Thanks Dick!
I was fortunate enough to participate in CAA's Overseas Awareness
Program that ran in the early 90's. I believe Buck Brooksbank was at the helm at the time.
A good thing to come out of that program was for Melbourne to look at it's runway utilization resulting in the 16 arrivals and 27 departures mode.
To bad the SID's and STAR's introduced later meant hellishingly long track miles for some, which waters down the runway efficiency.
We visited Oakland Centre on several occasions, and I am still perplexed as to why a centre controller was vectoring a helicopter
for a instrument approach to a remote location out in the "sticks".
He commented himself that it was a difficult task with the radar scales available to him.
It seemed to take a lot of his attention as well.
At the same time, a Learjet blasted off from somewhere else, VFR, because an IFR clearance was not available.
Lots of controller coordination and keyboard input to deal with this event as well.
More distraction from his separating responsibilities with traffic at higher levels.
So it seems that no matter what airspace system is in use, someone is going to have to deal with it,
whether it be tower or centre. If the centre staff are spread thin, then their extra workload with setting up approaches
to remote locations may well be much higher than that of the tower.
I think it is easier and more efficient for the towers run their own approaches and leave the centres to do the higher level separating.
Recently, I visited Cambridge tower in England, a private operation with a E CTR.
If we think the alphabet airspace system is universal, then this message didn't get through to the chaps there.
Their VFR operations were much more restricted than any C airspace we have here.
CG
Last edited by Chief galah; 11th Nov 2006 at 02:08.