This feels like just a load of
threads about something so common in these days that most folks in this forum seem to just make a great deal of
. Im surprised on how much enfasis has been given to the matter, and seriously it looks like most people in this thread have just done solely UK-Spain return flights, and havent been elsewhere.
As someone else added before, spanish is an ICAO language, that means that JARīs are also written is spanish, it means that operators can have ALL their documentation and manuals in spanish, evrything can be in spanish including evrything involved with ATC, you like it or not its like that, the same applies to French, I believe Russian and some other.
Of course comparing with flying over scandinavia, germany, italy, holland etc has no influence on this matter cus they dont have that right, evrything has to be in english and trust me most of those nationalities would love to, but theyre not approved, so in this matter we should think in why before opening our peaks., If any incident or accident directly related to this would have happened before, then we would all be speaking english mate!
About the rest, even though most people sound like crying babies I do agree that in general ATC quality is poor,, ATC dont seem to like making an effort to give you Direct WPīs, some controllllers speak as good english as me japanese
, but nothing else really, for the rest, they seem and act perfectly in accordance. TWR ATCs as someone said before military airports arent even in the acceptable margin, that is absoultely true, I have no defence for them
, I heard that airports like Murcia, are changing soon into civil,,, but most civilian international ones are pretty decent.
Theres some aspects you dont see elsewhere; in spain making visuals is quite a tradition, and they try to help you out (not counting mad and bcn at peak times), but also with traffics before you, they inform you of their position and as long as you got the previos on sight they are in peace with it, unlike many EU airports in many places (incl UK) asking for visual with the preceeding in sight although is completely legal (as you assume the risk and youve left notice it through the transmission) they almost seem to laugh about that.
As a pilot, getting to make a good visual makes me more my day than having an ATC guy delyaing your departure a few minutes from some sort of confusion any could have
Someone porsted that in LEAL the ATC had intentions in giving priority to an iberia,,Why would there be priority to an Iberia if it aint anymore a public company( as AENA is)
, did you maybe stop to think the iberia had a slot and maybe the ATC wanted to help out.
In terms of equipment Ive visited quite many ACC and TWRs in Europe. In Spain the equipment genrally used in most ( dont know about the militaries)is from one of the leading spanish brands in this technology; INDRA which exports quite a lot of aviation and simulation equipments all over the world (incl the UK).
When i fly to the UK, or Germany (mainly these ones) the control is superb. Ofcourse still ages from the US for those of you who havent been there, but probably the best ones in Europe, you get lots of direct WPīs and good advisory information, I could also tell you a few number of things I could comlplain of like the only TCAS RA ive had in my career which was in german airspace, etc but in general excellent work, when i fly to spain i might one day be flying to one of these southern airports controlled by one of these newbees that ofcourse get sent to the most southern like places to get experience and feel like he doesnt have all what it takes, but hey... i say; field in sight and you know what, I make him the favour and me the pleasure,,,
Happy landings to all.