do you really think you'd have one of your "existing" staff at the airport with enough spare time to monitor and provide the weather, let alone a traffic service?
Absolute crap Bloggs. Every RPT airport you fly to Bloggs, you radio your company personnel on the ground with an ETA and they tell you what bay to park on.
Your company personnel are already monitoring a radio and are already at the airport 'floating around' as you say, ready to talk to you on the radio, but suddenly if they were allowed to provide you with an airport advisory at the same time it becomes too onerous on them?
If your company reps were able to monitor the CTAF frequency and provide a Unicom service to those aircraft that
request an advisory (Hint... thats you Bloggs in your 717) then safety is enhanced. So simple.
let alone a traffic service?
Contrary to what you think the service is supposed to do, it does not provide Air Traffic Control functions AT ALL. Do you understand this?
You try and tear down this simple well proven affordable measure with the most specious arguments that only goes to prove that your ignorance of how its done elsewhere and a pathological resistance makes you look foolish.
Whatever you think you know about how a Unicom service should work is just plain wrong. Its sad to think that younger pilots may give credence to your remarks merely because you fly a jet.
The FAA also doesn't agree with your assessment that Unicom services are "not going to wash". You might wish to familiarise yourself with Ops Spec C064 and C080 (a) 2.
These require On Demand passenger, All Cargo and scheduled airline operations to be able to acquire "traffic advisories and the status of airport services and facilities" at uncontrolled airfields.
The Unicom is required by the regulations in the United States to enhance safety at uncontrolled airports.
Yes the person providing information might be the check in staff, it might be the fueler at the FBO or the mechanic at the local maintenance workshop but the total cost is the price of the radio itself. A very cheap safety measure.
No one is providing a directed traffic service or even a traffic information service.
If the person talking on the radio on the ground
is asked for an 'airport advisory' it is as simple as this;
Wind
Temperature
Visibility
Cloud ceiling
light aircraft heard in the vacinity/ Helicopter transiting area/
maintenance vehicle operating on taxiway
etc.
The Unicom operator does not need to know where other traffic is in the area. In fact as radio is not mandated for aircraft at uncontrolled airports in the US, its possible that the Unicom operator does not know where aircraft might be positioned. NO PROBLEM, the operator just alerts arriving and departing aircraft of other aircraft in the vicinity IF they know they are about. Otherwise the operator simply says 'no
known' traffic or omits any reference to traffic in their advisory.
Simple, easy safety related information given via a Unicom service mandated by the regulations.
Not an ATC function. Is this easy for you to understand Bloggs? We too should have this virtually free service right here in Oz.