I'm of the orange persuasion but not particularly pleased at getting tarred with this brush.
I never call ready until contact has been made with the ground crew, but even then every few weeks for some reason a tug driver will miss the call. It's annoying because it makes it look like we've called before establishing comms.
I will often say 'request taxy, able charlie' if I'm parked along Quebec because on many occasions the controller says, it does help either to get us away quicker or to keep us out of the way of the traffic jam at A2/A3. Most of my colleagues will never plan a Charlie intersection departure so I've always found it worth mentioning.
Will always be ready immediate, can't understand why anyone would accept a line up clearance if they weren't ready immediate. I'm very mindful that the Tenerife Accident had a captain that was keen to advance the thrust levers prior to take off clearance and I'm loathe to do that so my engines may take 2 seconds longer to spool up.
Push and Hold requests, I used to ask in line with company procedures but as soon as the ATIS requested that we didn't I stopped that.
160 to 4 is often very tricky without dropping the gear. Sometimes you get asked to reduce to 160 in excess of 10 miles out which is a long way to drag it in with gear down. If only we were reduced to 160 before we got on the glide it would be easy. Personally I'll strive to do it and will use speed brake on the glide slope which is something our manuals advise against doing. If used very carefully it's fine and will help the speed to come back, but as I said our manuals advise against it and if you move the speed brakes too quickly the aircraft pitches all over the place. If it's not happening I will of course drop the gear because I believe a speed instruction carries the same weight as an altitude instruction. I do know that a lot of our guys n gals will just sit there with the power at idle and accept 178kts if that's what it gives. But one thing's for certain, they're not deliberately trying to fly faster, they're avoiding dropping the gear too early. Also if I've struggled to get the speed back and was closer to 170 than 160 I'll slow up a bit earlier to try and average it out. I'm sure the environmentalist and the airports neighbours would soon complain if we all started dropping the gear at 10 miles. The solution is give us 160 prior to catching the glideslope or give us 170 to 5.
Gatwick could do a lot to help itself. If we've already called ready on delivery why do we need to call ground? Many other airports get you to monitor the ground frequency and the controller calls you when they're ready for you to push. RT transactions could be almost halved.
When vacating the runway, why not have automatic frequency transfer to reduce tower congestion?
I've been up to the tower on a couple of occasions, and would love to come up again but like everything it's so much more difficult now. We used to just ask Airlinks to take us there but that costs money and no one wants to pay. On the flip side, I've been flying 10 years and have never once had an ATCO on a famil flight with us. If the orange brigade is a problem, then perhaps seeing a few more controllers on the jump seat would help gain a better understanding of each others operation.
O, and yes I'd hate to have to listen to the ATIS as it is at the moment
