Originally Posted by
Bergerie1
Reading Mary Meagher’s post reminds me of how much we pilots owe to others, in particular, those on the ground who help and guide us in the air – the ATCOs. They really are the pilot’s best friends; our other crew members, even though they are not in the aircraft with us. I guess most of us who have flown have reasons to thank them, I know I do.
Then at Jeddah, bound for Abu Dhabi, we were held down below our safety altitude heading towards the mountains because an inbound aircraft was coming in above us. It was not long after ATC there had started using radar, I don’t know what the controller was doing – perhaps he was new to it all. I said we would continue on track for xx miles and then, regardless of what he wanted we would either climb or turn back to the field but we would definitely NOT be accepting the clearance to continue eastbound.
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Just because they had radar did they think to train the controllers how to use it? I've seen controllers with radar simply watching the traffic and waiting until they cross before they issue climb/descent instructions. Nobody had taught them to vector the traffic so the tracks did not oppose.