New ATC Procedures for arriving traffic
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Superb post, 055166k, - and many thanks to Gonzo, for the usual professional and measured response above.
I remember during my spotting days, seeing 17 at the 28R hold in 1973, about half of them were Tridents.
I remember during my spotting days, seeing 17 at the 28R hold in 1973, about half of them were Tridents.
Like Zooker I remember long queus back in the days of tridents and at peak times the same procession of landing lights in line over west London duritn winter evening peaks.
Having been thriough a recent series of 'we want to look at changing the flight path ' consultations from NATS and HAL I think that as far as the south east concerned the answer is always going to be dream on. People know where the holds and approach/SID paths are even if they do not know the industry names and they are just not going to agree to any changes at all unless they reduce noise all over which isnt going to happen. Expanding the holds is going to be opposed by newly affected areas and many of these areas a re pretty affluent and have large proportion of professional peopel who can put a good case together. In my area out to the south west of LHR many of them are pilots and airline ops staff and they gave the NATS HAL folks a very hard time on detail and planning assumptions. So personally i think the tradition ATC welcome to London message of ABC 123 Good morning pickup the hold at YYY and expect... is going to be around for along tome to comke whatever NATS and the airport operators think or want .
Just out of interest do other London area airports use stacks or because they are all a lot further out than LHR , use speed control and vectoring?
Having been thriough a recent series of 'we want to look at changing the flight path ' consultations from NATS and HAL I think that as far as the south east concerned the answer is always going to be dream on. People know where the holds and approach/SID paths are even if they do not know the industry names and they are just not going to agree to any changes at all unless they reduce noise all over which isnt going to happen. Expanding the holds is going to be opposed by newly affected areas and many of these areas a re pretty affluent and have large proportion of professional peopel who can put a good case together. In my area out to the south west of LHR many of them are pilots and airline ops staff and they gave the NATS HAL folks a very hard time on detail and planning assumptions. So personally i think the tradition ATC welcome to London message of ABC 123 Good morning pickup the hold at YYY and expect... is going to be around for along tome to comke whatever NATS and the airport operators think or want .
Just out of interest do other London area airports use stacks or because they are all a lot further out than LHR , use speed control and vectoring?
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<<ABC 123 Good morning pickup the hold..."
Novel phraseology!
The only other London area airfields with holds are, AFAIK, Luton, Stansted and City. Northolt traffic arriving via airways is treated like a Heathrow inbound and maybe held in the Heathrow holds.
Novel phraseology!
The only other London area airfields with holds are, AFAIK, Luton, Stansted and City. Northolt traffic arriving via airways is treated like a Heathrow inbound and maybe held in the Heathrow holds.
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2 sheds, because the question was asked!
pb/HD - The Farnborough clutch and Solent airfields now have a hold available, and Biggin Hill arrivals can use the City holds. Southend now has its own STARs so I can only assume these end at a hold.
The prioritising certain flights has been bumbling around for a few years and isn't as crazy an idea as you are all insinuating. Concorde jumped the queues for years, the concept proposed is exactly the same.
pb/HD - The Farnborough clutch and Solent airfields now have a hold available, and Biggin Hill arrivals can use the City holds. Southend now has its own STARs so I can only assume these end at a hold.
The prioritising certain flights has been bumbling around for a few years and isn't as crazy an idea as you are all insinuating. Concorde jumped the queues for years, the concept proposed is exactly the same.
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2 sheds, because the question was asked!
pb/HD - The Farnborough clutch and Solent airfields now have a hold available, and Biggin Hill arrivals can use the City holds. Southend now has its own STARs so I can only assume these end at a hold.
The prioritising certain flights has been bumbling around for a few years and isn't as crazy an idea as you are all insinuating. Concorde jumped the queues for years, the concept proposed is exactly the same.
pb/HD - The Farnborough clutch and Solent airfields now have a hold available, and Biggin Hill arrivals can use the City holds. Southend now has its own STARs so I can only assume these end at a hold.
The prioritising certain flights has been bumbling around for a few years and isn't as crazy an idea as you are all insinuating. Concorde jumped the queues for years, the concept proposed is exactly the same.
This is my main area of concern. With modern technology, it may be possible to have wider holding patterns & more than one a/c at the same level (facilitating the taking of a/c out of the natural sequence on occasion), but how on earth are you going to be able to artificially engineer later arriving flights into positions ahead of earlier arriving ones on a continuous basis; & on what criteria ? Surely attempts to do so are only going to make a smooth & efficient approach sequence & vectoring impossible to achieve without making some very bizarre decisions & a totally unnecessary & complicated traffic pattern ?
And then, there is the question of abuse of the system by some ATCOS who seek, for whatever reason, to put certain a/c first. I seem to remember this situation raising it's head at LATCC 20 or so years ago - resulting in the disciplining of the ATCO concerned. Is such an action now going to be condoned ? Or even encouraged ?
I doubt that it is "air traffic controllers" who want to do this. More likely top executives - who have absolutely no idea of what they are talking about !
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If the actual aim of any new procedure were to be able to prioritise certain aircraft, then this whole thing could be ignored. Simply tell us which one you want first, AS IT ENTERS THE FIR, and we can get it to the front of the queue. No need to block up loads of airspace with bigger holding areas. The problem seems to be, as asked earlier, what determines priority. If it's number of transferring passengers, then presumably weight of numbers means pretty much BA first and everyone else last. Again, if that's what is determined as required, then fine, but let's be honest about it. Then of course, which BA is most important? Gold card members, most transferees to routes with least other options, shortest time left for the one young child trying to get home before beloved relative dies?
On other views, as to whether vectors, speed reductions and the like are simply holding by another name, of course they are. It's just like saying point merge reduces holding. Point merge simply changes holding in 'traditional' holding patterns to holding in a different direction, curve, call it what you will.
Anyway, back to the catalogue "New attire for our glorious leaders"...
On other views, as to whether vectors, speed reductions and the like are simply holding by another name, of course they are. It's just like saying point merge reduces holding. Point merge simply changes holding in 'traditional' holding patterns to holding in a different direction, curve, call it what you will.
Anyway, back to the catalogue "New attire for our glorious leaders"...
You're all forgetting a similar system has been used in New York for over 40 years although holds are rarely used.
Inbounds are vectored all over the place into an orderly queue. I remember when travelling Heathrow to Newark once, we were taken well north and west of NYC and eventually left hand downwind for the 29s.
Inbounds are vectored all over the place into an orderly queue. I remember when travelling Heathrow to Newark once, we were taken well north and west of NYC and eventually left hand downwind for the 29s.
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This is called User Driven Prioritisation. As we have seen, it makes a good headline grabbing sound bite for somebody's speech. This is just one of many concepts a lot of which are dreamt up by people who have little if any practical experience as ATCOs or pilots. They have the time and the money to do this which is why some daft ideas get so far!
To be fair, the Spanish have been masters of it for years - just watch Iberia and Vueling on busy days at MAD/ALC/AGP/BCN get vectored straight in number 1 around all the foreigners.
They also do the RT in Spanish so fewer people can figure it out!
Regarding holding then, so if I am approaching STN from the East, and get vectored south, north, overhead and approach final from the West, that improves NATS's scorecard whereas a far more efficient 1 turn in the hold at ABBOT doesn't, despite me having chucked the same amount of fuel out of the back on either?
They also do the RT in Spanish so fewer people can figure it out!
Regarding holding then, so if I am approaching STN from the East, and get vectored south, north, overhead and approach final from the West, that improves NATS's scorecard whereas a far more efficient 1 turn in the hold at ABBOT doesn't, despite me having chucked the same amount of fuel out of the back on either?
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To be fair, the Spanish have been masters of it for years - just watch Iberia and Vueling on busy days at MAD/ALC/AGP/BCN get vectored straight in number 1 around all the foreigners.
They also do the RT in Spanish so fewer people can figure it out!
Regarding holding then, so if I am approaching STN from the East, and get vectored south, north, overhead and approach final from the West, that improves NATS's scorecard whereas a far more efficient 1 turn in the hold at ABBOT doesn't, despite me having chucked the same amount of fuel out of the back on either?
They also do the RT in Spanish so fewer people can figure it out!
Regarding holding then, so if I am approaching STN from the East, and get vectored south, north, overhead and approach final from the West, that improves NATS's scorecard whereas a far more efficient 1 turn in the hold at ABBOT doesn't, despite me having chucked the same amount of fuel out of the back on either?
Got it in one!
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Not Long Now, you aren't far off the concept I heard a few years ago. BA want certain flights on the ground first, especially when they have been delayed. They asked if NATS could manage swapping landing slots from one of theirs to another that they'd prefer in first. The number of times the Geneva inbound requested to reduce speed as they had "lost the landing slot to Concorde", as I said previous, the concept proposed is exactly the same (and I think even had a limit on how many a day would be acceptable).
NATS have to think about their customers, one has asked them a question about priority which they can manage "in house" without affecting the order for any other Heathrow customers, and NATS are considering it. What's the issue?
NATS have to think about their customers, one has asked them a question about priority which they can manage "in house" without affecting the order for any other Heathrow customers, and NATS are considering it. What's the issue?
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Precisely that! We have always been able to 'juggle' the order, and yes I too had many an occasion when a european got a sudden increase in delay as concorde hurtled past Bristol. My point was, why do we need a new procedure of lots at the same level in presumably much larger holding areas when we can already manage an order change with a bit of notice?
Perhaps I'm somewhat jaded post LAMP, which may, in my personal, non-NATS opinion, have more than a little something of the emperors new clothes about it.
Perhaps I'm somewhat jaded post LAMP, which may, in my personal, non-NATS opinion, have more than a little something of the emperors new clothes about it.
In similar vein (corporate bullsh!t), I was always fascinated by NATS' announcements about delays that were attributable to NATS, with figures such as "an average of 9.8 seconds per aircraft". I did contact their publicity department to point out that that sort of statistic was meaningless, in fact an insult to the intelligence, and would it not be more pertinent to address the issues that caused a significant delay to the few aircraft. I also asked how the figures were obtained that contributed to this "average" figure. Despite several exchanges, their spokesman explained how an "average" figure was deduced (he meant "mean" of course) in a manner that I took as somewhat patronising, but was singularly incapable of explaining the origin of the constituent data or any supporting logic.
2 s
2 s
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That always fascinated me too, 2 sheds, and how on Earth have they found 3Di figures going back to 2006? The measurement was only 'invented' a couple of years ago.
It's a shame NATS don't know the difference between "historical" and "historic". 
They are also using the global warming cheats' technique of only illustrating the top of the range rather than showing zero on the base line. And they connect the annual values which suggests visually that they can be interpolated mid-year when these data ought to be represented by a histogram, a bar chart.
All of which, including the "delays" fiasco, suggests that they need a proper statistician in their ranks.
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