racism and safety

[bivo]

As an aviation proffessional in Africa I have seen alot of things. But the industry here is starting to scare me. Most of the staff here are already unequipped to handle any sort of real problems, letalone the fact racism seems to be forcing even less skilled people into the industry, just to fill tribal quotas.

As an example. A certain airport handles 40 aeroplanes on aproach, yet last time I visited I was held up (747 200) by a cessna 210 doing training. On speaking to pilots I met whilst there, they explained to me that the controller concerned had been on app training for 12 months and still could not handle more than 3 aeroplanes per hour.

Apparently the system is not able to get rid of controllers like this due to racial issues.

IMHO this is a ridiculous and dangerous situation. Safety must come first, if someone can't do the job it is an obligation to get rid of them in an industry where hundreds of people can die per mistake made.

[3 slips and a gully]

could not handle more than 3 aeroplanes per hour

you must mean 3 aircraft in a sequence (on frequency). At 40 movements an hour thats an arrival pulse of 3 minutes interspersed by a departure every 3 minutes (90 secs between each runway movement) - probably looking at around a constant 6-8 in the Terminal area (30-35 miles) at any time with arrivals and departures.

3 aircraft an hour:uhoh: :uhoh: :uhoh:

[126,7]

If the ATCO was a student, where was his instructor during this exercise?

[Standard Noise]

If the trainee was that bad, how did he/she (regardless of colour) get through the college and exams let alone get near live traffic!?:confused:

[sandstorm inferno]

If the trainee was that bad, how did he/she (regardless of colour) get through the college and exams let alone get near live traffic!?

It's called politics!

[bivo]

40 a/c for the hole day. three a/c on frequency in a 50 mile radius:{ and the student has been on duel training for more than one year( over 400 hrs)

[chevvron]

Back in '84, I visited Banjul Tower. The controller complained how busy they were getting, with 34 movements planned for that WEEK. He had 7 scheduled for that day!
He had two frequencies, one for approach and one for tower. Although he could receive on both simultaneously, he could only select one transmitter, which had to be deselected before he could select the other.
An inbound called; he had the wrong Tx selected; by the time he had de-selected and re-selected, the inbound had called on the other frequency. When he finally got two-way contact, he got the callsign mixed up with another aircraft for which he had an estimate!