World’s Worst
A cap of 80 movements an hour, and 4 positions open at any one time, and I’m being conservative. I make that 15 aircraft an hour per position. Now in a 15 minute window, which is about as long as it would have taken Dick to transit the airspace, any one controller would have been talking to the huge number of four aircraft.
I must admit, this is a very insightful analysis of ATC workload, worthy of Winstun at his best.
Now, let’s see. Given that four aircraft per person, per fifteen minutes comes nowhere near being busy (certainly not overloaded), perhaps we should implement a new Sydney staffing plan.
An immediate staff cut to
two at a time is in order, allowing each controller to handle 32 aircraft per hour, or eight on frequency at a time, allowing some capacity for unannounced VFR transits. Let’s call it
“World’s Worst Practise” to give credit where it’s due. Given that we will need some of the best controllers to do the job, let’s hire both WW and Winnie Churchall for operations on day one.
Extract from Sydney transcript, Day 1
WW:
“Well Winnie, we finally got rid of all them pesky controllers. Let’s show them how it’s really done!”
Winnie:
“You bet, Worstie!”
WW:
“Look, here come some arriving aeroplanes. They look just like the ones on FlightSim2000. This shouldn’t be too hard…….. ABC cleared to land.”
Winnie: “
Friggin’ bone, mate, let me have a go……. DEF cleared to land”
WW:
“Well, so far, so good, Winnie.”
Winnie:
“Hey Worstie, I’ve just thought of something. If we keep handling all these jets at 80 per hour, we’re gonna run out of parking spots for them by lunchtime.”
WW:
“Strewth mate, you’re right. Those bludging ATCs who used to work here yesterday must have struck the same thing. I wonder where they put them all?!”
Aircraft:
“Worst Tower, Airline 123, requesting airway clearance.”
Winnie:
“Friggin’ bone mate, these bustards wanna depart! Won’t that increase the traffic to………. about double what we had when we just counted the arrivals?”
WW:
“Um, uh…. now twp time the number you first thought of and carry the 1……I think you’re right Winnie”
Winnie:
Anfd all I ever wanted was to become a web page designer, and pretend to be Canadian rather than Australian! Why, oh why did I ever get Flight Sim?!"
The moral of the story: There are lies, dammed lies and statistics. When collated by the “World’s Worst” each should be used with extreme caution.
Let me see. Where in MATS does it say that an aircraft with 200 people gets priority over an aircraft with 2?
Nowhere, but it does say that RPT landing SY get priority over GA landing BK. Priorities are published in AIP also.