Airfield departure times

[radarman]

splitduty,

I'm still trying to wade through some Spanish legal documents posted on another thread. It's heavy going, but as far as I can make out Spanish controllers are now hung out to dry by AENA for any action or decision they make that results in an irregularity of any sort. This is regardless of whether the incident happens in their airspace or further along the line. So let's imagine the controller who made you wait had been a good egg and cleared you for take off when you arrived at the holding point. You are now 7 minutes early. So some time later you arrive at a very busy sector boundary 7 minutes before they are expecting you and this contributes to an overload. When complaints are made AENA trace your flight and find you departed early. Who gets shafted for causing the overload? Under the new rules it's the poor Spanish controller who generously allowed you to depart before schedule. As BrATCO said, CFMU calculations are based on FPL departure times. Depart early or late and these calculations (and all other flights) get screwed. So the only way for Spanish controllers to safeguard their jobs is to take every conceivable action to ensure their @rses are covered, even if this means inconveniencing flights under their control. There is probably no particular Spanish regulation saying you can't depart before your FPL dep time, just the controller worried there could be a come-back if he let you go early. Making you wait till 1200 made sure he cleared his backside and kept his job.