Fun and Games in Schipol

[Few Cloudy]

So there we were - all ready to slot into RW27 ILS for an on time Ldg when we were asked to hold for indefinite delay.

Turned out that the reason was a fire excercise on the tower - including a full evacuation thereof. In the end a few of us waited round 10 minutes. To whom should we send the bill?

Thinks - next time we'll do a practice evac on the runway...

[whose ya daddy!]

Few cloudy,

Get a life, you ****ing stuck up tw*t.. .Its people like you who dont have smoke alarms in your house, its people likle you who stop to pick up there belongings on the way out of the office in a fire drill.

You may not think it a important part of your job (though if you fly a plane I would pray that you did) that people practice for the unthinkable, but most educated and informed people do.. .So, sit there and shut the f**k up until they have worked out the quickest and eaisiest way out in the event of a fire to save there own lives.. .As for the bill for 10 mins hold, well lets just hope you never have to land at Schipol with a faulty smoke alarm/fire warning O/B your plane, god forbid they took the same attitude to you for having emergency svcs sent to you and causing delay. :) :) <img src="tongue.gif" border="0"> . .People like you p**s me off, did you guess that??!!!! <img src="rolleyes.gif" border="0">

[aviator]

whose ya daddy,

First of all, that is an awful lot foul language.

Secondly, one would think that an excercise would be done without jeopardizing others - much for the reason airline training is done in simulators.

Sort of for the same reason Few Cludy does not practice evacuating passengers on the runway.

And that police men practice shooting on targets - not people.

And that firemen don't put occupied buildings on fire to stay sharp.

I hope that you are getting the point here, whose ya daddy.

[flapsforty]

Errrrrrrm gents, heard about this on chat last night from a fellow ppruner. He'd come back from his flight and was waiting for the bus to the car park (bus stop right next to tower at SPL) that there was in fact a small fire.

[whose ya daddy!]

Aviator,. .Please excuse my attitude, its been a long night!. .with regard to your comment, when would a fire pick the right time to break out?? After all scheduled pax services have taken off and are safely en route?? Fire does and will happen whenever, however and at a time you never expect it. When would be a convienient time with you to conduct an evacuation under full working circumstances??. .Am i making my point now????. . <img src="rolleyes.gif" border="0">

[raitfaiter]

Frankly I'd like to know how you only got a ten minute hold at Schiphol under ANY circumstances! <img src="wink.gif" border="0">

[Young Paul]

"Delay not determined" for an exercise is unlikely. If you have no estimated approach time, and you are close to fuel minimums, you will have to divert. It seems unlikely to me that this was an exercise. That way would lie commercial madness for Schiphol.

[Knold]

whose ya daddy!,. .What is it that can’t be simulated with running from a building?

What you don’t get is that when flying an aircraft to it’s maximum capacity regarding payload and range you don’t have the possibility to “take a few extra tonnes of fuel with you". You’re smack on the fuel numbers on your flight plan with only the route reserve to help you, and with a few extra knots of unanticipated headwind you’ve burnt of the RR as well. . .There is no way you can hold at low altitude for 10 minutes without breaking the safety rules. You’ll have to go to your alternate destination at once. What does that mean? You will most likely get stranded there! The company will have to provide transport/hotel/food for the passengers. Another crew will have to be taken out of standby and transported there as you’ve most likely exceeded your duty-points. There will be a delay in the production of the airline, which with a tight schedule can take more than a week to repair.. .Which in return leads to more costs, angry passengers and so on.

Think about it!

[ 23 January 2002: Message edited by: Knold ]</p>

[U R NumberOne]

I'd be amazed if somewhere like Schipol did a full tower building evacuation for practice. We do them occasionally and only non-essential staff (admin, assistants etc) leave the building and the controllers keep working with no impact on the service being provided.

[A.J.Baker]

I remember when they were building the ATC tower and a welder set fire to some wooden shuttering. .about halfway up. The flames were even more spectacular than those seen when Europe's biggest BURGER KING caught fire in SPL last year. Burning debris fell into the carpark at the bottom of the car and destroyed a few cars. . .At one time the airport authorities thought they might have to demolish the tower and start again but it did pass a structural examine and is happily in use today.

[Few Cloudy]

Gents,

Disregarding the vicious thug speak of Who's Ya Daddy for a minute, lets just think;

You can hold a practice drill at any time because, as has been pointed out, an emergency can happen at any time. However, if it is a planned practice during arrivals, it would make sense to have a skeleton crew to man the desk in the meantime.

That being the case, maybe it was a real fire - but that ain't what Approach was telling us.

Now getting back to Who's Ya Daddy, I just wonder whose your's is. I am trying to bring my kids up to be polite and kind. Your's seemingly couldn't manage it. You should be ashamed.

[GearUp CheerUp]

Few Cloudy - Hear hear with respect to the ill informed and rude comments of WYD. I hope I never come across him/her either professionally or personally, I doubt he/she is a pilot though - white van driver is more like it. <img src="mad.gif" border="0">

I thought your original post was well balanced and to the point and see no reason for the arrivals to be stopped just for a fire drill.

[ojay]

wyd,if you met fc for real, would you really speak like that? For all you know,he could be built like Mike Tyson.The deep joy of the internet.Fc was reasonably stating that it is impractical and unsensible to hold fire practice,thereby delaying commercial air traffic,and I agree with him/her ('her' might jeapordize the Mike Tyson theory).A real fire of course is a different matter.B/rgds.

[springbok449]

I sincerely hope that WYD is not one of our fellow aviators no matter how much of a bad night he's had, imagine sitting next to him on a 10 hour flight and holding a different opinon to him in a casual conversation...

[mfds]

whose ya daddy!

Its people like you who leave such foul languaged posting's on this site that ruin it for everyone else.

Why dont you just stay away from here ?

To then put another posting on later saying -

'Please excuse my attitude, its been a long night'

just makes one wonder if you are schizophrenic ?. .I just hope you have nothing to do with the sharp end of airliners ...... or that I never have to fly with you.

[Phoenix_X]

Dutch newspapers in fact confirmed that is WAS a practice fire drill, and there was no real fire.

They also reported 'What is it that can’t be simulated with running from a building', Knold, it's that they have to move to the emergency tower to resume operations. Obviously leaving a skeleton crew to continue operations would defy the object of such a drill.

The newspapers also reported the max delay to aircraft was only about 3 minutes, something which isn't true then according to Few Cloudy.

All in all, I think the exercise is worthwhile to train controllers to leave their desks for a few minutes to continue in the backup tower. It seems difficult to me, and it's not practisable in the sim.

[White Knight]

WYD, you are an obnoxious git, and I sincerely hope you're not a professional pilot because we don't need fools like you in this business...

[Offset]

WYD. .I don't see why we shouldaccept your apologies. Your post was foul mouthed and out of order. Any point you may have been trying to make was lost on any decent viewer of these pages. No need to fill in the "profile" section - we have all the information we need.

For PPRune:. .I am disappointed that whoever regulates these pages allowed such a post to stand.

[Capt PPRuNe]

Offset, just noticed and will close it. If I had the time to read EVERY post I would be incredibly sad. I generally just check out a thread when it starts and then might leave it for a few days, as I did with this one, which makes me a little less of a sad case.

Having revisiting it and seeing the 'thread wander' at the second posting with the subsequent divergence well off topic I am now going to put it to bed. It really isn't difficult to have an argument using wit and reference to a good thesaurus but to resort to effing and blinding just isn't cricket!. . <img src="rolleyes.gif" border="0">