Post Typhoon
 

Just to say thanks to all, for a difficult job well done. Working in the ATC centre today AM Sat 23 with twice the amount of traffic as normal, it was a pleasure to work with fellow profesionals. Massive holding and extensive delays, but very little bitching or complaining. pilots all on their best behavior with no uneccesary RT.
Flow into the aispace could have and should have been better managed, however controllers and pilots coped well under extreme conditions. Congratulations to all on a job well done.:D

very glad once again I could serve the department under such adverse weather conditions. no typhoon allowance is not a problem. everyone coped with the traffic well. well managed. well done to all. very few early-go although the people working in the tower still left as early as usual.

Actually I thought you guys did a great job under the circumstances. My arrival was pretty uneventfull and done with the minimum of fuss. Good to see the regular holding updates too. Makes our guesswork less..... guessy! Well done.

I did thank God today not to have any near miss/RA this morning, our airspace is simply FULL. Flow control should have done better...5mins=not enough, they all gathered up at holding pattern"s"

thank you for understanding our situation and be patient on endless Merry-go-round

feel sorry for the ground crews yelling in the check in counters and managing those furious px:*:*:*

tough day for everyone...:ok:

Colleagues(controllers and assistants) in the centre worked so hard!
Shame on tower controllers. Shame on ASU.

wow, are you guys serious? can't imagine this at such demanding situation, and that's why they are aka 'tower bastards' ... having said that, i'm one of these 'bastards' from time to time, though.:}

Come on, be fair to your tower colleagues, we were working as hard as those in the center. Do you really think it's easy to start up the right amount of traffic at the right time and then sequence them as perfect as possible, just to cope with the various flow controls? I know radar is more demanding, they are handling traffic that cannot be stopped, but each stream has its own difficulties and constraints, and tower is not excluded. By the way, about the early-goes, I'd really like to see a proof for that, but I can tell you that all the A2's did not leave the tower earlier than 22:20.

Ground Movement
 

Cutting across the backbiting onto a different subject, during the long tailbacks to get to the gates on Saturday I unwittingly turned my transponder to 2000...(it's the obsessive compulsive in me). I took my bollocking like a man, and of course apologized unreservedly..However, can you clarify where it is laid down that we should retain our allocated squawk until the gate..is it an AIP/NOTAM or what.! It certainly isn't in any of our publications . In addition I hear you guys asking a lot of my colleagues (I presume from the callsigns to be Airbus drivers) if they have their txponders turned on...what is the story here..? Does the Airbus equipment go to standby on the ground ..do you have difficulty seeing it vs. Boeings etc..Cheers, and congrats on a great job yesterday..:)

xpdr
 

jacobus, the only thing that I can find about the xpdr thing is on AIP AD 2.23:

2. Use of Mode S Transponder after Landing
2.1 Aircraft equipped with a ‘weight-on-wheel’ switch must continue to have its transponder operating (on ‘AUTO’ or ‘XPNDR’, and not ‘STDBY’ or ‘OFF’) until fully parked at a stand.

You can also check that on the web: http://www.hkatc.gov.hk/HK_AIP/AIP/AD/HK_AD2-75to78.pdf

Obviously, it only says that you have to keep your xpdr on, but does not mention anything about not changing your squawk code. But the reality is, if you're squawking the correct code, we can see your callsign on our ground radar, if you change to anything else, your callsign will be replaced by that code (i.e. 2000 in your case). The worst thing is having an a/c turning off its xpdr completely (or squawking sdby), if we're lucky, there's still a blip indicating its position (but nothing else). If there's no blip, and when we get very busy, there's a chance that we could forget the presence of that a/c, which is definitely a safety issue.

2 reasons for asking if an a/c has turned on the xpdr:
1. remind the pilot in a more polite way
2. under some circumstances, the pilot has turned on the xpdr already, but for some reasons, it's not painted on our ground radar

I know it's kind of messy yesterday, but I can assure you that we're all trying our best to get things back to order, and appreciate your (and other's) kind words.

Post Typhoon
 

Formzation

Shame on YOU for being our colleague.

Everyone and that includes Assistants and Controllers in both the Centre and Tower did a magnificent job under difficult and heavy traffic conditions and under enormous pressure to get the job done.

Agree. Everybody, in every position had to raise their game.. and they did.. That goes from the Assistants to tower to app to en-route to our friends the pilots... well done... Management may need to have a serrious look at how they flowed the traffic though... never have i seen so many blips on a single radar screen...

Jacobus, it came out in an AIC about a year ago. When I am next at work I'll get the reference number. As for your query re the Airbus/Boeing I can't say that there is any weighting either way. I think one could assume there are more Cathay A330 movements in and out of HK than other types because a/ there are more A330's/340's than Boeings (are there not?) and b/ also the A330's do a lot of regional flights so they tend to be in and out more often . Mind you I am just guessing here, but my experience says that there are just as many Boeing hiccups as Airbus when it comes to transponder operation...or lack thereof. I love it when we say "turn transponder on" and the various replies we get range from sheepish to out right indignation.
As for some of the other crap that has been posted here...I am at a loss to explain some of the outright unprofessional statements made here by one or two people.

The typhoon was only a tropical storm upon reaching HKG area, so not much of an adrenalin rush. :p

bedder, the operation of xpdr can no longer be found in AIP supp / AIC, as it's incorporated into the AIP already. In fact, I've already posted a link to jacobus, but apparently, at the time you read this thread, my last post was still pending for review by the forum mod, and not visible at that time.

You are from management, or the AA or simply blind
 

Tell the truth, we were lucky there were no major near-misses and that no one ran out of fuel.
The truth must be told to ensure this never, ever happens again. Saturday can only be labelled as a complete loss of control of HK airspace. There was no WX, only volume which IS controllable...who allowed all these aircraft to enter the HK airspace, hold over a hour, force long haul flights to divert but allow arrivals from ZGGG, ZSAM, RCTP to land??? Then land and guess what- no gate!This CHAOS lasted over 8 hours!! This is not the first time AA/CAD has screwed up bigtime...remember the last typhoon.
Pilots,the airlines, and the passengers should, must demand a public enquiry. Think of the: costs to the airlines, the frustrated passengers, the wasted fuel holding, the fact that Controllers could barely keep aircraft apart. It was dangerous, scary, with at times over 40 aircraft with undetermined holding/landing times. Loss of control? How else would you describe aircraft flying from one hold to another, climbing again to enter a new hold, without ever receiving an EAT?. Yes, the controllers succeeded in handling an eight-hour emergency situation.
**BRAVO TO ALL CONTROLLERS CONCERNED**
A public apology and a pledge not to allow a reoccurrence is the least we should expect from CAD and AA.

Post Typhoon
 

In total agreement with TCAS and his assessment of the situation.

With so many planes in the sky, we were very fortunate to escape with no incidents and no breakdowns in separation.

This is not the first typhoon nor will it be the last to affect Hong kong. We have not learnt from past typhoon experiences nor acted upon issues that have been raised before. When will CAD/AA and the airlines learn that the scheduling of flights during the post typhoon period needs to be controlled, centrlalized and managed in such a way that it does not pose a strain on our air traffic control system?

We survived a big scare on Saturday and only just. Nobody wants to see it happen again.

That was no doubt caused by the massive departure restrictions needed to cope with the massive overload of arrivals landing on both runways.
Somebody needs a huge kick in the goolies.
How dare they call themselves Air Traffic MANAGEMENT Division.

Glueball, this thread was started by a controller reviewing the situation after the chaos last Saturday. Blind Freddy knows that as far as typhoons go, it was a bit of a wimp. Never the less, the airlines (including I guess your employer) elected to suspend virtually all flights for between 8 to 12 hours. This led to a massive backlog of traffic that had to be dealt with. Well may your adrenalin rush have been able to cope with your cheap beer at DB Plaza (or where ever), but try telling that to some kid on Terminal Radar East who was a heartbeat away from going under, with no relief in sight.

your from management
 

Tcas...

What are you on about with the title of your post...???

Sure the management of the flow into the airspace was a disaster and yes everybody was very lucky not to have an incident. However all who did turn up for work got their heads down and did an amazing job in overloaded airspace.

Should the traffic have been allowed to become so overloaded, of course not, and somebody needs to have a good look at saturdays tapes and realise it is a situation that should never be allowed to be repeated.

Hope Management appreciates that the miners saved their asses again.

Might not be so lucky next time though. But I will say it once again, well done to those who did work on Sat...

Don't worry, the ususal sycophantic congratulations-on-a-job- well-done letter will be on the notice board any day now.
Meanwhile they'll be looking to blame anyone else they can for the disaster.