Originally Posted by
haughtney1
Sure Will
2 things would be a good start.
1.Advise me in good time (being pragmatic here) of expected or planned delays... (Given I'm datalink equipped it's a few strokes on the keyboard)
2. In the event of a delay...do as they do in the UK and Europe and increasingly in the US, advise us, send us to a fix to hold, and give us an onward EAT.
1. I can only message aircraft I have control of so I still have to go looking for you, put your estimate into Maestro, make a guess as to what sort of delay you'll actually get (seriously, a lot can change between 300 and 200 miles), tell another controller I may not even have a direct comm line to and get them to make a dozen clicks to send you the message.
2. What's the difference between that and us giving you a time that you can choose to slow down as much or as little as you want and we absorb the rest with vectors or holding? That's what I don't get. Why does it make you feel better to be given a 10 minute hold at 200 miles than us telling you to reduce speed to lose 10 minutes with the implicit understanding that you'll tell us what you want to do?
There 2 things that would make planet haughtney better for me.
P.S. If the controller is to busy, then isn't that an issue relating to safety and SA?
Yes it is, but it only takes a second or two to gain an appreciation of pending traffic, whereas it takes many times longer to provide the service you're asking for to just one aircraft. I can perform quite a number of my routine essential tasks in the time it takes to service just you with an guess as to a fix time when you're well outside my airspace. They don't have Maestro so can't do it themselves.
It's called workload management. The system we use just isn't designed to work the way that you want. Sure it can be achieved manually but that is labour intensive so isn't going to happen when I'm busy.
Are you guys understaffed or something? Knowing about a delay in good time also allows me to plan further on the basis of a contingency, prudence being what it is, my priority is also safety, knowing about that 10 minute delay in advance could be the difference between me legally being able to get to destination or divert.
We can go back and forth as much as we like, I want this...you can only give me that etc..ultimately my neck is on the line everytime I plant my fat butt in the chair, yes you guys have enormous responsibility as well but your safety and well being is hardly an issue, to me when I hear "I'm too busy" it's the thin end of the wedge, what else one day might someone be too busy to pass on, you guys have that luxury, that safety valve, I don't.
It's the nature of the job - workload isn't smooth. You can have 20 evenly spaced aircraft and be twiddling your thumbs or half a dozen and barely time to think. Loosely speaking staffing/sectors/the system is based on averages plus a margin. Sometimes the margins are exceeded and we just pedal faster to keep up. When you're busy the non-essential is moved to the back of the queue. That's what I get paid for - not forgetting to do the important things. While I won't physically fall out of the sky my neck is on the line every time I don a headset too.
In an imperfect world we make do, we improvise and we get the job done, if you use system and workload practicalities as reasons for being unable to provide some basic information..then maybe your organisation needs to look at how others seem to manage.
Not the guys on the front lines problem I know, god knows you have a bloody tough and thankless job at times, but as a team, we ought to be all moving in the same direction.
Too idealistic?
The information is being provided, just not with the timing you'd like. I don't disagree that things could be done better, but not with the system as it currently is.