Kellmark,
My concern is that without legislation and the requirement for Dispatchers then I don’t think that an FAA style system can be introduced.
1. I have used and continue to use the position reports or the flight plan route to estimate positions. CFMU’s CIA tool also offers a calculated time at certain points. My company employs both VHF and HF and more recently ACARS to allow direct communication with the crew, allowing the more proactive of us to provide crews with some form of support from the ground.
My point was that ASD is a great tool yet so far no one is interested in staring data, to allow us access to the data will require legislation – at present I am not even allowed to see what ATC is doing with most of my aircraft in mainland Europe.
2. It is true that new technologies do allow alternatives to an ATC based ASD system, but considering we are talking about major costs to carriers to introduce a dispatcher system why should we have to fit additional systems to our aircraft. As airlines we already pay expensive Navigation fees to provide ATC with the systems that could supply us data at no extra cost.
3. Regarding the weather radar sites I have not encountered anyone in Europe offering real time radar, again this could be a case of supply and demand. We have access to older radar feeds and satellite images, and charts in addition to TAFS, FC, and METAR data and do use these for planning. My point again was the need for system access and to show that at present we don’t have it.
4. I am reassured by your comments on productivity, however, for an airline such as mine we would require 10 dispatchers per day, I won’t debate the fact that experienced U.S. dispatchers command salaries of $50K plus, but say each dispatcher is paid £25K and to work a 4-on/4-off pattern we need 20 dispatchers, then you are looking at £500K per year additional costs. I don’t want to put a price on safety, but to persuade carriers to employ this method will take a considerable amount of lobbying. I wonder how many of the members of this forum actually responded to the EASA input?
5. I agree that the main obstacle to an effective operational control/flight dispatch system in Europe is the lack of legal/regulatory requirements for it. Without such a requirement there is not pressure to have qualified personnel or the appropriate technology tools to support them. Before we can go to a Flight Dispatcher system we have to supply the staff within the industry with a much higher level of training. You cannot simply introduce the system and grant grandfather rights to those already working in operations; the results given the varied experience, knowledge and skills could be a recipe for disaster.
I am curious with your 9/11 analogy, my impression was the FAA simply ordered all aircraft to land at the nearest suitable airfield, what level of dispatcher input was there?
I do fully endorse a requirement to bring legal recognition for the operational control of airliners, be that a training requirement or all the way to joint responsibility dispatching.