For Everyone But Nancy....

[Guest kevenv]

You can present a dozen controllers with the same question / scenario and get a dozen different answers. The fact is so much of what causes us to make a decision is subjective and dependent upon what is happening at that time. The variables are never constant

Having said that, if you have a question about what happened at a particular airport that I work at a particular point in time, feel free to post the question. I cannot make blanket statements to your "why"s. I cannot in most cases tell you why another controller did something. The vast majority of our procedures are out of our control. This includes runway use, noise abatement, separation minimums etc etc etc. My best advice to those who think we are costing them millions of dollars is "take it to your company". I am not allowed to change procedures on my own. Pressure from above (your company to our Board of Directors, which BTW are controlled by the airlines) can't hurt your cause.

Controllers can come up with a hundred questions about why this pilot did that, or why they asked "is that at my discretion", or why one airline will report continuous light chop while everyone else reports smooth, or why a pilot will ask for direct and then after being cleared ask for a heading. My point is procedures, habits, likes and dislikes vary from pilot to pilot and airline to airline. ATC is no different. I would hazard to say that you can no sooner violate your companies SOPs (not withstanding flt safety etc) than we can violate ours.

Hope this is useful to someone.

[Guest Starman]

One advantage pilots have in comparing ATC practices is that we are constantly exposed to other airport environments. There are many airports around the world which are more efficient and user friendly than YYZ despite having double the traffic volumes. (ie: Heathrow, O'hare, etc.)

I'm not saying that all of their practices are superior, only that if ATC management were to take the best practices of all the major airports around the world and standardize them in our own environment, we'd have a safer and more efficient air traffic management system.

Even within Canada we have inconsistancy which is unnecessary. (ie: why does YVR have silly "code routes" for taxiway assignment when no one else does? What's wrong with "26L via the inner, transition to the outer at Kilo"?) Of course, in YYZ it's the taxiways themselves which are silly, but that's an issue for airport design engineers...

In Heathrow you're always given "discretion" or "start down now" with a descent clearance. If a hold is necessary, they'll tell you how long to expect (not a fictitious "expect further clearance time) and when they vector you out of the hold, they'll invariably give you "track miles to touchdown" so that the pilot can arrange a "continuous descent profile" for noise abatement. Once on the ground, things are far more straightforward than in Canada even though the airport is far more congested.

Mind you, I wish more of the approach controllers in London would use the term "cleared for the approach" instead of the usual "continue on the glide path" which always seems a little vague to me although it seems to work even with the cosmopolitan pilot group in the stack.

If we could get the ATC managers in Ottawa out of their paradigm and around the planet more often, we could all benefit from a better system and a better work place. If not, I'll just have to comfort myself with the thought that I get paid by the hour and not by the mile... ;-)

[Guest Starman]

One advantage pilots have in comparing ATC practices is that we are constantly exposed to other airport environments. There are many airports around the world which are more efficient and user friendly than YYZ despite having double the traffic volumes. (ie: Heathrow, O'hare, etc.)

I'm not saying that all of their practices are superior, only that if ATC management were to take the best practices of all the major airports around the world and standardize them in our own environment, we'd have a safer and more efficient air traffic management system.

Even within Canada we have inconsistancy which is unnecessary. (ie: why does YVR have silly "code routes" for taxiway assignment when no one else does? What's wrong with "26L via the inner, transition to the outer at Kilo"?) Of course, in YYZ it's the taxiways themselves which are silly, but that's an issue for airport design engineers...

In Heathrow you're always given "discretion" or "start down now" with a descent clearance. If a hold is necessary, they'll tell you how long to expect (not a fictitious "expect further clearance time") and when they vector you out of the hold, they'll invariably give you "track miles to touchdown" so that the pilot can arrange a "continuous descent profile" for noise abatement. Once on the ground, things are far more straightforward than in Canada even though the airport is far more congested.

Mind you, I wish more of the approach controllers in London would use the term "cleared for the approach" instead of the usual "continue on the glide path" which always seems a little vague to me although it seems to work even with the cosmopolitan pilot group in the stack.

If we could get the ATC managers in Ottawa out of their paradigm and around the planet more often, we could all benefit from a better system and a better work place. If not, I'll just have to comfort myself with the thought that I get paid by the hour and not by the mile... ;-)

[Jastefn]

deleted