Flying into LAX between about 7-10 years ago left some unique impressions on me. Not only was the 757 difficult to slow down anywhere, mostly on the Civet Arrival (it required a constant descent path), even with only one runway change at a very busy time. But once we were given three runway changes and SOCAL or Approach control gave us an EXTRA altitude restriction which was not published! At about 10 or 11,000', the Captain called for "gear down". Fortunately, he had flown there often on the B-727. After a very long leg from Asia or Europe, this might be more of a challenge, even without language difficulties. Leaving one morning at 0200
, I had no idea what an MD-11 pilot was saying on the radio, who taxied out for a very long flight westbound.
As a group, the voices of the LAX Approach and Tower Controllers back then, at least from my perspective, indicated more stress than I remembered hearing at any other US airport, including Chicago O'Hare, La Guardia, Boston etc. Atlanta (and STL etc) was designed with a parallel taxiway between each pair of runways, with time after landing to recheck a clearance and unwind just a little bit. Cleveland (CLE), Chicago Midway (MDW: also the length of each runway), Houston Hobby (HOU) and Boston (BOS), even Milwaukee (MKE) at times, can be just as hazardous as LAX, maybe more so. The trickiest and most hazardous runway layouts seem to be at CLE (three closely-spaced parallel runways, intersected by 10/28 on the north side) and BOS, most of all. Even crossing Milwaukee's runway 01L and 01R requires extra concentration just to finish the "taxi checklist" due to a controller constantly calling you.
Even a First Officer Instructor in the right seat was required to explain to the MKE controller that we needed to be left alone, so that we could remember where we were on the checklists. The weather was good, no traffic holding short for us, or that required us to hold short, no traffic on short final and no wheels up times issued - nothing that required us to hurry things up. He just wanted us to switch to the (for runway 25L) tower freq very early so that he could forget about us. Even my FO, an excellent highly-experienced jet simulator instructor and excellent line pilot with about fifteen-eighteen years of flying was forced to tell ATC to leave us alone for about 30 seconds. Talk about unnecessary distraction with low traffic volume!
This might be one extra reason why MKE is reported to be a high runway-incursion airport. Do some ATC guys believe that in a two-person 'steam-gauge' c0ckp1t, we have nothing to do on a short taxi route, as we cross two or even three runways? Soon this will combined with double-checking de-icing holdover times, perhaps next Wednesday for those in North Dakota (MOT or GFK) or Winnepeg. The tragedy in Lexington, Kentucky enlightened laymen and reminded flightcrews as to what can happen when an operation is rushed.
An article in a newspaper last week claimed that new US Controllers might be hired at 10% less salary and in the near-future might have a workload 10% MORE than many controllers have now. The theme of the article, often quoting a Controller directly or indirectly, suggested that their FAA bosses are indifferent and callous about the results, including two solid hours on the radar scope with no break during a peak workload period