Airservices CEO, Greg Russell, states that for “flight information and alerting services” there are only 50 calls per day made to Flightwatch.
But we know that there are many many times that number of calls made to Flightwatch VHF in the course of a day.
What accounts for the disparity?
Surely Airservices would not leave themselves so open like this? So WTF is going on?
Eureka! SARTIMES!
Airservices is going to do away with SARTIMES!
Yes, that has to be it.
Airservices will remove the separate Flightwatch VHF network thus shifting the in-flight responsibility totally onto the ATCs and then ATCs will force sartimes out of the system entirely.
Blackadder would see that as a cunning cunning plan I’m sure.
There is no charge for sartimes (unlike DTI hey Dick!) so why not “terminate with extreme prejudice” the whole sartime system.
Yes ladies and gentlemen, we are only seeing the opening salvos of a significant raft of changes to come.