Greetings from Beijing ACC
 

Hello all! I am one of the chief controller in Beijing ACC. I am looking forward to know more of you guys. Feel free to ask me if you have any questions/concerns/complains about the air-traffic control in Beijing area.

Nintendi
 

Greetings, what do you know about PVG? Every time I try to get out I get my ATC clearance, call ready, I am told to contact Ground Control and immediately told 50 mins delay. What is the problem?

I could be falling for a rather obvious wind up, but welcome to pprune Nintendi.

One of the biggest complaints I have about PEK is when you assign arrivals so late. They are assigned by approach! THis is way to late to be loading/changing arrivals, we have to load it, brief it all before we are issued the next runway change. 3 runway changes is not un common with PEK, the worst I saw was 5. This is ridiculous, not to mention dangerous!

Another problem we have in PEK is no communication between your controllers. We are assigned something with 1 controller, only to have the next guy issue something completely different and conflicting with the intentions of the previous guy. IE maintain high speed, the next guy asks you to slow to 180kts on the frequency change.

Also issuing ridiculous requirements like descend at 2500fpm and slow to 200kts when you are doing 300kts.
Also the atis. Why state that its cavok, when you cant even see the new terminal through the polution, and guys on approach are just getting visual at 800ft? Everywhere else in the world, when you here cavok, it would be a reasonable expectation that the conditions would allow for a visual circuit.

Other than that, keep up the good work!!!! :ok:

Ask yourself why would a controller in PEK be posting here? I must say your English is very good. Do they have foreign controllers there?;)

Could it be “The Management”? Usually management types are a bit more direct. Come on you can do better than that.:ok:

I speak mandarin. Why do you guys always talk about cows and chickens in Chinese on VHF freq.? My mothers chicken died yesterday of birdflue but I hope Beijing does not find out etc.. Sometimes I here you talk about pigs too. It not funny. :*

Hello all,

As a native Chinese working in foreign aviation field for several years, I realised that there are some big or even we can say Hugh mis-understandings between the Air Traffic Controllers in mainland China and the foreign crews. And this is exactly why I encouraged my good friend, NINTENDI, to come here and introduce himself and getting to know your friends.

I know there are many rules and ATC operations that seem "strange" to you all, as foreign crews. I know sometime our controllers' English communication skills are not that good as you had in Hong Kong TMA/ACC. But as I know, the ATCs in mainland China are working hard and always learning and improving themselves. Compare to Hong Kong, which airspace open to foreign carriers for more than 50 years of time, mainland Chinese airspace was opened for normal operation no more than 25 years. Also, unlike Hong Kong, English is not our education language and therefore there must a process for our controllers to learn and practise.

I hope the topic here is not a tool for you to express your internal "Fire". Rather, this is a topic that I hope you friends can exchange the ideas with each other and elimate mis-understandings on both sides.

I will try to ask more mainland ATCs to come to this forum and share the ideas/thoughts with you friends.

Hi, thanks for asking. I am asking one of my friend who is the Vice-Director of PVG Tower to come to this forum to answer your question. He will probably be here in a few days. :-)

NINTENDI is one of the chief controllers in Beijing ACC, no doubt. He is a very brilliant young-man and he was being promoted very fast. From your words I can see that you are one of the men that have lots of internal "Fire" about Beijing ACC/TMA. We are looking forward to letting you know the truth about your concerns and questions. Feel free to post your questions & concerns, but would you please be more respectful? Thanks.

As I know, there is NO foreign controller in mainland China. In order to be a ATC in mainland China, you must be a Chinese Citizen and you must be able to command both Chinese and English.

Haha, sounds interesting, but that's impossible. You must interpret some mandrain air-ground communications in a wrong way :-)
Why not share us what you heard in Pinyin or even in Chinese? We'll explain them to you.

Thanks very much for bringing these questions up. NINTENDI will answer your questions in detail shortly.

Good thread, I don't think it is a wind-up. Let's make this dialog productive and positive, OK?

I have a question for PVG ATC.

In the charts, a lot of different sectors, with different frequencies are listed. Yet so often, it is one controller covering many sectors on the same frequency, even when it is busy. Mixing Mandarin and English does not make it easier, and just for the English part of it, accents from long haul flights from different countries, make it even more complicated.

So is it a question of not enough controllers when all these sectors are combined? Sometimes even a short "request descent" can be hard to get through on the frequency, and in the middle of a clearance, Chinese pilot interrupt so you can start all over (I am sure the same also happens the other way). It would be really great if the ATC staff would be enough to cater for the actual traffic there is, especially at peak periods.

Also, like mentioned for Beijing, arrivals are often announced very late, and often they are off the flight plan route. Coming from HK there are two STARs via the same entry point, and when you plug in both in Route 1 and Route 2, they give you a third one, at the very last moment. Some times we neither get vectors nor a STAR but because of congestion on the frequency, we just follow the most obvious STAR in lack of better.

Hi Scbsli and Nintendi:
Very nice of you to post and I hope everyone can engage in emotion free dialogue. I must admit that I have only flown into Beijing once and that was quite an eventful trip, however, I overfly your airspace all the time.
My major concern on my flight to PEK was the huge discrepancy between the reported and actual weather. The ATIS was indicating SCT clouds and -RA with viz >10Ks. The actual weather was CBs with lightning over the airport. CB's on approach requiring deviation off the loc and windshear on final +15 to -15 knots with heavy rain hampering viz to about 1K. After we landed and taxyed off, the ATIS was still the same. Shortly afterward the airfield was shut down due lightning although the ATIS was still the same. We were delayed on ground for several hours and ATIS was upgraded to CBs in the area.
About the overfly, which is out of your jurisdiction, but maybe you could ask your colleagues: What is your standard separation over Guanzhou, Chengdu and Llanzhou airspace? I am usually radar identified and have seen separation to less than 10 minutes (normal procedural). Before we Muren airspace the separation is back to 10 minutes as I understand Muren is still procedural although they request our squawk (I take it they are training with radar).
Thanks for appearing on this website to enhance communication between air and ground personnel. Please don't apologize for your English to anyone on this website; I am sure your English is better than the most of these guys' Mandarin.:hmm:

Hello All,
Thank you so much for posting. I am doing my best to answer your questions.

For the first question about the arrival routes:
Before ZBAA has new JB arrivals, traffic coming from A461 only has VYK as their entry point tin Beijing TMA area. Because of the single entry (VYK) existed for a long time, so our controllers are used to assign arrival route late or even don’t assign any arrival route (it’s obvious that VYK would be used since the entry point was single). Although we have JB arrivals now, available for traffic coming from A461 to use when the traffic is heavy at VYK, but most of the traffic will still go through VYK and therefore our controllers are still assigning arrivals late. Well, personally I think assigning arrival late is NOT good. I will bring this topic to our directors and hope they can work out some new working procedures in the coming future. Actually, our directors are now re-designing the procedures in ZBAA area as a preparation for this year’s opening of our third runway in our airport, so this can be a good chance for us to bring up this question to them and let them think about it and make some change. I will do my best! But for personally advice, you can ask the controllers for arrival when you think you need to know it. Usually, as a normal procedure, most of the aircrafts will be vectored instead of flying STARs.

For the second question about the coordination between controllers:
Beijing ACC and TMA have many super-complex sectors (some of the complexities are contributed by the military restrictions and the old design of arrival and departure routes). The situation can change from second to second. It is hard for our controllers to work in a same schema because each controller has his or her own new situation in the sector. Therefore you will see lots of things may change between two nearby controllers. For the speed problem, when you enter Beijing’s first sector (usually 128.3 for you from A461), the controller in 128.3 wants you to fly 300 knots because he needs to place you into a good arrival position (help you join a good arrival queue). When you entered the second sector, usually 128.1 , most of the aircrafts are being placed in a good arrival queue so the regulating target for this controller is to help everybody smoothly transits from high speed into normal approach speed. Therefore, you’ll always be directed to reduce to a lower speed when you enter the second controller’s sector. We are always doing best in our complex sectors to help everybody touches ground on-time. Although some speed regulations may make you feel exhausted but please understand that we are doing our best in handling this super-complex situation in Beijing and we always want you to touch down on time.

For the third question about the high vertical speed:
The controllers in Beijing are being trained in a specific course about aircraft performance. We have a rule, in general situation, no speed control if the aircraft is descending with -3000ft/min. But in some unusual situation (e.g. traffic conflict), speed control with -3000ft/min may be instructed by our controllers. If you experience this in the future and you feel you cannot make it, please tell our controller instantly by saying “Negative due to performance”. We will continue provide more training about aircraft performance to our controllers.


For the fourth question about the weather report in ATIS:
The ATIS is generated in ZBAA Tower so as an ACC controller I do not know much about it. I need to ask my colleagues in Tower before I give you a detailed explanation about this. But as far as I know, it is true that the ATIS is not accurate some time.

About the question regarding to Enroute Separation:
In China, we have many super-large FIRs and control sectors. The situation may vary from one with another. As I know, in China, there exist three kinds of separation. They are Radar Separation (10nm), Procedural Separation (10 minutes) and Procedural Separation with Radar Monitor. The last one, Procedural Separation with Radar Monitor is a transitional method used in some areas where they are equipped with radar but the radar is not accurate enough to provide radar separation. Different areas may apply different situation (depends on equipment and other factors). For example, in Beijing, until 2004 ,we have 20nm radar separation and in Qingdao they use 20nm radar separation. For those aircrafts fly on airways and transits from one ACC to another, we have a rule that all controllers will apply the common-accepted maximum separation.

Trust us, we are always working our best in handling our complex sectors and guiding you home.

I have to stop here since I have to work tomorrow. Thank you again for your posting and I'll see you around!

Hi,

Very nice idea to start a post like this. I am sure there are many questions and I have one as well;

Both from PEK and PVG we often run into huge delays during our departure. Usually this explained by the controllers due to separation enroute or enroute restrictions. It is nice that PEK (and PVG) is preparing a third runway but is this really going to decrease the delays. To me it looks like restrictions enroute seem to be the bottleneck. RVSM might improve this a little bit but do you have any infomation about the possible opening of more airways especially in direction of Hong Kong which can be used for internation flights?

Best regards...

I'm an expat Controller in Hong Kong, and a question that I have, is an explanation of random implementation of 10 minutes flow control at nights (between 10pm and midnight) on B330 and/or A461 (normally we provide 3 minutes). I must say that it's not as common now as it was 6 or more months ago, but we have many departures late in the evening from VHHH to Europe, and when a 10 minute flow control is enforced with little or no warning, it can really make things difficult. I do stress, that the situation has improved, however, it still happens occasionally. I note that in your last post Nintendi, you refer to vertical speed change in "feet per minute". Are you journalising here, or do you really think in "fpm" for rate of level change, but use metric vertical separation? Must be fun! All the best to you guys (and girls).

Well, here we have another thing need to be clarified -- Why we use meters in Mainland China?

It looks strange, indeed. Modern civil aircrafts are almost all default in "feet". But why CAAC is still using meters, Even in the new RVSM across the mainland begins from Nov. 21? Here are some explanations:

The main reason that we cannot use feet in mainland China is the coordination problems between Civil Aviation and Military Aviation. All military aircrafts in China are default in Metric system (We bought a lot of military aircrafts from Russia and also we use metric as a national standard in developing new military aircrafts ourselves). There will be a BIG problem if the Civil part of aviation begins to use Feet. And it is IMPOSSIBLE for military forces to change to feet. So, basically, that's the reason.

Although the civil part of aviation use meters, all the civil aircrafts in China are being operated in Feet (convert from meters). So you can simply understand Meter as a shell in civil aviation. That's why in description of our new RVSM standard, it requires crews to Operate Meters in Feet. E.g. If the ATC advise you fly 9800M, crews should target their flight level at 32100ft ACCURATELY (Accurately speaking, 9800M does not Equal to 32100ft, it has been rounded down about 50ft).

Hope the statement above help you understand why the air-traffic controllers in mainland use "fpm" when talking about vertical speed.

Thank you Nintendi/scbsli, I obviously didn't make myself clear enough. I understand the 10 minute requirement for aircraft at the same level, but what I was referring to is the random imposition of 10 minutes flow control for all aircraft, regardless of level. As it stands, we can "play" to a certain extent with changing levels within the S0810 range to S0960 range quite well, and if there is a demand for say 12 flights over a 60 minute period, then we can juggle flights using the normal 3 minute "flow" requirement. When it get's tough is when a "10 minute flow" is instigated, regardless of level, and then we have a situation where those 12 demand flights over a one hour period are now subjected to a 120 minute time span, so the flights at the end can often be delayed by well over 40 minutes or so. And then, as soon as we get the delayed aircraft on their way, then the "10 mins flow - regardless of level" requirement will be dropped. I have to admit that it doesn't seem to happen often now, but about 6 months or more ago, it became a pretty much standard modus operandi. I got the feeling that it was being imposed because someone up there came up with the bright idea one night, then it took hold, and we in HK were having to pay the price for it. Anyway, I guess these issues gradually get themselves sorted out. It is well known by most HK ATC that you have many difficulties, particularly with the military, and you are doing the best you can under the circumstances.

NINTENDI

With the greatest of respect, one wonders what your (Mainland ATC's) idea of ATC is.
If you want us to provide sufficient separation on departure so that everyone gets F315 entering Mongolia FIR, then why don't we cut out the middle man and tell the aircraft to call Mongolia direct?
Of course I'm exagerating but that is the general perception. The same goes for traffic through Sanya FIR. What is the point of their existence except to collect en-route charges?
Hong Kong has to set up the required longitudinal separation so that the standard is maintained all the way to the Ho Chi Minh FIR. Why don't we just hand off to HCM? All Sanya seems to do is take the transfer from us and pass it to HCM and vice versa. I can't recall the last time I saw Sanya actually change the level of traffic in their airspace. If someone asks for a level change northbound they just tell the a/c to call us and say "no restrictions"!
Enroute ATC is all about constantly assessing and reassessing what minimum standard can be applied depending on the circumstances and then giving aircraft the best possible level available. It seems many of the Mainlands new procedures are based on some fanciful perfect world where we can get someone airborne at the pefect moment, out of several airports, so that nobody along route has to do anything.
I wish.

Sorry if this comes across as a bit harsh, and I realize you are hamstrung by ridiculous Military megalomaniacs playing with thier toys, but that is reality.

Edit:
P.S. We used to do this sort of thing for traffic heading across the N. Pacific on the basis that Japan FIR needed 15 minutes between a/c going oceanic at the same level.
The fact that 5 hours after departure the aircraft would be at nothing like thier initial cruise levels and that they had either opened up or closed up the distance between them by more than 10 minutes made a mockery of the whole thing. Finally the Japanese had the sense to say "Oi, knock it off - its total rubbish"

Use of 7700 squawk?
 

NINTENDI
Thank you very much for opening this thread and providing this opportunity to improve communication and understanding.
Question: If I need to make a rapid emergency descent in Beijing, should I change my squawk to 7700 or keep my assigned squawk? In Europe squawking 7700 over rides RADAR display height filtering in neighbouring (lower) sectors so that controllers get immediate early warning of an emergency that may affect them.
Does the same answer apply in other parts of china?
Regards
D.B.er

What are you plans for Olimpic Games ??
 

Well , I've been flying in China for more than 3 years . My previous experience involves all 3 Americas and Europe and I never saw so poor control system as in China . Looks like you guys have no idea about big jets performance !! Climbs that take around 260 miles to reach the approved flight level . Descent earlier as 200 miles before the computed descent point with that " stupid" instruction: " - Descent rate of 2500ft/min or more " . What is this ?? Do you guys have any idea about the additional costs you bring to major airlines ?
And what about the delays ? Do you guys have any respect to our passengers ? Flow control ?? Came on !!!!
You should open your mind and send some controllers to observe and learn abroad . Go to Chicago for example ....
Sorry for being so hard and honest but you really need to improve a lot ...2008 is right there !!

My colleage tell me, in 1 month we have more than 15000 minutes of delays into China. 15000! In 1 day, the worst is more than 2000 minutes. Thats more than 30 hours in one day! When we see all the flow controls it looks bad but never realize it add up to so much. :eek:
NINTENDI, can you explain??? Is it not embarasing for the mother land? Its embarasing to us!! No face.

Absolutely no need for that sort of language AGNES. Thanks for probably ensuring we don't get any meaningful response from NINTENDI to our somewhat harsh, but legitimate questions. :(

hey all...
 

:\
Hello all...
I'm a tower controller of Guangzhou Airport (ZGGG) and i had worked in Gungzhou ACC for one year or so when i was a probationer.So I'm willing to explain what's happening within our airspace.
Several factors have contributed to such flow control that you complained
First of all,I wish you could gain a clear idea of this:In mainland China,all airspace are managed and supervised by Military Air Force,even our civil control area cannot make an exception!:suspect:
That's why we can't approve the crews' request of direct sometimes,even though the sector is quite clear and there's no collision at all! It's not the thing we could dominate and it's already up to the Military Authority!
When there're activities or conventional trainings by PLA Air Force,all civil flights will have to give way to those military aircrafts according to our rules...As a result,flow control could be an usual thing in that situation!
Not only you,but also us are all fed up with this!But who is to blame?I don't know...:sad:

Traversing through China from South to North,the A461 is an international airway along with six ACC can be found (Guangzhou、Changsha、Wuhan、Zhengzhou、Beijing and Hohhot)...They're inseparably combined that each and every mishap in one certain spot may as well led to total confusion!Especially Beijing,the aviation "Hub" of China.
On one hand,it's just like my colleague NINTENDI said:Mogonlian ATC require 10 minutes separation on A461.Obviously,a great disparity is laying ahead of us if compare with your 3 mins one...Coordinating is of great importance.
On the other hand.As we all know,the Pearl River's delta zone contains five main airports,making it an extrodinary busy airspace.Hundreds of flights,which follow A461,fly back and forth between Canton(ZGGG)、Shenzhen(ZGSZ)and Beijing (ZBAA) every day in mainland China.Hand off of flights between HongKong and Guangzhou are exactly realizes in such a complecated area!According to the L.O.A,all flights depart from HKG to European countries,which follow A461 and heading North,must maintain S048 or above to get over BEKOL before they turn to YIN in the sirspace of GZACC.Meanwhile,maintaining S051~S060,flights depart from ZGGG (follow YIN-SID) and ZGSZ (from LMN dct YIN) to Beijing are also gather at YIN and waiting for climb to their cruise altitude.Shortage of altitude and quantities of aircrafts,what's worse,the restritions or flow control by whichever of those six ACC...all cause in the diffculties of sequencing.
That's why 10 mins separation is required for the flights from HKG...Is that going to far in this case?I don't think so...:uhoh:

What about B330? Most flights from Chinese Southwest cities to Canton must follow this airway and join the GYA-STAR.Simularly,flights from Europe to HKG are also follow this airway...making collision could be an easy job if you're careless.Usually we will told those flights landing at HKG from GYA direct to SIERA if avialable...But if the Air Force is going to hold a party is this manoeuvring area and deny our scheme...These poor guys will have to fly over POU the join the R473...descend to reach FL 170 or above by SIERA before they contact HongKong 127.55 or 127.10...Here's the problem:all flights depart from ZGGG,which SID is heading South and destinations are Southeast Asia or Hainan Province,must pass POU too!One of our tempoary airway is from POU direct to BIGRO for these flights.Unfortunately,it's also not avialable when the party is in progress.:sad:
Everything seems crazy at that time,right?...So the best and most safety choice for us is.....FLOW CONTROL!:bored:

Last but not the least,I know there's a saying that "CAAC means 'Chinese ATC Are Crazy'..."I can understand that...however, what i want to express is:We're so sorry about the delays...but...We are also sufferers...

Thanks scbsli telling me about this forum.
I'm pleasure to exchange with all of you...
Have a nice day and,all the best!