Well, I, and the majority of my colleagues, are not at all confident with the new technology programmes.
In the past year or two we've had a Runway Incursion monitoring system (RIMCAS) active, which we are required to have switched on (fair enough). However, this system is STILL faulty. The alarm goes off quite regularly. In one forty five minute session of departures today it went off ten times, with the system believing there were two aircraft taking off in close formation and thus conflicting with eachother. This is causing a human factors problem in that it goes off with such regularity that nodoby actually takes a lot of notice anymore, even if it alarms for the proper reasons!
The tower supervisor is required to log all faults on this system on the RIMCAS fault sheet.
Our new ATM regularly fails to convert the squawk into a callsign. This happens maybe ten to twenty times an hour.
The tower supervisor is required to log these faults on the ATM 'fail to convert' fault sheet.
Our new ATM has an approach monitoring function (AFDAS), both height and azimuth, and regularly shows a/c are low/high/left/right/going backwards on the approach. This happened maybe once or twice an hour.
The tower supervisor is required to log all faults of this type on the ATM/AFDAS fault sheet.
Our new ATM often fails to display a/c for several seconds, ie. a/c drop out of radar cover, including the trail dots. Sometimes they pop up ten miles away from their actual position. This is why we are back to the stone age with Approach having to advise us of the order of landing.
The tower supervisor is required to log all faults of this type on the ATM/AFDAS fault sheet.
It's now been decided that the ATM is so
that it's effectively been taken out of service completely, but because it's been a bit of a fudge, we are not required to increase to minimum four miles spacing as the Part 2 states if the ATM is U/S.
Add the above to the airfield lighting fault sheet, and three of four other fault sheets I've forgotten, it's very rare to actually get any other tasks done on the sup's desk. Last cycle I had a thirty minute period as supervisor where I was just logging faults one after another and got no other task done, even the latest weather was still hanging out of the fax machine.
It's quite ridiculous!
