A QUESTION FROM AIR CANADA
I had the good luck this past weekend to fly up front on an Air Canada A-330. While up front another passenger came onto the flight deck. It turned out that this man was an air traffic controller from Canada. He and the pilot got into a discussion about what the pilot considered to be an unsafe condition at LHR. It seems that the controllers would not give an ATC clearance until the plane was being pushed back. This meant that the First Officer had to set the proper coordinates into the flight control computer and the pilot could not cross check the FOs input because he was involved in starting the engines and taking care of other business. The pilot stated that he questioned personnel from LHR ATC and they did not respond. He feels that this practice is unsafe and I would well imagine that other pilots feel the same. I told him about these threads on PPRuNe stating that he should ask this question. Since I didn’t see any postings from him I thought I would ask the question for him.
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The Cat