Originally Posted by
Uplinker
Those who tell us to simply ignore the guard idiots obviously do not fly in Europe, or any other busy airspace. Twice today on a rotation to Rome, I missed calls from ATC because they were 'stepped on' by the audio from guard blotting out the audio from ATC.
In some places there is almost continuous chatter on Box 1 and if guard starts up it can be almost impossible to concentrate on either, so how do you ignore guard with it babbling into your ear?
If it's not a daft question - you're in 2-way with ATC, you don't have a SAR role or triangulation equipment on board, other people are there within the FIR with the explicit role of monitoring guard.
So, why are you monitoring guard?
If it's company SOP - why has that not been challenged and changed on safety and workload grounds?