Is this internal MUAC comms only or are you expecting external units ie London to tell the aircraft to "standby on"?

Bit difficult to find either these days at a busy unit.
I see there's another thread joined this having been booted from R&N

Introduces the opportunity for much more confusion, and the risk of Comms difficulties, than it would solve. If a frequency is so busy that you need to regulate it, your declared capacity is too high perhaps ?

Lon and 10W,
I don't know much about the sectorisation/staffing at MUAC, but from what I do know of Eurocontrol, they seem to be aware of the 'big picture' regarding traffic pending. Having spent many hours on 'fam-flights' listening to Maarstricht it always sounded very professional.
I'm just amazed that there is no spare sector/ATCO capacity available. If this is the case 10W has a very valid point.

Zooker i presume you mean sectorisation?

It's pretty much split as best it can. Geographically ignoring national boundaries, almost all split horizontally as well. Divide it up even more and as 10W said you're only replacing one set of problems with another.

This is an attempt to reduce the frequency loaading. If it can avoid two transmissions per flight per sector it's proably giving 20 seconds more for each one. Take 25 - 30 flights per hour which is a lot for a sector + say FL340 and you free up a lot more thinking time.

Sputnik may know; was this trialled at Bretigny? They can assess the controller workload very accurately by running a series of excercises with a number of variables

Thanks Lon,
corrected now. 20 years ago I spent a month on Project AR39 at Bretigny, they seemed capable of measuring everything!

zooker; I'm not aware if Eurocontrol has tested this new "procedure"at Bretigny or not. But buttom line is that it causes a lot of confusion. I totally agree with thos who suggests the use of monitor, or check in with callsign only. But I guess the big problem is that noone at Eurocontrol wants to tell us to use phraseology that is not 100% in compliance with ICAO rules. So it becomes a bit useless. But I'm highly in favor of using check in with callsign only.

When it comes to sectorisation and lack of capacity it's the result of a lot of things. Last year we saw (especially in the Brussels sectors) a massive - and unexpected - increase of traffic. This year even higher levels of traffic are expected as Germany has raised its route charges significantly resulting in many flights avoiding Germany (ie flying west of Germany through eastern Belgium and Luxembourg). Our flow people have tried to tactically force westbound traffic gojng towards the UK a little bit further north to avoid Belgium and fly in the southern part of Dutch airspace (less congested), but the the Belgians will not have it. If aircrafts have filed through Belgian airspace the HAVE to fly that way because the depend a lot on the route charges.

Geographically Belgium is challenged as it's sorrounded by many major airports. Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, London area, Dusseldorf, Cologne etc. This gives us a lot of vertical movements in a limited airspace (Belgium is tiny). I don't know that our declared capacity is too high, but we are nearing the limit. And because of all the vertical movements it's difficult to just add extra sectors.

and finally staffing is an issue. So even with extra sectors there would be no qualified people to man them.

Mattis,
tell me about it.
A couple of years ago, I went to an interesting presentation by an Airbus marketing man. It was amazing how many A318s/319s/320s etc they were planning to sell.
Over here, a big ATCO retirement-bulge has just started to take effect, (the result of staff-cutting during the 1970s 'Oil-Crisis', and subsequent intense recruitment).
With those folk at SESAR hell-bent on reducing costs, it doesn't look good.
CPDLC might be an answer, but it's easier to press a switch and talk to someone than type a message into a tiny keyboard.

All CPDLC instructions are done via mouse clicks on the radar screen (frequencies, route points etc are all in dropdown menus. Screenshot taken from the Eurocontrol website:
https://www.eurocontrol.int/services...communications

http://i58.tinypic.com/6t0piv.png

CPDLC
 

The more aircraft that have this fitted and working the more London area control can QSY to the next freq. this will save a huge amount of rt. QSY can be achieved with one click of the mouse.

Unfortunately, London is not meant to use this below fl200, but it would make some sense that QSY could be allowed below fl200 as it is not so safety critical as say a level change.

Has anyone who doesn't like it sat down and written a complaint to either (internally) Current Ops. or to (externally) Eurocontrol HQ?

FWIW I was involved in the initial trials at Bretigny when colour displays shown above were being developed. As Zooker said, they could measure almost anything. Even the initial tests for colour blindness took almost a morning

I have to admit that the process seems to be a lot more complicated than it could be. I certainly had to read the NOTAM a couple of times for it to make any sense. This doesn't really solve R/T loading as a call is still required to be made to confirm that you are 'standing by'.

To this day I have never been told to 'standby' in connection to the action of changing frequency but I have been told to 'monitor' many times throughout the world. ICAO Doc 4444 - PANS ATM aside - being told to 'monitor' is clear and unambiguous and would help to reduce R/T loading.

Why make life more complicated than it needs to be?

Does Schipol still use "standby on ground/tower"? If so do they also expect pilots to report "standing-by" on the new frequency?

Back in the dark ages when 'Monitor' wasn't working, and 'Standby' wasn't working, a number of ATCOs including HD and me used the unofficial 'Listen' eg. "Listen one one eight decimal five, Good-day"

One simple, two-syllable, easy to pronounce word, one meaning, hardly likely to be confused with anything else, and generally very effective…

Only a few were daft enough to call up and say 'hey, Tower, I'm listening'…
('No you're not, you're talking…')

Any comments on how it's going?

Perhaps your LOA needs renegotiating? :}

Historically more customer orientated than some of the neighbours :}. Not Swanning off to the canteen every five minutes

In general, its not.

Its a nice idea in principle, but it wont work and ATCOs dont have the time to educate every pilot who hasnt read or doesnt understand the NOTAM.

It would be far better for pilots simply to pay a bit of attention and not blurt their way into a busy frequency.

Its a dumbass idea in principle, always was, always will be. Quite simply it's counter intuative to common sense, as is the notam which was written by a lawyer, not an aviator/atco.

^^^

Unfortunately chap, I know who wrote the NOTAM and he is an ex-atco with very many years experience. He is/was, however, bound by the legal requirements as stipulated by ICAO in terms of the wording.

The idea of having pilots 'monitor' or standby for the next frequency is excellent in principle, however (for various reasons) this campaign has been implemented incorrectly.... or rather, has been neutered by the legal stipulations that MUAC is bound by.

The vast majority of pilots do a great job of listening in and speaking at the right moment. However it only takes an ignorant few at the wrong moment to really, really make things difficult on a busy sector. I (as an ATCO) will not be using the stand-by phraseology, but perhaps some will.