Timmay

I heard Seattle give Horizon a crossing restriction this afternoon, not for altitude, but for time. "Cross xyz at 2148 or later", something to that effect. That was the first time I've heard of that, and seems to me to be easier to follow than center telling pilots to hit the brakes, then floor it as they try to make planes get in line.

ridejumpfly

I had a trainee once that asked if he could descend a SKW flight and I told him no, he is not in you airspace yet. Without a thought he said "Skywest xxxx count to 15 then descend and maintain 4000." I couldn't beleive it.

FlyJSH

Clearance delivery circa 1959:

During this pause in the operation he begins to issue the ATC clearances. It went something like this: Ground Control -"The following flights listen for your IFR clearances and read them back in the order given. ATC clears United 723 to the DEN airport...........ATC clears TWA 452 to the Kansas City airport.........ATC clears American 124 to the Tulsa airport.........ATC clears North Central 17 to the MKE airport........ATC clears Capital 654 to the CLE airport...... Go ahead United 723 with your read back!" They usually issued the clearances in batches of 5 or 6 at a crack and heaven help the F/O (first officer) who "muffed" his read back! And so the process went. After a batch of clearances were read and acknowledged, then another group of aircraft would be issued taxi instructions followed by ATC clearances.

(excerpt from story by Dick Brown) http://hermantheduck.org/pages/%20st...firsttrip.html

plasticpi

No reason to get all bent out of shape when they give you more things at once than you can remember, just read back what you got, and ask for the rest again. After the controllers realize that all these dumb pilots can't keep up with their obviously superior instruction giving skills, they'll chunk them down a little bit.

p1kraft

Ive been given something like cross 20 south of polar 11,000 190 heading after traml, after traml slow to 210kts and descend to 8,000, expect visual 4R.
Sometimes i cant help but let some laughter out during the read back. I really dont even know why its so funny but it is.

bizlake

The other day a friend of mine was flying back from Tucson and nearly hit a bunch of baloons on an airway. He advised center, center came back with, "say type and direction of flight!" my friend replied, "they are red, and uhhh... up." ha

cessna157

Sounds like ORD ground today. They'll give 6 different clearances to 6 different aircraft with no chance for a readback. No wonder they have so many mistakes there. The checks-and-balance system of readbacks has been eliminated.

freezingflyboy

You wanna talk about non-standard...coming out of Newark one evening going north off of 4L we were climbing through 2-3000, accelerating and turning west per the departure procedure when we get "Jetlink XXXX, slow to 170 turn left heading 030". Well shoot...minimum speed with the flaps up is 180kts so we had to put the flaps BACK to 9 on the departure. Nowhere in our departure profile does it say we can put the flaps out after they've been retracted. Did we still do it? Absolutely. Instead of whining about whats not on the profile, fly the airplane. Sure beats the clusterpuck that would have ensued.

And keiundraj...if instructions like "slowest practical" and a turn with a descent and a crossing restriction give you trouble you might want to think about surrendering your instrument ticket. I guess this is a case of "getting what you pay for". The airlines pay bananas and are starting to get monkeys who can't walk and chew gum (or turn and descend) at the same time. I guess the lack of experience in American cockpits and behind American radar screens is starting to become evident...

Turnbase

Wow, between this thread and the "advising ATC of speed changes" thread, it's pretty east to tell how disconnected we are from each other, for a group of folks that work together every day.

I have read both threads with great interest. I am a pilot and a center controller.

A couple of things from my perspective (fwiw);

1) The controller work force is going through a changing of the guard so to speak. All the controllers that were hired after the strike in '81 are now eligible to retire. The FAA did a terrible job hiring to replace them in time. In a center you can expect anywhere from 3-5 years to get through the training pipeline. This is some of the reason you guys have been hearing one set of instructions, followed by another set of different instructions issued by a different voice. Not to be a pessimist but, you can expect this to continue for the next several years...it's gonna get worse before it gets better. Tony Williams mentioned it in the other thread, lots of new guys and lots of labor relations issues.

2) After 9/11 the FAA thought it would be a good idea to kill the fam program (where controllers used to be able to jump seat). Now, it's been gone for so long that newer controllers and pilots, in some cases, have never had any face to face interaction. How can you provide a service to people when, in some cases, have never set foot in the environment that they operate in. Was the fam system abused? maybe in some cases. Did it need to be overhauled? Probably. Was it a terrible idea to take it away completely? Absolutely.

3) As far as the "crazy instructions" are concerned; FAA order 7110.65 is pretty explicit as to what we can say/do and what we can't. With that being said, the order has a lot of things in it that I would never use, for a variety of reasons, with the number one reason being that some of the authorized instructions are just plain confusing to pilots, I know because I fly too. Their are really several types of controllers (just my opinion here); ones that will protect themselves at all costs, ones that try really hard to provide a service to you guys (w/ safety taking top priority), and ones that try hard to find that middle ground and do both. Just like flying an airplane, there are rules and procedures that are hard and fast, black and white, but, you bring your own style of flying to it as well. In much the same way, controllers follow the black and white, hard and fast rules from the 7110.65 but, they all manage their airspace, traffic conflictions, departures, and arrivals in a little different manner. Example, if two airplanes are converging at FL350 and the controller is not busy he/she may say "SKW92A your converging w/ another aircraft, I can climb or descend you or turn you 20 left, which would you prefer"? If he's really busy, and FL330 is clean, you'll probably here "SKW92A, for traffic descend and maintain FL330". It all depends on the controller and what is going on. Sometimes the controller will be working multiple frequencies and while it may not seem busy to you, the controller might be jumping through a ton of hoops.

Bottom line, its' your AND OUR responsibility to get passengers home safely. Like any working relationship, all kinds of factors (attitude, experience level, ego, etc.) make it tough at times. We need to keep in mind that we are all on the same team here.

Lastly, there is a post here on Communicating For Safety in Chicago. This is a symposium pot on by the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. It starts on Monday, so if you're not already going, you probably missed it this year but, I think it would be great to get as many pilots/controllers together as possible, especially since we lost the fam program. Here's the link http://cfs.natca.net/

Slice

You have some serious insecurity issues and it is showing.