MAX1 said
If the System Estimate Time Over (SETO) and BRL are out by more than 2 minutes, or considered unreasonable, the controller is REQUIRED to check and confirm with the pilot as to the Pilot Estimate Time Over (PETO)
Once upon a time Flight Checking Officers were tasked with checking pilot estimates in such a manner. Moving into TAAARTS, the implementation team were a bit stunned to not find a Rodoniscope on each console,
Airways Museum Virtual Tour - Rodoniscope and so decided to waste everybody’s time by using the smegging ETO function instead, and writing a procedure that MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL to administer it, resulting in controllers bugging pilots regarding discrepancies involving sometimes an astonishingly small tolerance. If Australian ATC has time to administer complete bollocks like this maybe we could stop it and devote some time to ATC’ing in other internationally accepted manners. Other controllers just use what the pilot says, and mitigate pilots telling lies or making mistakes by implementing surveillance where the risk of errors causing unsavoury results is high.
Am going to read up on the msaw alert before I respond to the guts of this issue. Certainly agree that if a simple procedure will save lives, and it is done elsewhere, and is practical to implement, then we should do it. I don’t know either way if this is the case. It is also true that recent structural changes have placed all such airspace under the control of Regional Services, causing spectacularly huge sectors, rivalling the monsters that existed in the closing throes of Flight Service, as James Michael says (and it is true, whether he is secretly Adrian Dumsa, or El Cid or whoever is leading your paranoia parade today).
The forthcoming spod: and mostly here alreadySDE environment will group lower level GA and regional RPT separate from CC pairs and high level heavies.
It seems likely this is a precursor to a spectacular winding back of services on economic grounds and not an opportunity for implementing new ones.
RHS said
When the aircraft went 500' below the LSA of 7100' about 30 miles east of Benalla the MSAW would have been activated as the Pilot would not have reported visual or cancelled IFR as he was still in IMC. The controller would have called the pilot to check if he had failed to report visual. The pilot would have reported that the aircraft was still in IMC. The controller would then have issued an urgent safety alert with the instruction to climb to 7100'… …There will not be 80 alarms- there will only be an alarm from a pilot who has failed to report visual or is about to die.
So putting this into the ATC perspective: An aircraft is cleared to leave CTA or has notified on descent to no particular level, so the CFL shows ‘000’.
… nor can he reliably and quickly notate a 'Visual' on the track.
Well we can, when the pilot reports visual we change this to ‘VSA’, as is enabled now in the TMA. If the MSAW alert goes off we must “assess the integrity of the alert”.
CFL=’VSA’ - I don’t know if ‘VSA’ disables the MSAW or not, but if the CFL = ‘VSA’ it is not a valid alert, ignore it.
Obviously nowhere near destination – It’s probably valid, issue safety alert, "(callsign) LOW ALTITUDE ALERT, CHECK YOUR ALTITUDE IMMEDIATELY... (followed by advice on the minimum altitude appropriate to the aircraft's position)".
CFL=’000’ – Is either visual and hasn’t told us, or in the middle of an instrument approach, and maybe near the minima. Either way it could be a valid alert unless the pilot is following the instrument approach. Your sector has hundreds of instrument approaches, and even the meanest checkie can’t expect you to memorise them all. Select ‘local data’ in the ARRRRDS, removing the picture of the Cozy that is burnt into the monitor, then ‘approaches east’, there are 4 RNAV approaches, a VOR and an NDB for that aerodrome. You look back to the radar track, and his position is near one of them so ignore it. If you haven’t got time for the above, or can’t bear to move the picture of the Cozy just issue the alert. 80 times a day.
Thrower of Left Handed Rocks
absolutley no input required from the controller unless the aircraft breaks the protected area outside say 5nm of the destination aerodrome and the alarm sounds.
Why is that a sacred site? Plenty of aircraft CFIT within 5nm of airfields, judging by nasty photos in the crash comic. Why do you draw the line of ATC intervention there, rather than at 8,500ft where it is now?