And on a lighter note - A340s....grrr
Following my first ATCO posting in the Pilot's forum - here's me second!!
London terminal control ATCO person - working on the south side of Heathrow. Now I'm sure the A340 pilots among you may well love the plane - but from a purely professional point of view, I'm not particularly endeared to it.
Firstly it joins the exclusive club populated previously by the 747-100 alone of climbing solely due to the curvature of the earth. And secondly, some airlines SOP of flying at around 160knts until passing 4-5000' (and therefore half an hour into the flight) causes havoc with departure separations. Where 2 minutes would normally be perfectly acceptable we need a generous 3.
(This problem is exacerbated by the noise restriction whereby we can't issue a heading to get the a/c out of the ruddy way until it's passed 4000'.)
I'm not trying to change the world here just help my own understanding (and hopefully yours!) and maybe answer any odd questions you may be asked shortly after departure such as 'are you ACTUALLY climbing?' or 'what is your current speed and what are you accelerating to?' or 'are your wheels still on the ground?' etc.....
I'm a little curious about the differences between airlines too. Virgin bods - you seem to fly around the 210knts after departure whereas the Sri Lankan guy I spoke to last night managed about 155.
I would be pleased to here your points of view, it just seems so odd when after FL100ish it performs very similarly to a big 74 with 'normal' speed and climb rates.
Oh yes, just one more thing - I can't help but wonder how it'd cope with an engine failure at MTOW. No doubt the fuzzy logic would take over and all would be fine. I watched a prog on Disc Wings showing how an A340 responded to GPWS warning - if only you could climb like that every time!!
Take care one and all, speak to you sometime soon! (Tonight even...)