Step climb departure best practices

[Journey Man]

Firstly, congratulations on your vast experience. Whilst I know that with your experience your opinions must therefore be irreproachable, I disagree with you.

I believe, as I stated in my opening post, that technology (specifically the capabilities of enhanced Mode S transponders) are creating situations that were not anticipated, and a wider discussion on creating industry best practice or regulation may now be necessary.

The thread is not about the applicability of altitude restrictions on a SID, or the use of automation. The discussion is based on whether there exists a specific applicable regulation that I may be ignorant of and various companies' SOPs are.

We're three pages in and despite various poster's assertations, no regulation has been presented for reference. Am I to understand that by resorting to belittling the subject you're also throwing in the towel when it comes to producing a reference? Does airing your resume normally end further discussion? An interesting TRE technique.

You do not have to state the MCP altitude. Please provide some reference to this, as I can't find one. You have to state the altitude you're climbing to, and in the case of intermediary altitude restrictions, this is the first altitude constraint you state. I have referenced CAP417 above, but a review of Appendix 1 shows that this is not a listed change from ICAO. There is no regulation stating you must state the pre-selected/MCP altitude, and not manage the climb using VNAV in the automation. If there is, then that would certainly clarify things if you could reference it. In VNAV climb with intermediary altitude constraints in the FMS, you are climbing to the first intermediary altitude constraint.

In the situation you describe, especially as you say ATC will always give you further climb on first contact (which is irrelevant to the discussion, incidentally) then there would be no need for intermediary altitude constraints on the SID. The departure would have a vertical limit of the lowest step and thereafter climb would be upon clearance by ATC.

Again, it is a wider discussion on issues that may be arising through technology and how best to adapt so that the entire system works in unison. If we have reliable VNAV capabilities and a published departure, then flying the departure in accordance with the altitude constraints in VNAV results in a lower flightdeck workload, more capacity and less frequency saturation. However these advantages are moot if ATC are expecting to see information via the enhanced Mode S transponder that isn't required and interject, increasing radio chatter and workload for both parts of the overall system. If that's the case then the introduction of SARPs may be beneficial. Alternatively, consideration by ATC of the implications of the reported selected altitude may be appropriate, as alluded to in the Skybrary article on Enhanced Mode S. The response from the UK Regulator has been quite positive. Maybe they don't benefit from your wealth of experience, though?

So, with all due deference to your extremely impressive resume, I believe the conversation is worth having. Might I suggest not getting involved if you don't feel it is a valid conversation, or indeed post erroneous information such as stating one must level off at the first altitude constraint and await further ATC clearance to climb to further intermediary altitude constraints.