When flying in China, there are of course a few things to remember. I will limit it to ten…..
1) It's military airspace, controlled by military (yes mostly incompetent) ,military controllers operating old military equipment.
2) Sector controllers do not talk to each other, so treat each sector as a singular unit.
3) Controllers speak limited English, so keep any requests simple or expect to be ignored.
4) Due to the military airspace, civilian aircraft are graciously allowed to occupy their military airspace and fly to their destination via narrow corridors. Thus in order to maximise the number of aircraft in any corridor, they stack them up left, right and anywhere they can. So yes expect 3, 5 or sometimes 12nm right of track. You should consider yourself lucky to be airborne in the first place, so don't complain about a lateral off-set, even if it might put you legally "off track". This is also the main reason for the intolerable undetermined departure slots, called flow control, which inevitably your flight will suffers from on numerous occasions.
5) As WYOMINGPILOT eluded to before, they want you to descend NOW and at at least 1500 fpm to get rid of you, using the usual excuse of "due separation" You have no way of verifying this so as frustrating as it is, you have very few options here. Also SID/STAR altitude and speed restrictions are not relevant in China, nor are you expected to adhere to them. Forget VNAV/Managed descends, the military controllers will manage you, so coupled with a healthy dose of experience/situational awareness and TCAS, you’ll be right mate.
6) Sector controllers don't give a rats
if you want a higher level "due weather" or just to get some respectable fuel economy. They expect you to lie about the reason for your (quite possibly legitimate) request for a higher level.
7) Expect to negotiate CB circumvention as they want to keep you in their corridor. Heaven forbid you might be lying about that CB and just wanted a shortcut.... Often they will refuse you to divert left or right and you have no option but to request a 180 turn. Friendly persistence helps though.
7) Again due to the narrow corridors, if the sector controller determines that there is just too much weather along the track they will close the airspace and you will be told you cannot carry on to your destination, even if the latest Atis tells you it’s cavok.
8) At many airports the, ATC, Ground, Ramp and Delivery do not talk to each other. ATC is military and ramp etc is airport authority. There is very little or no co-ordination between them, so while you may be cleared to push and start, when it comes to taxiing, you may incur a further delays.
While taxiing, a “more than normal” vigilant lookout is essential here. You might be happily trundling along a taxiway having been told to taxi and hold short of the runway, only to find that an aircraft emerges from the ramp area and turning onto the same taxiway in front of you. You, nor him have been told about each other and no-one has been told who’s no1.
9) Safety concepts are not well understood in China. I could write a whole epistle about this alone….Suffice to say, BEWARE and never ASS-U-ME.
10) …and finally I wanted to make special mention of emergency descents.
PLEASE DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES START AN EMERGECY DESCENT WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE CONTROLERS !!
As strange and contradictory as this may sound, again due to the narrow corridors we all fly trough, starting an emergency descent without permission could very well lead to multiple aircraft being taken our during the plummet to terra-firma.
You should hopefully have a copy of the expected procedures, but basically they expect you to:
a) Declare the Mayday to ATC and request emergency descent.
b) MAINTAIN you altitude and track 10km (5.4nm) right of track.
c) Once on the offset and with permission from ATC, you can start the descent.
d) Above all else, it is imperative that this manoeuvre is co-ordinated with ATC.
Hope this helps and keeps the stress levels down
Ed