Hi Carnage (Good Nom de Plume)
You are being too general. One day at 12.30 it can be quiet, and the next it can be chaos. If, (as most of the time when it is "quiet") you are passing SIERA and given a turn for obvious track shortening, then knock it back. Do the whole STAR and your FMC will be able to tell you how many track miles you have to go....probably about 80 I would say. I have the sneeking impression that you fly for "The airline". Well it just so happens that we notice that you people are notorious for landing long (on 07L) to your E gates on the North apron. I will offer this to you until the cows come home ...if it is available, but when your lot take liberties that inconvenience others, then the next time it might not be offered. I am not trying to tell you for one second that everything that happens with HK ATC is good, or can be justified in every circumstance, at times we have a lot to answer for, but as the ratio of crews operating into here that have poor English skills increase, well I can assure you that our workload will increase and the nicities will gradually fade away.
For you to post here "At Heathrow blah blah blah..." is like me posting to you "At Cathay blah, blah, blah..." It is irrelevant. We have a system with a big mix of expats from all over the place (including ex EGLL) and an increasing number of low experience locals. Most of the time people are trying their best under the circumstances. Let's face it "track miles to run" is at best an (educated) guess on our part, and can be reasonably well figured out by you people using the resources that you have at hand... your experience; the runway in use; your NAV display; where you are being vectored to; listening to what you think will be the next aircraft ahead; your TCAS; fighting with your F/O...etc.
Not trying to dismiss your query, it's all relevant, however, you really need to consider both sides of the story. Operating a large heavy jet with other traffic can have it's frustrations, but you just have to live with it. As I said in a previous post, one of our tasks is to align the traffic flow in a reasonably sane order to land given wake turbulence and other considerations, and it becomes "juggle juggle" to a certain extent. You might want "track miles to run" (at SIERA) but if we are on 25R you will pass through the hands of 4 controllers before you call the Tower, and not each has the time to try and second guess what the other is going to do with you. So as I said above, we can only come up with an eduated guess with track miles, which as often as not will be no more accurate that what you yourself can figure out in the cockpit.
Hi Moosp, thanks for the (as usual) kind words. You are correct, some sort of dialogue would be useful, but I think for the time being we will have to annonymously "PPrune" it. I do think that "pilots visiting ATC" with useful periods of interface would be good, but trying to get our management to provide the resources required is an issue. It's unfortunate that access to the centre/tower is pretty restrictive, that will remain a problem. As for the talks between your "line ops" and "you", I guess you mean our management. We rarely get feedback from that. What is needed is for line pilots (say groups of 5) to have the opportunity to come and plug in for a couple of hours. I don't know what sort of interest there would be. With CX pilots being scattered all over the World doesn't help, but I guess slots could be reserved for those staying at the Headland on layovers....KA guys are more "local" ....just thoughts!