Growahead
Don’t get me wrong – I think Class D towers are fantastic, especially Hobart. Some of the best movement of lots of traffic including helicopters I have seen anywhere in the world. I’d love to see those procedures used in another Class D tower in Australia but I won’t mention where because I might get delayed next time!
Yes, I have heard of visual separation of course, but how I understand the US system works is that if you are in IMC you remain with the centre controller who has the radar. The minute you are visual you go to the tower and the tower uses all of the visual techniques that we have in our Class D towers now – and more.
From my experience there are no Class D towers with tower-based radar services in the USA. Yes, places like Aspen have a small TRACON in a separate room in the tower and that gives a full approach service. However, what I am talking about is Class D towers offering visual separation and doing it in a really effective way and when IMC exists using the 24-hour controllers in the centre. From my experience it works superbly in the USA, however in Australia we have pilots changing to the tower frequency when they are in good radar coverage and in IMC. This seems ridiculous to me.
Re. the USA – yes, I am sure there are some things we do better. If you remember when I was CAA Chairman in 1990 I arranged for air traffic controllers to go to San Francisco and look at the systems there and then write a report. Many came back with lots of suggestions and lots of comments on what they thought the US does better and what we do better. My success in life is simply the result of going around the world and copying the best of each. If we could do that in aviation we would become leaders in the world.
I would love to see a really good multilateration system working in Tasmania that gives (as was planned) a radar-like surveillance service right to the runway. That is actually what was originally intended if you look at the old Airservices Annual Reports. If it needs a few more multilateration transceivers, let’s wack them in and get a really good service.
It only needs a minor error on the part of a pilot and the ground proximity system not working properly and we could have a classic controlled flight into terrain – say, an aircraft coming in from Flinders Island to Launceston over Mt Barrow.
They don’t swap chairs frequently in the USA – they use the enroute controller to do the approach work and it works superbly.