Manchester Controllers

[Sledge]

Just a quick thank you to all at Manchester ATC,tower and ground for the professional way you handled the weather problems today at Manchester.We had a 2hr delay but were kept entertained by delivery shuffling an ever changing deck of departure routings.Well done !!

[yaffs]

awwwww :O ta

yaffs

[Scottie Dog]

Felt sorry for the poor man on delivery at around 1630 local as everything went pear-shaped, but did he loose his cool - no!!

Just kept everybody in the picture - with humour - as to what was going on, whilst being battered by non-stop requests from flight crews who were obviously concerned about missing slots. I hate to think how his desk must have looked at the time - I suspect that the normal means of displaying strips might have gone out of the window and that he just had various columns depending upon the direction of departure. Was it 30 plus I heard at one time waiting to start?

Congratulations to the Air2 controllers who kept a fantastic circulation of aircraft under control. Not very often that one gets so many aircraft lining up, looking at their radar and then deciding that caution was the better part of valour and therefore clearing at U1 to return to the hold.

All in all a very professional piece of organisation.

Scottie Dog

ps- you guys and gals deserve a large drink.

[gliding777]

I would also like to add my thanks to Manchester Control ATC yesterday. We were inbound towards OTBED and the ROSUN arrival about 1700z, when faced with two massive red paints on the weather radar - one over Birmingham and the other towards Doncaster/Hull. Managed to get radar steers between them thanks to some excellent ATC and a straight in to 24R - the controller then said that Manchester had been closed for an hour and all departures were now being routed via DESIG, ie East.

Must have been a controllers' nightmare but nothing was too much trouble for you guys yesterday. So thanks!