Sir George must be turning purple....
As far as Nigeria goes there was a big push to get SATCOM for ATC. Huge white antennae sprouted alongside the AIS facilities, meant to keep everyone in touch with everyone else. Nothing much really seemed to change, though.
I have been flying in Africa for over 25 years now and I get the definite idea that many folks just don't give a damn. That might just be me though.
The odd thing is that some of the really poor countries give really good service. You get to Bamako and the man takes pride in handing you a complete sheaf of weather information, satellite imagery even, something that I seldom saw in relatively wealthy Nigeria.
Visit AIS at DNMM, Murtala Muhammed Airport, Ikeja, Lagos and see what sort of weather information is available. Maybe it has changed but I doubt that and it should be an eye-opener to see this AIS in a major airport.
The sort of stuff we were up against, just for one example: We would call Abuja on the telephone from Lagos to get the weather, when we could get them to answer. For a little while we could get a weather report, one that was mysteriously unavailable in Lagos. Then they refused to give weather over the phone. We had to appear in person. So we sent our Abuja service representative in person to get the weather. That worked for a few days. Then came the order that only a pilot could get the weather in person. We ended up just getting our service rep to give us a good guess at the weather, the best we could do! You found out what the official weather report was when you got line-of-sight. Note: You did not find out what the actual weather was, you just got the official weather report! You found out what the weather was when you shot the approach. "Are you feeling lucky, punk?"
Another good one: In Port Harcourt we couldn't get a special Met report for love or money, when rainstorms could sweep through and cause rapid changes. I looked into this to find that the Met man had 24 little slips of paper, one per hour, to pass his official reports to the Tower. If he gave specials then he was one little slip short per special! And, no, only the official little slips from the government Met Office were acceptable: no making duplicates and giving them to him so that we could get specials!
Just a story because I know nothing: Radar: they bought clapped-out, discontinued radars for the price of new ones and then took big kick-backs. When the radars broke down the manufacturer told them to get lost; that model had been discontinued.
At every turn you found some daft obstructionism meant to build some shaky little African mini-empire for some little toad tucked away in a sweaty little office somewhere out of sight. Grand initiatives from ICAO would sweep overhead and promises of reform would be trumpeted in the papers but down where it mattered things did not change because people did not WANT them to change.
Algeria is an oasis of sanity by comparison so that I feel as if I am on holiday here. It's still Africa but the daftness is within proportion.
To answer the question above: If I were still in the same FIR then I would follow the lost com procedures to the letter. (I used to review them faithfully. There were some things I might have been a bit vague on but I was the Ace of the Base when it came to Lost Comms! That stuff can get you killed!) That said, the Dornier 328Jet was a good climber so that we would be able to go to F350 if appropriate right away. We didn't need to step-climb so that we could try to get cleared as high as we wanted right away. I don't know why but once I was up there I felt as if the odds were now on my side.
We would often get a climb enroute and then find that the level change had not been transmitted to the next controller. No problem with our comms, just some guy not passing the word down on the ground.
I really don't have a good answer to that question because it depends. I guess you would have to ask yourself, "What does that guy on the ground expect me to do?" and try to match that expectation rather than follow the rules necessarily.
For instance one day we had Lagos lose their comms when we were inbound to the VOR. I did exactly what the rules said, holding until my ETA and then descending for the approach in use. The comms came back and the controller LOST HIS MIND! I was doing WHAT!? I never did figure out what he wanted me to do; hold for a however long it took while they sorted themselves out? Just don't do what the rules said to do, okay?
Last edited by chuks; 22nd Nov 2008 at 22:01.