Virgin on a go slow?

[mikk_13]

From where I work at the moment,

If ya got behind the other and the radar says its pac man, ya need to do something.

In reality it is very obvious if you have a problem. The ground speed is rounded to the nearest 10knots, so if it says 450knots on both jets, you may have 10 knots of closing. So the old how long ya got calculation eg, max 10 knots per hour of closing which means if you have 15miles to start with you got an hour before ya have to do something or you never will be cause they will be in sydney.

This doesn't work so good on the climb, especially with the A320s. I find that they can reduce ground speed quite a bit if they increase there rate of climb. 737s are not as bad. So its hard to judge and depends on the operator.

Here is a simple example of how it usually works. If you have a 767 and a a320, the A320 might be doing 400knots and the 767 420knots. Say you have 20 miles. So maximum closing would be 30knots which gives you 30 mins to sort something out. However, say the front today is doing 370knots, that make 50knots closing and that gives you about 10-15mins to do something.

So based on 20 miles, a bad case of 50knots closing you still have at least 10 mins to sort the problem. And if it is a problem, 5deg left and she'll be offset 5 miles after 7-8mins.

I work in germany. There are so many flights, companies and aircraft types that you just can't say its a 737 so it will do this. You would not last a day. I usually go on- if its more than 20, i'm sweet because i have 10 mins to do something with 50 knots closing, if its less then i got to be careful. You will only be caught out once and after that you will always be watching the ground speed once they level out.

However, after all this, I would be pissed if an aircraft slowed down from a high speed without notice. This is because once i have jets in the cruise, I expect that the the speed will remain fairly constant. I do not expect them to cruise at .79, then without notice drop to .68. It is quite possible that i have one 20miles behind without speed control and this would leave me with not much time to recognize the problem, especially if I am busy.

So for me, If the jet climbs and set cruise speed at .68 at Top of climb, then this is not a problem because i would be checking the speed against preceding/following traffic at that point or if not before hand. If you are doing .80 and then decide to slow to .70, you need to tell me.

Assumption is the mother of ****ups.