I think you have missed the point.

I dont have a problem with air traffic organising the flow to facilitate anyone with a slot to keep - and they do it well.

What concerns me is when a commercial thinks he knows better and thinks he can bully air traffic into changing the flow that air traffic had already planned to suite him.

In my view that just ends up causing hassle for all concerned and may be potentially dangerous.

Was this an isolated case? I dont know but now I come to think about it only a few weeks earlier I had an occasion where it could have directly effected me.

I was just established on the localiser into Southampton.

I cant really recall the wording but a commercial made a real Ar&&e of himself by "complaining" that there was much slower traffic in front (I was going down the localiser at 130 knots into a stiff head wind). The controller was excellent and effectively told him to sod off so it really didnt trouble me.
In fact the "incident" ended up in an amusing way. There were some very heavy showers around and conditions were IMC down to 1,000 feet. The commercial driver asked for a turn away from the localiser for weather - which he got. Having avoided the weather he continued on a vector that would have taken him outside CAS - there followed a little exchange between the radar controller and the commercial driver questioning whether he really wanted to take his stead outside CAS - he reluctantly accepted he did not and was eventually turned back onto the localiser after I had landed.

I am sure I heard the controller having a little chuckle to himself :).

Personally, if it had been me, I would have turned him back into the shower and seen if he wanted a further delay whilst be turned away again. I'd been through the same shower and although I eventually asked for a turn for the sake of my passengers it really was not that bad even in my little twin. I am sure the G and Ts would have survived.

I once had a Ryanair driver ask a French controller if he could be given priority on an approach in France. Shocking weather, drizzle, minima and gusty so I was rather pleased that I had managed to set up a stable approach. The controller told him to sling his hook and he complained that he was twice my speed and was going to arrive at the fix before I was down. The controller responded by vectoring him off so far into infinity there was space for another flight to land behind me.

My experience of controllers especially when flying IFR has been exceptional. My experience of CAT pilots often leaves a lot to be desired, I guess when they get into a Chav transporter some of them forget where they came from......

I agree! Rules are so last year! I know it's 1000ft vertical I need, but 800 is OK. Likewise 3nm radar sep. Oh what the hell, I got 2.5, that looked alright to me. 12 minutes past the slot? Well it's some other poor bugger who has to short my sh1t out so what the hell!

Lol, I knew as I was typing that someone was going to come back at me with that.:mad: In fact I was expecting someone to hit me with approach minimums is 200ft, but surely 170ft is ok, which clearly my answer would be no, it's not.

Nuff said on the subject of sneaking off outside of your CTOT margin.

Has anyone got an answer to my earlier question? If the tower kindly get us a 5 minute slot extension as we are running late, and we push back in time to make our extended slot, yet it all turns pear shaped at the hold for reasons beyond our control do flow control/CFMU grant a further extension to the slot? In AMS today for example, we had a slot but for some reason they stopped all pushbacks for 5 to 10 minutes but they told us and others that the slot was ok because we’d called for pushback in time to make our slot.

Cheers for the info

SW

Again it's an absolute. We won't ask for an extension unless it looks like you will make it. "Turning pear shaped" at the hold shouldn't happen from an ATC point of view. (but that's what the 15 minute window is for). Taxy times for airports are published, you know how long it takes to push, you know how long it takes to taxy. Arrange to be off stand at the right time and the scenario doesn't happen.

Now - if you're running late then what you do on the phone to
Company Ops, and what they do with Flow is a different matter. Sometimes that's enough to get a new slot issued. If that is a case we get informed of the new slot, and that gives us the option to ask for an extension on top of that.

Extensions on extensions however - it isn't happening.

Fuji - come to Brizzel, there aren't many of us who pander to the commercials whims once the sequence has been formed in our heads. I certainly don't change my mind, I just make it work. It's amazing what speed a Minibus can slow down to to accomodate our slower customers.
You want to see us vector an S61 with jets rapidly eating them up. I've seen them on the approach doing 48-50kt ground speed and had not a whimper from the Bus/73/75 behind.

Ain't any bullying of Air Traffic going on at Brizzel. Far too much work involved in changing things.

Chilli

By "turning pear shaped" I meant an incident on the runway or perhaps stopping all take offs due to mayday traffic or maybe the aircraft at the front of the queue has tech probs and has held things up for 5 minutes (brakes stuck on?) etc. Does your answer still apply in those circumstances or would you make a quick phone call to flow control and hope that they'd then pull out all stops to make sure that the delayed aircraft could get away as soon as the runway was available?

Out of interest, where do you work?

Standard Noise.

It's funny you should say that. My first ever go around for real was on my qualifying solo cross control at Brizzel when a BA EMB45 was eating up the distance behind me. The controller said sorry, it's not going to work and sent me around from reasonably close in. To be fair to the controller, he'd asked me to keep the speed up but as a 30 odd hour student there was only so much that I was capable of safely doing. At least it gave me a nice view of the airfield as I did the early left turn over the top of the apron to go back down wind.

SW

If you search through some of his past posts, it should be obvious. But I'll give you a clue - it's not quite in the South and it's not quite in the North... (And it's certainly not in the West!) ;)

Luckily his PM answered the question.:ok:

Filton has never been the same since .. .. .. :)

Yep, we've cured that problem.:}

Since we mentioned Brizzel...
 

SN - were you there the day a CAT pilot (might even have been EZY) announced on the cabin PA that they were ready early and were going to "bully" ATC into an early departure? Shame he had COM selected at the time:}