Thanks FT for your response to my query on the other post. It seems that this is the post where its all happening so I'll post my opinion here.
A varied wind at 500ft is indeed a valid reason for a runway change, but it doesn't absolve you guys from communicating this as the reason. All the UAE Centre could tell the pilots is that Dubai have asked for widespread holding and haven't provided a reason. The ATIS wasn't updated, and everybody more than 30NM from the aerodrome had no idea what was causing the delay or how long it was going to be. Freq 129.5 was almost blocked for the next 20 minutes with pilots making trivial requests. The easy way to solve this is to change the ATIS and then tell the UAE Centre this, so that they can make a broadcast-- "All stations this freq inbound to Dubai, wind at 500ft is......, new information is available on the ATIS freq, expect a delay of 10 to 15 minutes, standby for holding instructions"
With regards to the spacing being a little bit more than required, okay not ideal, but did this make your job harder? NO. Even with the 15-18NM spacing, you's had some guys doing snake patterns inside the approach airspace. And a couple of times, when the Centre did nail the 10NM, your co-ord rang up at the last minute to ask for 20NM. So the traffic in question had to be put back in the hold!!! And in fairness, there was 10 holding at Desdi at one stage, so the only way to figure out who was who, was to get somebody to squawk ident.
Cheers.