Originally Posted by Bring back Tridents
"weld man and machine together somehow"
Maybe so, but EFPS is NOT its finest hour. If I can do things better with a paper strip and a pen there is NO benefit to me as an ATCO from having an electronic system. Yes it has got rid of some phone calls but not nearly as many as was expected. At my regional airport there has been no capacity increase from having it in Approach, it has no clue how to do and count circuits and doesn't do overflying or IFR training traffic simply. Perhaps I am a dinosaur but I'd have paper strips back in a heartbeat.
Was EFPS designed to be an approach tool, a tower tool or both? I wonder if the same system is used by Canadian air traffic controllers in their approach and tower units.
As I see it, most often capacity issues in approach and tower units are related to runway capacity or geographical issues, so I'm not surprised that moving to a paperless system hasn't brought about any capacity increase.
Still, by allowing a crosscheck between the controllers' inputs and the pilots' inputs (via enhanced mode S), and route adherence monitoring in the air and on the ground (coupled with an ASMGCS) those systems should bring a safety gain. And then there should be a benefit in sharing more data with adjacent sectors (see fuzzy6988 's post above).
Originally Posted by Not Long Now
Either make a new system with as much added wizardry as possible that actually does new useful better things, or do nothing.
I think the idea of electronic stripping is to actually get the benefits of feeding the system with the clearances you give without changing much work methods. The gap in work methods between a paper strip system and a stripless system looks a bit scary...
It seems that most ANSPs go for electronic stripping for tower control and for a stripless system for terminal control. I'm still trying to get a confirmation of this (
thread).