Schnowzer I can't give you a reason why Dubai shouldn't control the bottom of the holding pattern because there is none. Dubai should at least have the bottom level of the stack. You take him in, we drop the next guy and give him to you, you bring him in we drop the next guy and give him to you. That still doesn't solve the problems of spacing when we aren't holding (which is getting less often but still the majority of the time). I honestly don't think slot times will work, because that relies on our neighbours being a part of the whole plan, and that won't happen. We can't get aircraft as late as we do and then try and implement a time to meet requirement on them. So the only quick improvement I can see right now would be more specific flowing from the Dubai coordinator. That is rather than a blanket 20 NM in trail spacing, by the Dubai Coordinator being more proactive and working out the order of the sequence 100 NM out from Dubai and then adjusting the spacing requirements to East and West as is required there would be a lot less wasted slots into Dubai and similarly a lot less cluster farks in the DB TMA when the aircraft have been vectored to achieve required spacing only to be vectored all over again once with Dubai. My understanding is that during training in DB TMA the coordinator position is a bit of an afterthought, and very little if any training time is spent there, whereas I think it is one of the most important positions in the operation. Some people who have worked as a Flow controller back in there home countries are a joy to work with and they make the sequence work from both sides, whereas in some cases you go to Dubai Corrdinator with a request for an aircraft 60 NM out of Dubai, and the reply is "Who?" as they haven't even looked at the aircraft yet. Again this is not trying to slag off Dubai Controllers cos on the whole they do a good job, and there are sequences handed off by guys in the Centre that make me wince with embarrasment, so there are problems on both sides, but I think there needs to be improvement made. Fire away!