Originally Posted by Fuji Abound
There is an increasingly held view that it is a waste of time talking to London info.
The fact of the matter remains there are significant parts of the country were there is no RIS or LARS and no other meaningful service.
Never the less I still find some of the traffic information that can be provided by London info or ATC useful.
I don't think the view is increasing - it's more that there are a lot of people calling who don't really need to who are, by dint of clogging up the frequency, preventing them from doing their main tasks and preventing those with a
higher priority requirement to call them from getting what they need.
This has been spouted many times before, but the main priorities for London information are:
1) Dissemination of information
required for the safe conduct of flights (weather, danger area activity, TDA activity etc).
The calling for a pseudo ATC service, which is not actually provided, does not fall within that remit
2) Receipt of airborne flight plans, and issuing of ATC clearances when that clearance cannot be obtained from an ATC unit
How can they do that when the frequency is clogged by people who are calling for the pseudo ATC service mentioned above.
3) Provide Alerting service
If you're over the English Channel, Irish Sea, Middle of Wales you want a safety net just in case it all goes quiet. That is a servce that is seriously downgraded when every cretin from here to kingdom come is calling for a supposed "Flight information Service" (Read - "I want someone to talk to because that's what I was taught to do"). If you're over the south of England, in good VMC, do you need to make that call?
NO - look out of the damn window - it's going to serve more use!