PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - 25 years of holding at Williamtown
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Old 18th Dec 2007, 22:52
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mjbow2
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
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As an airline pilot I used to fly into Amarillo Texas, the home of the V-22 Osprey. For several years I would fly into Amarillo several times a month and the vast majority of the time there were either a B1, F15, C-5 or similar approaching, departing or most often doing touch and goes in the traffic pattern.
The Panhandle VOR is the intersection of 10 (ten) Class E Victor Airways. See here with KAMA being a class C airport. Its interesting to see how similar AMA is to Williamtown with the traffic mix, with AMA having around 270 movements a day (not sure how many Williamtown has) but having much smaller class C boundaries. (5 mile ring surface to 4000ft agl, 10 mile ring 1200 agl to 4000ft and class E outside of and above the class C)
With so many private and uncontrolled Class E airports in the vicinity of AMA there is always VFR traffic transiting through class C. Its interesting to note too that VFR only need to 'establish two way coms' seeAIM 3.2.1 with the approach controller when transiting the class C.
Wouldn't it be nice if our class C was like this too? I don't think it's unreasonable to reduce the size of our class C, limit the tower controllers area of responsibility to the vicinity of the airport and give the rest to an approach controller just like the US.
If they can safely provide a VFR friendly and efficient class C airport with military and airline traffic like Amarillo in the US then we can do it here too.
MJ

Last edited by mjbow2; 18th Dec 2007 at 23:10.
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