I agree with SATCO; the people at CMFU do a pretty good job.
I too rermember the old days when the job was done at each Centre. Normally by a Controller with no extra training and, on night duties, in addition to his job as a controller. It was very hit and miss, juggling about 12 lists on occassion, and very dependant on goodwill. Operators pulled a lot of tricks to avoid delays ( e.g. a certain large German charter Operator avoided the French restrictions for flights from EDDK/EDDL via NOR by joining at NIK - this worked for a while until the Traffic Route Orientation Scheme was introduced. Many disregarded slot times completely, knowing the chance was they would be accepted and that any penalty incurred would be for someone else later on.
Up to date traffic forecast per sector is available on line and, in co-ordination with the local flow manager the flow rate per sector is frequently adjusted to accomodate extra flights, knowing that we can level-cap certain city-pairs (at Maastricht, this was the reason why flights from London TMA to Düsseldorf TMA are sometimes restricted to max. FL290). This has a knock-on effect on traffic reducing delays over a much longer period. Of course, sometimes, due to shortage of staff, equipment deficiencies etc. it is neccessary to reduce the rate, but this guarantees a visit to Head of Ops. the next morning for a rather uncomfortable interview. (This never happens when we accept more traffic which speaks volumes about the quality of some ATC management)
Of course it is impossible to keep everyone happy. In one case a biz-jet operator out of Norwich was (is) very unhappy with a system that requires that he flies due South to join the system at CLN rather than route through military airspace and join at SPY, his tirade against the system blocking the freq. for a couple of minutes (very professional NOT).
Lon More
here before Pontius was a Pilot or Mortus a Rigger.