For all LATCC people on VNAV decents

[Racing Snake]

Now we are well into the age of VNAV decents do you guys get peed off with us jet jockeys always asking for further decent or is a good prompt for you.Personally i let the aircraft get high on profile intill called for decent and dive down later with full speedbrake.

RS

[identnospeed]

Racing,

Asking for further descent can be a hassle or a help to an ATCO, it really does depend on things like workload etc. A vague answer I know, but its a grey area.

Occasionally, an aircraft will call level and "looking for lower" while I am climbing an aircraft to a level underneath. Believe it or not, on saying "maintain, traffic to pass a R to L, a thousand below", I have had a "We can see it on TCAS" !
Due to the fact that we need 3 miles (or 5 depending on where you work), even if you have passed the traffic, we can't descend you until we can be sure that 3 miles will be obtained. Also radar info is around 6 secs out of date so what might actually be 3 miles may only look like 2 on the tube.

I wish there were more pilots who would be ready to use the speedbrake, it really does help out sometimes, but I s'pose that depends on the type (?)

INS



[This message has been edited by identnospeed (edited 10 September 2000).]

[bill]

not so much bothered about the prompts as long as they've been considered first.

but, recently I've had a number of pilots asking for descent, me moving traffic to give you it, and than you not descending...

infuriating!

also, when I give a descent clearance I mean descend now, if I mean "at your discretion" I will say that.

other than that feel free to ask for anything

[get'em to heaven & back]

Racing, as long as you don't say "approaching level requesting higher/ lower" when you still have 1500 feet to go. Some environments, usually descending into an airfield, are limited by bases of controlled airspce. Thus if you are descending early then it's odds on that you will level off and it's not that we've forgotten about you.
Then of course there are the times when we've forgotten about you..............

[Avman]

Ironically, it's when we are at our busiest that we might need a friendly prompt from you which of course clutters the R/F even more. Just a quick "c/s request descent" is enough. However, as already mentioned above, once given don't then stay up there for another three minutes. Again, because it's a common occurence, I would re-emphasise that unless we specify otherwise an ATC instruction means NOW and not at your leisure. Many thanks.