Two minutes behind a 757 please!!
I'm a skipper on the diminishing RJ100 fleet at LGW (formerly CityFlyer) and I have to relate this story to you as it really disappoints me that someone at LGW TWR could act in such a way. I have a very high regard for all controllers and the LGW ones I normally have a special regard for as I have had the pleasure of working with them for the majority of my career. I suspect that it's just the one controller but I'm not sure as the two incidents took place a fair time apart. Here goes:
I'm sitting at A2 and a 757 has just lined up from A3 on 26L. The controller asks me if I'll accept an imediate departure behind a 757 which I respectfully decline. He then has me sitting at the holding point for 15-20 minutes before he allows me to go. In view of the fact that I have been flying out of LGW for six years I am well, aware and used to, being slotted in between two arriving aircraft five miles or so apart. On this ocasion he did not do so, choosing intead to "punish" me for NOT being bloody stupid.
About three months later exactly the same happened, only this time the 757 lined up at M1 and there was a BA 737 at A3. Again I respectfully declined his invitation. I expected him to ask the 737 the same question but he did not. WHY?? Why, also, did he then proceed to punish me again and keep me there for 15 minutes again, allowing the 737 and the whole queue on A3 to line up ahead of me?
Now please don't respond with theories about slots and gaps because, believe me, I should know how it works by now and I do, so you can take it from me that he could have got me off easily on both ocasions without any disruption to his sequencing.
Now look, I know this subject comes up every so often and you're all bored to tears with it which is why I'm not after a legal ANO quote on vortex separation and classification of the 757; I know what the book says but I have run out of control input in roll taking off after a 737 and I can tell you it's not a pleasant experience so I shudder to think what it must be like behind a 757.
My old Grandad used to say, "Common sense is the least common of all the senses". The ANO may state that for departure a 757 is to be classified as a medium, and heavy for approach but the 757 is barely medium (especially the long range ones), and the RJ barely medium; they are each at the upper and lower end of the spectrum respectively. I'm not getting at all the controllers (Unless you all think like this individual, which I doubt) just this particular individual or if it's a LGW thing, then them as a whole.
On a last note I often get lined up behind 757's in AMS, CDG and MAN as well as other places and I always ensure the controller is going to give me 2 minutes. In AMS recently the reply came, "Do I have a choice SpeedbirdXXXX?" I respectfully suggest that if other european countries can acknowledge that a 757 generates wake vortices far in excess of it's weight category we should do the same.
So, LGW, give us a break, please. The RJ's have always played fair; we always make the first RET and we are often airborne by then too.
Rant over, thankyou.