Cleared to a FL - stop climb altitude @ LHR northbound ?
Hi,
Last week on a LHR northern departure on contact with 118.82 we were given climb to FL110, upon passing FL50 we were told to stop climb at altitude 6000.
At this pint we are doing 4000ft/min and only due the fact I was hand flying the a/c did I managed to capture the 6000ft. The automatics would have overshot it by a considerable amount.
After levelling @ what we thought was alt 6000 I noticed we were still on STD having been already cleared to a FL.
Luckily on this occasion the QNH was only 5 millibar from 1013 giving a discrepancy of around 150ft.
Looking back at this in retrospect it is a level bust waiting to happen - we are going up like a rocket and given a level out with less than 1000ft notice.
On TCAS I could not see any conflicting traffic and were not given an explanation by ATC or even a 'thankyou'.
Three points -
1) Having cleared us to a FL why not tell us to level @ a FL ?
2) Some reasoning as to why this instruction was given would be appreciated. I do accept you guys (and girls) are busy and the freq is manic at times but just a few words please.
3) Had the QNH/STD split been greater than 10 millibars we would be looking @ a level bust ....
PS : I wanted to file an ASR but my colleague was not keen.
Any LATCC controllers care to comment ?