Greetings pilots of the Middle East. On March 10th at 00:00Z (04:00L) DXB tower and radar will implement new procedures that, with your co-operation, will greatly increase capacity and efficiency whilst maintaining a safe ATC service.
As a bit of background you guys often pick up delays at the holding point on departure as the tower controller is severely restricted in when they can issue a takeoff clearance in relation to the arriving traffic on the parallel runway. Dubai’s offset parallel runways are too close together for ICAO/GCAA approval to operate departures and arrivals independently. As such, in standard dual operations (dependant mode) the tower has to have the departure rolling by the time the inbound on the parallel runway is at 2 DME to ensure the departure passes the upwind end of the staggered parallel runway before the arrival crosses the threshold of the landing runway, to ensure separation in the event of a go around, eg departure 12R has to be passing abeam M13B airborne or rolling before arrival crosses threshold 12L or the controller is relieved of duty as a technical loss of runway separation has occurred. This results in huge inefficiencies on departure when tower marshalls aircraft at holding points to get north/south SID splits for radar but can’t issue a takeoff clearance as arriving traffic is now close to 2 miles from touchdown on the parallel. Furthermore, once you finally get airborne radar cannot give you expeditious turns until you climb out of very conservative altitudes dependant on the runway in use.
So what are the changes?
For the past few months we’ve been training hard to introduce early turns on departure at 1000’ but more importantly tactical turning missed approaches that will allow the tower to operate in a considerably more efficient independent runway mode. Both these two procedures are different though so I’ll explain them both in turn, however one thing remains constant at all times, from March 10th, all departures must remain on tower frequency until instructed to contact radar, without exception.
Omni directional departures
Tower may, following co-ordination with radar, issue departures with an instruction to turn onto a heading between 090-160 degrees off 12 L/R passing 1000’ and not before the upwind end of the departure runway, and heading 270–350 degrees off 30 R/L with the same above restrictions. It is most likely though that this early turn instruction shall come from the departures radar controller once tower has transferred you and you have reported your passing altitude (verified at above 1000’ on our radar screens).
Missed approach departure turning area
To facilitate independent departure operations and ensure seperation from any missed approaches from the parallel, the tower now have a section of airspace they can turn both the missed approach and the departures at low level to create the minimum ICAO/GCAA acceptable 30degree track seperation. In 12 ops , a missed approach off 12L can now be turned at 600’ onto a ‘track’ of between 090 and 120 and a departure off 12R can be turned at 800’ onto a ‘track’ of 120 and 150. In 30 ops, a missed approach off 30L can be turned at 800’ onto a ‘track’ of between 270 and 300 and a departure off 30R can be turned at 600’ onto a ‘track’ of 330 and 300. The key things being that it’s a track being flown not a heading here and that the level of turn is low but approved by the regulator for terrain clearance, hence the critical need for a track to be flown, also tower will not issue these turns prior to the missed approach crossing the landing runway threshold.
I hope from reading the above you can appreciate the critical need to remain on tower frequency at all times until instructed otherwise. Further, if tower does turn you onto a track then be aware that this is to be carried out immediately as it's to ensure seperation from other traffic, and will result in an earlier transfer to radar.
Also as Dubai is surrounded by a class D control zone we only have to provide traffic info to IFR vs VFR and vice versa, so early turn for seperation from IFR traffic may also get a ‘significant’ RT transmission in respect of VFR traffic, that said we’ll be restricting the levels at which the VFR operate and timing the turn of the IFR traffic to ensure that there should never be a chance of traffic getting too close and the increased RT will hopefully be the only headache.
As nothing in life is ever simple…..On 30 ops providing we have VMC we can operate independent departures 24/7, however on 12 ops the the full length (K1, K2, M4 and M5) take off points of 12R are too close to the touchdown point of 12L for ICAO/GCAA to permit independent operations. So if met conditions force us to operate in 12 mode we shall be expecting you to help us out and depart from the intersections K3,4,5 or M7, thereby ensuring we can remain efficient and continue idependant operations. If your performance does require full length 12R then you must advise GMP on first contact so the tower can plan ahead, be advised though that this request may incur a delay for your flight as it will be treated as an ‘arrival dependant’ departure. We understand that certain destination flights, especially in the summer, will have no choice but to request 12R full length, but please tell us in advance.
If you’ve read this far then congratulations, we hope you’ll agree the above new procedures will offer you a more expeditious, orderly and equally safe service and thanks in advance for helping to make them work.
If you have any questions by all means post them on here. DXB ATC operations would appreciate any feedback on the new procedures and you can do that by emailing us at the following address:-
atc-operations(at)dubaiairnav.gov.ae (substitute (at) for @) as it's not always displaying correctly below.
[email protected]
All the best Yellow Snow.