willadvise,
You don't have to be around these forums to realise the immense respect we have for our colleagues in ATC. However, your post uses all the reasoning that fills so many of us with dread.
To your way of thinking the more accurately we fly the better you can do your job and the more effiently ATC can move traffic.
We are the traffic, not data tags. Anyone travelling on the flightdeck can see that we are now using a 100 metre swathe of that 5 mile (assuming it is drawn between VOR's with the required legal distance) or wider airway.
As forget points out, throw RVSM into the mix, as we're facing here in Europe, and you must surely understand our desire to offset. The major crossing points are going to present some very interesting and salutary experiences.
Why not allow a couple of hundred metres of limited offset in that complex airspace to cover the majority of our encounter time? It must already be built into the calculations previously mentioned as a buffer. Let's use part of it.
As controllers in 'first world' complex airspace you have an entirely undue influence on the wide open airspace we spend the majority of our time traversing.
An off hand reference it being understandable in dodgy parts of the world only serves to illuminate our frustration with your senior colleagues. Get them on a flight deck to see just how our navigational accuracy combined with your tight, accurate and efficient controlling gives us a very nasty sensation in our trepidation glands.
And while they're at it let's have them in a sim to at least give them a taste of what high level windshear, CAT and turbulence from passing traffic can do to a 1'000 feet of vertical separation at upper flight levels.
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Regards from the Towers
[email protected]
[This message has been edited by PPRuNe Towers (edited 27 November 2000).]