Intial call to french ATC
Joined: May 2001
Posts: 1,424
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From: London,England
All a bit long winded on the RT sometimes in France but they more than make up for it by giving nice long direct routings which cut the RT load right back down again. Generally enroute ATC in France is pretty easy and relaxed, TMA is a different matter!.
Thread Starter
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 410
Likes: 87
From: EASA territory
Makosa:
Thanks for the confirmation! I hope they change this requirement soon.
Ziggy:
Yep, I've noticed that as well!
Yes, very strange phraseology. 
There is one more thing that is strange in french airspace. I regularly get a radar heading of 25 degrees (or more!) off track for traffic separation, and this for quite a long time. In the rest of Europe I hardly ever get vectored more then 10 deg. off track. I recently visited Maastricht ATC, and one of the controllers told me that he'd been told during training that if he had to make an A/C turn by more then 10, he had probably made a mistake earlier. Does that mean that french ATC make a lot of mistakes, or do they simply have different working methods and procedures?
PS: It is certainly not my intention to pick on french ATC. As Max Angle said:
Amen to that.
If you work by the book, you HAVE to say "Airline 123 bonjour, maintain FL360, route ATN, CLM".
Ziggy:
In France to my surprise, almost every time, I found 5 minutes later that he meant for me to maintain that heading without specifically telling me to.
"no more heading restriction"
There is one more thing that is strange in french airspace. I regularly get a radar heading of 25 degrees (or more!) off track for traffic separation, and this for quite a long time. In the rest of Europe I hardly ever get vectored more then 10 deg. off track. I recently visited Maastricht ATC, and one of the controllers told me that he'd been told during training that if he had to make an A/C turn by more then 10, he had probably made a mistake earlier. Does that mean that french ATC make a lot of mistakes, or do they simply have different working methods and procedures?
PS: It is certainly not my intention to pick on french ATC. As Max Angle said:
All a bit long winded on the RT sometimes in France but they more than make up for it by giving nice long direct routings
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Joined: Jul 1997
Aviation Qualifications: PPL
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From: Europe
I recently visited Maastricht ATC, and one of the controllers told me that he'd been told during training that if he had to make an A/C turn by more then 10, he had probably made a mistake earlier.
Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 25
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From: Paris, France
Well concerning 10 or 25+ degrees turns, I guess it all depends on the sectorization, the conflicting points, and the traffic flows.
We are told not too turn planes more than 30° unless for a quick avoiding action.
Moreover if you want to turn a plane just 10° to resolve a conflict, you have to do that well well in advance, and our sectors (I speak for Paris ACC) are maybe smaller than in the rest of Europe (due to the high traffic volume).
We are told not too turn planes more than 30° unless for a quick avoiding action.
Moreover if you want to turn a plane just 10° to resolve a conflict, you have to do that well well in advance, and our sectors (I speak for Paris ACC) are maybe smaller than in the rest of Europe (due to the high traffic volume).
Joined: Nov 2000
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From: Dre's mum's house
Makosa said
Interestingly JAR Ops 1 Subpart P 1.040 presribes the use of English in Ops Manuals unless national law states otherwise.
There had been an experiment carried out in CDG in 2000 (or 2001?): everybody had to speak english on the radio, it turned out to be a big mess (some AFR pilots have a terrible level of english) and nobody was properly prepared actually..
