4 Holer Poler
I want to take issue with what you said in your post. OK
Firstly you say "it wasn't even busy". How do you know? Do you think that R/T is the be all and end all of our job. He may have had an airworker or air test flight wanting to do something strange and he was up to his eyeballs with the military and all units around him trying to negotiate a clearance for this guy. He may have had strips piling up for pending flights that he had to assess before putting in his board. He may have been trying to help out one of his fellow controllers while doing his own job due to short staffing. There are a million reasons a controller can be busy and sound quiet on the R/T.The radio was quiet; it was 3 in the morning with only three a/c in the hold at DESDI; these were arrivals, directed to the hold.
Secondly you say it was just an observation but it was clearly a dig at us controllers in the UAE No, I wasn't generalizing, keep your hair on. The guy was plain rude - if he didn't want to thumb-suck an EAT then he should say "undetermined. Pilots ask for an EAT because they need to plan ahead., when you said that you wouldn't hear a request for an EAT go unanswered at some other major airports. I just want to point out that at those airports they will have proper flow that tells them not only the order of the sequence but also the landing time of each aircraft. We have neither. The reason a request (3 in the space of as many minutes)may go unanswered is because if we do make an asse pluck and it turns out to be wrong, which it will be 90% of the time, we will cop it from the pilot and if it goes further from our superiors. But again I ask you seriously what should we do. ? We do the best job we can with the equipment and manpower available to us. Agreed. The Gulf as a whole is at least 100 controllers short (to put that in perspective there is roughly 300 controller of all shapes and varieties in the Gulf so that means we are 25% short), and it will only get worse as the dollar depreciates further and the traffic continues to climb. We keep the aircraft apart, and try to provide as best service as we can to our customers, you the pilots. There are some things though that you may expect in other better resourced parts of the world, that sadly you cannot expect here. So when you go into the hold and fuel is an issue, rather than asking me for an EAT, the most useful piece of information for me will be a latest divert time and alternate.You would understand what I'm talking about. Most wouldn't & the arrogant would ask me for my intentions. Now I'm generalizing.
I should have added to the things that can be done to help us, and probably the most important of all,
6. Carry enough fuel to hold for at least 30 minutes and then some, if flying into Dubai or Sharjah between 10.30pm and 2.30am. The way the traffic is going it may also be an idea to expect holding between 3.30am and 5.30am from Asia inbound to Dubai from the East, and between 6.00am and 7.00am from the West.Good advice. I'm not beating up on controllers & certainly didn't intend to flame the DXB controllers as a group. This guy was just out-of-line. 4HP