Anyone familiar with busy US airports knows that you guys push a lot of traffic, including VFR. However, as I was trying to get through earlier, one cannot just compare a busy airport in the U.S. to a busy airport in, say, the UK.
There are significantly greater expectations put on us in terms of de-conflicting VFR and IFR traffic, fulfilling a duty of care towards all airspace users, as well as different restrictions put on how and when we can reduce separations between IFR and IFR.
I'm struggling to think of an analogy. I think it's like this: in the U.S., you can turn right on a red light at a junction. In the UK you cannot. This makes, all other things being equal, U.S. junctions more efficient than UK junctions. A U.S. driver visits the UK, sees this, and then starts having a go at the traffic policeman that is sitting near the junction for doing it wrong and doing it more slowly and less efficient than the U.S.
ATCOs all around the world usually do their best, but with very different rules and regulatory hurdles to overcome and abide by. Comparing them with crude measures such as number of aeroplanes per hour or whatever is not even half the story.
Last edited by Gonzo; 24th Jun 2015 at 21:07.