Question for all ye, pilots and controllers...
 

Hi, i'm kinda new here, nice to talk to you all.
I am pretty puzzled these days as i've once heard a senior member of CAD (HK) saying, Quote"No offense here, but quite frankly ATC is mere simple 手作仔 (Allow my poor english here to translate it as handcraft for i couldn't find a better term to express it as my englich vocabulary is very limited as the conversation was done in cantonese.). No matter how good you perform, it is of no use." Unquote.
The thing is, if this senior member only said it to encourage us staff to enhance ourselves other than simply working ATC, i'm afraid that member had given it a wrong approach... If it is otherwise, i am speechless, i am afraid it would not do any good to all us controllers as the morale is not high already these days. It is indeed very discouraging. What do you guys reckon?
Back in a couple of years ago, the aforementioned personnel had a group gathering with the then junior staff, namely speaking, student ATCO and ATCO III, the whole gathering went well except the following conversation, Quote "Any of you being dog owners? Training an ATCO is like dog training, you give dogs treats and they do tricks...." Unquote

This is a very bad comparison, I have nothing against dog but is there a better way to talk to junior staff that would be carrying out OJT later on? Is that personnel trying to imply SOMETHING?

That's all now my folks, thanks for bearing my poorly, long-winded type-written post. I couldn't care less now since i am just a mere factory worker who couldn't think properly. As long as i am getting paid, i really dare not ask for anything more...

Wish you could throw some light upon the stubborn me!

Once again thanks for paying attention.

Love you all

P Poon

Well, if I understand correctly, it seems CX's human resources management methods have rubbed off on the CAD. It would make sense, old couples always end up sharing bad habits.
Although they still have some way to go to be as subtly and insiduously cynical in their insulting methods as our dear leaders.

手作仔 = DIY = Hand-Wage-earners :E

Well, with the greatest of respect guys, you gotta start handling us better through Murry if you don't want to be referred to as basket weavers.

Dog or Monkey?
 

Sorry Poon about your management.
Please believe me when I say that you ATC Guys and Girls are highly valued by us pilots. You stop us crashing into each other. That is the major thing. Our passengers benefit from this too!
If it is any consolation for you, our simulator instructor used to refer to us pilots as "Trained Monkeys".

all mickey mouse play to me if a boy can be allowed to
direct ATC at JFK and pilots are amused by it

Cafe City,

Hey, we used to be BAKER weavers. If you think MURRY is bad you should have seen the old arrivals thru BAKER from SIKOU and that other place, er, what was it called, er, SIERA with 200, er kms, or was it nms to touchdown? Either that or the SIERA "slam dunk" arrival, where the aircraft arrived minus the pax.

There's no pleasin' some folk.

On the beach :ok:

I'd prefer a good job, I enjoy good food, and most of all I'd like a good paycheck.
But if you try to pat me on the head I'll take your f### hand off!!!

basket weavers
 

Shorty who was a failed controller and through luck lick his way to what he is has always the habit of taking a cheap shot at the people who knew how useless he was. This has happen to different people at various times. For management to belittle the staff for no other than selfish ego hunting just when one feel like it reflects how pitiful the whole workplace has become when the leadership is so sadly lacking in integrity and professionalism. Mark my words, this will not be the last time and it will be more bitter the next time.

Well considering how little you seem to be appreciated by your own bosses in ATC, the same can not be said for the feeling of us pilots who call HK our home.
In general, we feel relieved to be back in HK airspace having done battle with either the American 'How good are we' controllers,
or the neurotic Indian 'if you dont do what I say I'm going to shout more' controllers,
to the Indonesian'do what you want and we dont care if you cant understand us' controllers,
to the Australian 'just confirm you are 1/2 mile right of track, and read it back verbatim' controllers.
So yes, we breath a sigh of relief when we get back into the FIR, so thanks for staying professional despite your less than appreciative management.

Who is Shorty?

Shorty
 

Shorty is the current headboy of the department who runs the cad with his inflated ego and who has no time for people who does not agree with him. His 'i am better than you' mentality is a sad reflection of his inferiority complex. Like many things in life, luck places a big part in putting him where he is - far more capable people migrating, opening up of new positions just when he was ready to walk into it. Now he uses every opportunity to pull rank on his peers and is never liked amongst controllers.

I remember an episode that really summed some in upper management in CAD/ATMD.
Single rwy CLK,and a 747 departs blowing tyres and leaves bits of undercarrage all over the runway.The runway was closed to clear debris.Then it came back in,so same situation.Then they had to close it again for emergency repairs.So we had a hell of a backlog because it was now about midday.
I ended up in Tower co-ordinator,and luckily had a lot of experience with snow clearing,runway closures etc.I had everything sorted for re-opening in 15 minutes,when a local appeared in the Tower screaming,''Where's the Tower co-ordinator,bring them in, bring them in ''.All the other locals were hiding behind the desk.So I said are you looking for me.
''Bring them in '' he screamed.So I said if you bring them in,then they will just come straight back out the other side,because the runway is CLOSED for emergency repairs,and who the F:mad:k are you:and just stared him right out.It was the boss of ATMD who I had never met.:rolleyes:The was a long pause,and he said nothing,and just ran back down the stairs.One of my friends said he thought I was going to give him a Glasgow kiss.:ugh: I heard later that this was a favourite trick of his in Kai Tak,but no-one had ever answered back.However he never appeared in CLK tower again because of the biggg loss of face.
He became big boss of CAD,probably retired now on a vast fortune.

One of the celtic dogs had a bite back.:}:}

you are one big trumpet blower

He may be blowing a trumpet - so what.
I'd rather have had someone like him organizing how to get the strip useable again, than some paper pusher who rarely appears except when its time to show how to really stuff things up.
Sometimes ya just gotta grab the bull by the horns:}
Nice work dyce :ok:

On the beach
 

I wasn't complaining about the recent welcome change to the procedures, what I was commenting on was the haphazard handling we seem to be getting regularly. After almost 6 months I would have thought it would have been sorted by now. We can come in from sikou without a word from either of the first 2 frequencies we talk to only to be hit with some significant vectoring on approach control. Sometimes to the east for 20 miles and then almost back to where we started. How does that happen? Don't you have someone who has the overall picture and can start to slow us earlier? I mean, I understand we often may need a bit of a tweek here and there once we call approach, but to such a drastic degree?? It makes it very difficult to manage our proflile sometimes. Perhaps you can enlighten me. If we're given such long vectors should we reduce our descent rate or are you looking for us to keep coming down and put on more power to drag it in from low level?

Cafe,
Agree with you. No, it should not happen but it boils down to this
1 A useless FLOW machine
2 inexperienced flow director
3 a lot of new rated locals,
4 supervisors with their head in the sand,not watching exactly what is really going on .
5 lot of BIG egos that side of the room.
6 extremely poor management.
So, put that all together or maybe only a couple of them and you get exactly what you are referring to. My advice.... complain ,call in and ask to speak to hopefully a sympathetic supervisor who is not afraid of losing face and may even apologise, but don't hold your breath. Good luck.

CC, Your discussion obviously refers to RWY07 where we merge two inbound flows together south of LIMES.

APP's problem lies in the groundspeed differentials between traffic inbound through MURRY which usually has a higher groundspeed vs the other sequence inbound through GUAVA. Accordingly, there are ATCs that will make the MURRY traffic number first and will slow and bend the downwind traffic ten or twenty degrees left to fit in behind. The only problem with this is that it takes nerves of titanium as the number one guy turns over SILVA and conflicts with the downwind guy. The other option available is the one you're ( in my opinion, rightly ) complaining about. FYI, we need you to be about 4000' at LIMES, so yes please, dive and drive.

However, this is off topic: maybe the HKATCA should invite this manager, in terms he cannot refuse, to get an APP rating, I'm sure that will be interesting.

Cafe... agree with you .
mercury... There is one simple answer to this DAILY occurrence- a flow controller who do his job .Unfortunately there are very few who can, so problem boils down to incompetence.SIMPLE.

Throw a Dice
 

If you such an experienced ace as you say you are - get things "sorted out" in 15 min without having yourself to go out there with a brush and a broom, then
your boss is right to order you to "bring them in";

Coz it would take your AMAN flow to get those in the holding stacks "sorted out"
and started feeding to the inept lepsep to send them round in circuits 50nm wide