I must admit that I expected these sort of replies from you Military guys. I'd like to make it clear that I am not "having a go" at you following your instructions. What I personally find illogical and frustrating is some of what is written in your JSP550 (or whatever it is now), and taught as gospel at Shawbury.
At the unit I work at, when we are on the westerly runway we have to coordinate about 70% of our IFR traffic (ins and outs) with an adjacent Military unit. When on the easterly this increases to about 95%, as our final approach tracks cross.
The ATCOs at this Military unit are normally very good, and understand our problems. Until recently, coordination was done on a unit/unit basis, with one person at the Military unit, normally the supervisor, coordinating with us, and then passing that coordination to whichever of his/her colleagues that needed to know. This has worked well for a number of years. The only times that difficulties have arisen was when a new ATCO was posted in fresh from Shawbury, and had not been taught how we work.
Our local instructions have recently been changed so that we now have to coordinate each track on a controller/controller basis. "About time" I hear you Military guys saying. However this has led to a considerable increase in our workload, which, given that as we work a lot of the time with 1 ATCO and 1 ATCA in radar, and it sometime gets so busy that we scarcely have time to draw breath, we just do not have time for.
This is further complicated as these Military ATCOs tell me repeatedly that they can not take a discrete, validated and verified squawk as an identification, but still need it's position stating to them (for God's sake, why?).
A typical recent example was the other day. I called them to try to coordinate 1 aircraft inbound. At the time they had thier radar pattern active, a couple of departures and transit traffic. This meant that I had to coordinate ("Your traffic X miles se of YYY, squawking 1234, not below ZZZ, my traffic, etc") about 6 different tracks with 3 different ATCOs. With all the "standbys", etc this took nearly 5 minutes, by which time my traffic had travelled about 25 miles! They then picked up yet another track and, as this new track was not part of the original coordination, it all had to be gone through again. This was for 1 aircraft, with 1 other unit, at a quiet time. Busy times this is simply impractical.
Some of you are probably thinking "then get more ATCOs". I couldn't agree more, but that is where the bean counters get involved, and is out of our hands.
Roger That, you say that this is a result of a "successful" trial in Scotland. From what I've been told, the trial involved Civilian ATCOs coordinating in the Military fashion. What was not trialled was Military ATCOs trying the Civvy method. I'm sorry, but all that proves is that Civvy ATCOs can coordinate in the Military fashion, provided that thier workload is not too high. It does not prove which is the better method.
Diddley Dee, I completely agree, more standarisation is required. But until we are taught at the same schools/colleges, to the same standards, I feel that these misunderstandings will continue.
Tired-flyboy, I also agree that some Civilian ATCOs need to tighten up thier coordination procedures. But I also feel that Military procedures need reviewing and updating to bring them into the 21st century. Provided that a course of action is agreed that is clear and unambiguous to both parties involved, then it should not matter what format the conversation takes.
As for "traffic information is dead information once you hang up", this need not be the case. If you ask me for traffic on a particular track, and I were to answer " flight information, not above xxxft", all you need ask is for me to let you know if this changes. This I will do, and if I'm relieved I'll pass that on to the next ATCO. That particular track should then become known traffic to you, as long as you retain the ident, you could use that information not just for one track, but for anything else you have in the area. As I'm not providing that track with any form of seperation I do not need to know what your traffic is. However, if I were to see a collision risk, I would certainly alert that aircraft, (duty of care, etc).
Last edited by Toadpool; 16th Mar 2007 at 12:40.