City. Now try cramming all their traffic into one airport in a day. How safe can making
FIVE a/c a minute land at the same place (within 2 or 3 miles of each other) at the same time rather than spreading them out over the skies and eliminating the bunching and congestion of one area! Crossing tracks at 8000' to 20000'? Thats what radar is for, and the use of 13 levels for the traffic in your example rather than them all being at 8000' trying to land together - very safe.
My "assistance" is take Radar's advice, contact the press office, thats what it is there for. If they say 'no' then maybe they know a reason we don't, so why should we put our jobs on the line in helping?
My advice is to learn more about what you are writing about and learn the FULL facts and quote them accordingly, then maybe for once a properly balanced report/article will be read that actually gets some praise - wouldn't that be nice
