Originally Posted by
le Pingouin
Lead Balloon, it's nothing to do with industrial relations. Sigh. It's a management imposed structure to centralise the holding of SARTIMEs in a single location to remove that workload from ATC. We used to hold them but TAAATS really wasn't designed for providing anything but a control service and the process we used to hold SARTIMES was not robust.
As a controller I don't have time to go looking for random information on the off chance that you may need it. It's nothing to do with stovepipes and things being hungrily protected. What you're asking for is the reinstitution of ops which was devolved to the pilot many years ago.
Absolutely! In the olden days, DCA/CAA/Dotas/CASA had Operational Control. Someone in a building had overall management of a flight ,rated higher than the PIC. They would call you up via enroute comms and tell you things that might be helpful to you. The downside was that they would also call you up and tell you that airports were closed to you, and other unhelpful things like imposing unexpected holding time on you etc. Then Operational control was abolished and control reverted to the PIC and the operator. A good thing. But they stopped calling you up with things you didn’t need and didn’t like. However you the PIC were in control of your destiny. You had to manage your flight. You had to make sure you had the info you needed/ wanted. If you couldn’t get it by method A you got it by method B and if method B wasn’t possible you used method C.
IMHO the abolition of Operational control was a good thing but you had to understand that there was no one ther3 to chang3 you nappy any longer.