I certainly agree about one thing:
Perhaps we should make more of an effort to get civil ATCOs to ASACS units and V/V to see how each other operate
And I also acknowledge that occasional difficulties have been experienced getting through to ASACS controllers.
I can assure BALIX that his doubts are unfounded. Of course we are aware that ac climb and descend on air routes - can I assume that was banter? I still don't think it is unreasonable for a controller to take 10,000ft vertical separation when he is maintaining height and heading without bothering the Civ ATCO for coord 'just in case it descends'. Ayrprox, are you seriously suggesting that you want mil controllers to coordinate every 'potential' confliction? You are going to get a lot of calls if you operate over the North Sea! And can you explain what is meant by:
therefore it would have the last 2 identifiers of the destination in the data block
?
We do have some access to flight plan info, but it is not straightforward for the controllers to access, and we certainly don't have code callsign conversion as such.
In the incident which we are discussing (there is much to suggest we are all talking about the same thing, or at least very similar events), IIRC the descent commenced about 60 miles south east of Leuchars, with the airliner heading west. The mil ac was heading NNE.
I note BigginAgain appears to have scarpered! Perhaps he/she lit the blue touch paper and retired!
STH