FlyingForFun
2nd Jul 2008, 10:32
Please excuse me in advance for barging into the ATC forum and coming up with the rant which follows. It's not directed at any particular unit or person. I don't know what the solution is, or even if there is a solution, but I'm hoping that by expressing my frustrations on this forum someone will be able to suggest a solution.
My rant relates to the ever increasing difficulty in conducting instrument training.
As a flying instructor, I have only been involved in instrument training for a few years, but in that short time I have noticed that it is getting increasingly difficult to arrange the ATC services necessary to be able to plan a day's schedule, and provide my students with relevant training.
I am used to having to book a training slot for carrying out instrument approaches, whether at my home airfield or away from home. But over the past few years, as regional airports become busier with commercial traffic, more and more airports are imposing restrictions on the times of training (no training during busy hours), the types of training (no procedural training, or procedural training only allowed off-peak), or no training at all. One local airport will allow CAA examiners to carry out instrument training as part of a test, but will not allow instructors to visit the airport for training. Another has increased its charges so much that we avoid training there.
Trying to plan a busy day around these restrictions is becoming a more and more frustrating task.
The reason why I've chosen to rant now, though, is because of two recent developments.
The first is one particular route - an airways route from my home airport to an away airport at which we carry out training. We usually route to this particular airport initially in the FIR, joining the airway a short distance from the airport, because the airspace on the full airways route is particularly busy and not suitable for training students early on in their training (and the CAA examiners also avoid the airways route for tests for the same reason). However, the full airways route has immense training benefits for students in the later stages of their training; in particular, the amount of time spent on radar vectors, rather than own navigation, is much higher than on any other route we do, and this poses additional problems for students which they must learn to deal with. Because of this, I try to expose my students to this route once during their course. However, recently, we have had problems with this route. On one occassion it took well over an hour to get a departure clearance. (The clearance was only forthcoming after a shift change in the tower; when I later spoke to the tower controller about the delay, she told me that she's come on shift, requested our clearance and issued it to us, she didn't know anything about the earlier delay.) On another occassion, the clearance was denied completely. Initially, a clearance through a neigbouring CTA and then below the airway was issued, but then this was retracted and the only clearance available was into the FIR, with the possibility of an onwards clearance later. The onwards clearance was not forthcoming, and the instructor (not me this time) aborted the flight because the routing in the FIR was not what had been briefed to the student, not what the student had planned, and did not have any of the training benefits which had been anticipated from the planned flight. This cost the student a large sum of money for a wasted flight, as well as wasting the student's and the instructor's time. Of course I understand that airspace is busy, but should we not have been issued a slot if it was that busy? Even having had the flight plan rejected, so that we could re-plan, would be better than what my colleague experienced.
The second recent development is a change of procedures at my home airport. Previously, we would often be in the hold at 4000', while IFR departures were stopped at 3000' until identified on radar and clear of us. This seemed to work well for all concerned. But a recent change has meant that commercial IFR departures must not have their climb delayed by training traffic. The result is that a typical flight now results in us getting airborne, taking up the hold, then, half way around the first hold (before the inbound turn and inboud leg, which is where all the real training value is) being vectored out of the hold for a departure. Once the departure is clear, we then return to the hold, only for the same thing to happen again. If this happens, we can be airborne for 20-30 minutes without having completed a single hold, and not having achieved any real training value, except, once again, costing the student a large amount of money. Additionally, the controllers' workload increases due to having to vector us around, and also due to us being in their airspace for a far greater amount of time in order to achieve the same training value.
Like I said, I don't know what the solution is. I understand that commercial traffic has to take priority over training flights, and that regional airports are getting ever busier with more and more commercial traffic. It can even be beneficial to me and my students to have our plans altered slightly by ATC - dealing with change is something students have to learn to do. But the situation for training flights is deteriorating to the point that it is sometimes difficult to do my job at all, so I'd welcome any input on what can be done (by instructors, controllers, management, or to the system as a whole) to improve things. More airports with instrument approaches? More low level airways? A change in priorities???
Finally, by way of contrast (and to show I'm not just a whinging git!) I want to mention Yeovil Westlands, and all three of the Channel Islands airports, all of which are fantastic at facilitating whatever training we need. I'm spending more and more of my time at these places now - although how much benefit students get from doing the same routes over and over again is open to debate!
FFF
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My rant relates to the ever increasing difficulty in conducting instrument training.
As a flying instructor, I have only been involved in instrument training for a few years, but in that short time I have noticed that it is getting increasingly difficult to arrange the ATC services necessary to be able to plan a day's schedule, and provide my students with relevant training.
I am used to having to book a training slot for carrying out instrument approaches, whether at my home airfield or away from home. But over the past few years, as regional airports become busier with commercial traffic, more and more airports are imposing restrictions on the times of training (no training during busy hours), the types of training (no procedural training, or procedural training only allowed off-peak), or no training at all. One local airport will allow CAA examiners to carry out instrument training as part of a test, but will not allow instructors to visit the airport for training. Another has increased its charges so much that we avoid training there.
Trying to plan a busy day around these restrictions is becoming a more and more frustrating task.
The reason why I've chosen to rant now, though, is because of two recent developments.
The first is one particular route - an airways route from my home airport to an away airport at which we carry out training. We usually route to this particular airport initially in the FIR, joining the airway a short distance from the airport, because the airspace on the full airways route is particularly busy and not suitable for training students early on in their training (and the CAA examiners also avoid the airways route for tests for the same reason). However, the full airways route has immense training benefits for students in the later stages of their training; in particular, the amount of time spent on radar vectors, rather than own navigation, is much higher than on any other route we do, and this poses additional problems for students which they must learn to deal with. Because of this, I try to expose my students to this route once during their course. However, recently, we have had problems with this route. On one occassion it took well over an hour to get a departure clearance. (The clearance was only forthcoming after a shift change in the tower; when I later spoke to the tower controller about the delay, she told me that she's come on shift, requested our clearance and issued it to us, she didn't know anything about the earlier delay.) On another occassion, the clearance was denied completely. Initially, a clearance through a neigbouring CTA and then below the airway was issued, but then this was retracted and the only clearance available was into the FIR, with the possibility of an onwards clearance later. The onwards clearance was not forthcoming, and the instructor (not me this time) aborted the flight because the routing in the FIR was not what had been briefed to the student, not what the student had planned, and did not have any of the training benefits which had been anticipated from the planned flight. This cost the student a large sum of money for a wasted flight, as well as wasting the student's and the instructor's time. Of course I understand that airspace is busy, but should we not have been issued a slot if it was that busy? Even having had the flight plan rejected, so that we could re-plan, would be better than what my colleague experienced.
The second recent development is a change of procedures at my home airport. Previously, we would often be in the hold at 4000', while IFR departures were stopped at 3000' until identified on radar and clear of us. This seemed to work well for all concerned. But a recent change has meant that commercial IFR departures must not have their climb delayed by training traffic. The result is that a typical flight now results in us getting airborne, taking up the hold, then, half way around the first hold (before the inbound turn and inboud leg, which is where all the real training value is) being vectored out of the hold for a departure. Once the departure is clear, we then return to the hold, only for the same thing to happen again. If this happens, we can be airborne for 20-30 minutes without having completed a single hold, and not having achieved any real training value, except, once again, costing the student a large amount of money. Additionally, the controllers' workload increases due to having to vector us around, and also due to us being in their airspace for a far greater amount of time in order to achieve the same training value.
Like I said, I don't know what the solution is. I understand that commercial traffic has to take priority over training flights, and that regional airports are getting ever busier with more and more commercial traffic. It can even be beneficial to me and my students to have our plans altered slightly by ATC - dealing with change is something students have to learn to do. But the situation for training flights is deteriorating to the point that it is sometimes difficult to do my job at all, so I'd welcome any input on what can be done (by instructors, controllers, management, or to the system as a whole) to improve things. More airports with instrument approaches? More low level airways? A change in priorities???
Finally, by way of contrast (and to show I'm not just a whinging git!) I want to mention Yeovil Westlands, and all three of the Channel Islands airports, all of which are fantastic at facilitating whatever training we need. I'm spending more and more of my time at these places now - although how much benefit students get from doing the same routes over and over again is open to debate!
FFF
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