Contacting an Area Control Centre

[CheekyVisual]

I had an interesting problem last night with my a/p f/d system returning to the UK from europe through LAM for BHX. Although we thought we'd thought through all the problems our particular failure could cause ATC identified one we had no idea existed in connection with our mode s transponder and the altitude information it was relaying. Talking to the engineers and fleet management they had no idea that was how our system worked either ! It would be an interesting exercise to find out exactly what appeared on the screens and when so that we can assess the best way to deal with a similar problem in the future.

That said what is the best way of going about contacting London Control to see if they have any record or recollection of the event which may be useful to us.

[coracle]

What flight level were you crusing at as this determines whether you were being controlled by controllers at Swanwick or West Drayton?

[Phantom99]

In fact you would have spoken to both centre's if you were high level as we transfer Midland inbounds to TC eventually. However as you mention Mode S that could only have been Terminal Control as LACC do not have access to Mode S data (that's another story!)

Your OPS department (I assume you have one that is) should have contact details for TC, PM me if you need any more help. If it was TC the watch that was working yesterday afternoon/evening will be on night shift or on day shifts on other watches today.

[begbie]

cheeky,

You were cruising at FL240 as shown on our mode c readout but your selected flight level on our radar FL99. It then dropped further to FL96 while you were still in level flight. Was working at the time on adjacent sector, hope this helps.. Liked your comment to the TC controller when advised about it!! :D

[CheekyVisual]

Begbie thank you that answers my question. We are not always aware as we should be exactly what our mode S is telling you. Our actual problem, or the main problem that caused all the others was that the knob used to set the Altsel was jammed solid, believe it or not ! and on the 145 there is no other way to select an altitude, however you can obviously manually fly the aircraft wherever you want which is what we were doing.

[ATSA_Grunt]

YOU FLEW IT MANUALLY!!!!

These pilots! Crazy men!!

[eyeinthesky]

To refer to your original question:

The phone numbers of the control centres are in the AIP, I think. You can always ring them and ask to speak to the Watch Supervisor and they will find out what happened for you.

I would put the numbers on here but then we might get inundated with phone calls from all sorts of people...:ooh: