Originally Posted by
Jet Jockey A4
And I decide to visit PPRuNE and come upon this thread and I simply had to LOL...
So some are complaining about the ATC system in the USA and how they are not ICAO “standard”…
Well a lot of places in the world are not ICAO “standard” including Europe it seems. However in my opinion there is NOT a better, more efficient and friendly ATC system in the world than the one found in the USA.
They will do their best to accommodate any reasonable demands, from direct routing to wrong way flight levels, to deviations for bad weather, to departure and arrival runway selections to get you on or off the ground as rapidly as possible while remaining safe in their operation.
Eurocontrol is a joke compared to the US ATC system. They can’t even start to think “outside the box”, they are in my opinion inefficient.
Two very recent examples on how inefficient Eurocontrol can be…
#1 - We were flying from southern Spain to LFPB. Both the departure and arrival airport as most of Europe on that day, was under VFR weather condition, actually the Paris area was severe clear. We were given a slot/departure delay of 2 hours by Eurocontrol because the ILS into LFPB was out of commission and this when there was a RNAV/GPS approach to that same runway available.
#2- We were scheduled to leave Zurich for Montreal at 17H00 local (with a Zurich airport slot for that time). We ask for start-up and Zurich advised us that Eurocontrol had just imposed us a slot for 18H30 local, a 90 minute delay for no apparent reason. Eurocontrol can override any airport's own slot system which is counter productive in my opinion. Why in this day and age, can they not communicate with each other and coordinate a departure slot and an airway/ATC slot.
How many aircrafts were going from Zurich or that general area of Europe to Montreal at that time? Furthermore, how many of them were climbing directly to FL430 (initial climb) in Europe's airspace and then fly on a random route across the Atlantic to Montreal? I cannot believe that ATC could not accommodate another aircraft for an on time departure, especially one that was above 99% of all aircrafts in their airspace.
In all my flying years, I have NEVER experienced this kind of nonsense in the USA (or the UK) from their ATC system unless it was severe weather or an emergency at a departure or arrival airport.
Are the Americans perfect? No they are not, but I can say the same of many other ATC systems in the rest of the world. There are far worst places in the world where I think safety issues need to be addressed before even thinking the US system is unsafe.
You folks can go on ranting all you want about the US ATC system because of their “non-compliance” to certain ICAO standards or the use of some slangs when they talk on the radio but I’m willing to give them a break because IMHO the rest of the world can’t even come close to their safe efficient ATC system.
BTW, I want to make this clear, I am not criticizing the individual controller here because most are highly professional in my opinion. I even spent 3 years flying out of Paris for a major feeder airline for Air France in the early 90s and thought the French controllers were very good. However I do question Eurocontrol's ability to manage its traffic.
End of my rant!
Delays on a clear day because the ILS was OTS? Doesn't make sense. Isn't arrival rate higher with visual approaches?