Departure clearance in european busy airports
 

Good morning everybody,
According following recommendation for risks mitigation by Eurocontrol:


The existence of appropriate procedures for:

• the timing of the issue of initial departure clearances - this should preferably be sufficiently ahead of the likely "off blocks" time to allow the flight crew actions which must follow the issue of clearance to be completed before the aircraft first moves.

could you explain if in your airports (especially for busy ones) you apply a particular procedure for initial departure clearance issueing? Do you issue any departure clearance before the Aircraft is ready for start up clearance?


Thank you very much for your kind cooperation http://cdn.pprune.org/images/smilies/thumbs.gif

Our AIP entry states something like "crews should request clearance no later than EOBT -10mins"

Hope that helps

Which country are you talking about? So, if a crew requests an atc clearance before they are ready for start up, even if 30 min. before EOBT, you issue a departure clearance?

UK

Provided we have the clearance available (not sure without checking what the parameters are) then yes, we issue the departure clearance.

It's not uncommon for aircraft to land, park, do various checks and then request departure clearance (even before next sector passengers have boarded).

Tkank you Good Egg, in Italy in our AIP we don't have this kind of procedure. I know a lot of european busy airports have the pre-departure clearance, to issue by mean CPDLC, but in our airports it is not available yet, so we are in an embarrassing situation when the pilot request departure clearance before being ready to start up.

Why is that a problem? Can you not just pass the clearance via radio??

The problem is, other than delivery frequency congestion in A-CDM context, also our local procedures that are provided to issue start up and atc clearance together.

How about submitting a "change request" to your procedures?

How about submitting a "change request" to your procedures?Are the same also in other airports full A-CDM like EDDM, so I suppose it is a standard procedure if a CPDLC is not available. I'd like to have confirmation about that...

I found out that in EGLL the procedure is quite similar. The difference is just for having two ways to transmit the departure clearance: via data link or via radio. Via data link the departure clearance is available since 25 mins prior the EOBT, via radio 15 mins if pilots have been briefed with regard to the correct phraseology (???http://cdn.pprune.org/images/smilies/icon25.gif). All other pilots must be fully ready before calling Delivery frequency, so the same as in Italy.

Italy seems to be more tolerant (as usual), considering we don't have CPDLC yet...