Units started going off the piste and doing exactly the kind of thing that's mentioned here. For example paraphrasing an earlier post, well we were giving FIS because we were too busy to give RIS, but we tried to provide traffic info as and when we could if we were quiet. Absolute tosh. You should have provided one or the other. Provide FIS with "duty of care" collision warnings, or RIS and limit it for high traffic density, controller workload or both.
The definition of FIS is 'a service provided for the purpose of giving advice and information useful for the safe and efficient conduct of flights' and specifically allows for the provision of radar derived information (which is good and what people want). So who are you to call it absolute tosh when it was invented by ICAO and used all over the world? I suspect your origins betray you. I have heard it said on several occasions that we are ‘getting away with’ not providing RIS by people who work to a different set of rules, appear to prefer to do what they’re told rather than use their own judgment and do not understand the complexity of our particular task.
The reality is that if my main activity is providing radar control within CAS and I have a secondary activity outside, the game is different, and often close to impossible. For example, if an aircraft wishes to transit our airspace and receive ATSOCAS, we have to negotiate an initial contract, re-negotiate when they enter, re-negotiate when they leave again and cancel the contract at the end. We also might have to limit the service for a variety of reasons. Throw in a couple of radar handovers and do it with umpteen aircraft on frequency and listen. Listen to the RT at this kind of unit on a summer Saturday – endless talk, virtually nothing being achieved.
Unfortunately if you are providing RIS and are not very careful/lucky and something unexpected happens, attention can be diverted elsewhere and someone you have contracted to provide a service has flown for 30 miles without any service at all. Should the unthinkable then happen, a friendly barrister is unlikely to be satisfied with a reply of ‘I was a bit busy’. When you have found yourself in this situation a couple of times you become very selective as to when you offer a service. In these circumstances I and colleagues do our best, ‘getting away with it’.
Still, the new service recognises using radar to be such an appalling act it may only be permitted if there is a definite risk of collision. Clear enough, I will stick to the rules and that will make you happy, and my service worse. However, given that the new procedures are a little more complex, and resources are the same (actually less as most units are short staffed) when Jumbo Driver calls for TS and can only have BS please remember that we would like to help, but cannot.
Just to sign off, the phrase ‘taking your own terrain clearance’ is, like ‘freecall’ illiterate. Who dreams up this nonsense?
Grumpy