Originally Posted by
How's it Hanging
As someone who operates about 300 sectors into YSSY each year, my memory of it is initially, when parallel operations started, a readback of the localiser frequency was required. However that did not last very long and ATC asked that it not be read back. I think that might have been done by a memo to operators from ASA before it was amended elsewhere.
In the last few years I cannot recall hearing anyone asked to readback the frequency.
I do have a question for ATC out there though. Non-jets are normally on a heading or turning to a heading when changing to director. The normal requirement is to state the heading when being vectored and changing frequency, but I notice on change to director a lot do not say the heading and director does not seem to care one way or the other. What is the ATC point of view of this?
How's it Hanging is pretty much correct regarding the history. The LOC freq check by DIR was a safety mitigator for YSSY's close-spaced parallels and
AFAIK not done anywhere else in the world where there are parallels - except during a late landing runway change. We hope we won't have to do it for much longer.
Regarding the second question, heading and (assigned) altitude are required to be included on first contact. You're right in that a lot omit the heading. You're also right in that director doesn't care (nor do we really care about "leaving 6000"). It assists you greatly for "Runway in sight" on first contact too - even if it's behind you or under the wing, epaulette, etc, ...!
All we care about is not having blocked ATC frequencies on DIR while you are being vectored directly towards other aircraft. The LOC frequency check confounds the odd international or non-familiar pilot which often results in a lot of (imho) unnecessary waffle clarifying the difference between a LOC frequency and the QNH
