NAS - A view from the stage
Found on a console in Melbourne Center, roughly where I found a copy of "Collision" by Spencer Dunmore a while ago, with "NAS 2B Training Manual" written on it...
(A Pilot comes onstage. The Managers, have just scattered to various hiding places nearby, like roaches when the kitchen light comes on. The pilot, having laid plots of this own to entrap the controllers, appears not to have noticed this and instead focuses his attention on the instrument panel. )
NAS 2B, or not 2B, that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the air to suffer
The slings and arrows of IFR pickup;
Or to take arms against VFR climbs,
And by opposing, end them: Fly IFR, to look
No more; and by flying IFR, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That VFR is heir to; ‘Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To fly IFR,
To hope, perchance to dream; Aye, there’s the rub,
For in that hope of IFR, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffle off this VFR coil
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of VFR:
For who would bear the whips and scorns of Dick Smith,
The flight rule’s wrong, the CASA’s contumely, The pangs of
Dispriz’d IFR rating, the paperwork’s delay,
The insolence of lighties, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy passengers,
When he himself might his flight rules make
With a single transmission? Who would fartless care
To Grunt and sweat under a weary controller –
But that the dread of something after flight,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No bag returns, puzzles the customers,
And makes us rather bear those rules we have
Than fly with others that we know not of.
Thus E airspace does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of conflict resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of NAS,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment,
With this regard their flight paths turn awry,
And lose the name of separation..