Approach check rides for specific airports

ATC
22

Slightly off-topic, but slot/reservation system has been mentioned more than once so wanted to chime in again.
We have a new mode on the horizon that is supposedly expected to be more popular than Free Flight. It makes me wonder if this new mode (corporate/fleet mode) will implement a system like this when it comes to the hub-based schedule we currently have.

The reason this crosses my mind is because I’ve wondered how parking feature at the gates at hub airports would work

Regardless, I feel with the new (pending) mode, it won’t only change how pilots experience IF but also how IFATC does.

Just something that I think about occasionally.

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23

I think this is a point that needs to highlighted when asking for changes in the community. Sometimes it may just be unrealistic for IF to change certain aspects about the game if it impacts the game as a business.

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24

Exactly! That’s my point. In real life, they have multiple runways which we use in IF too, but in Mumbai, there’s more than 3 ATC controlling due to the sheer amount of traffic and hence my point of multiple frequencies. Of course ATC is voluntary and won’t have full staff all the time but during peaks, there should be a booking system like others mentioned so there are multiple people helping each other. There’s a reason why those 100+ arrival airports are highly efficient, not because there’s 1 person who’s amazing, it’s because there’s a team of controllers helping each other. Why not implement that in game is my question.

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25

That’s exactly what i mean though. The IFATC standards are high (or want to be high) but st the same time, they’re debating it as “oh, but the traffic is just too high, it won’t be possible to do that”

High quantity means low quality. You can’t have both.
That’s why IRL they limit the traffic to a certain number and they do that by slots.

However, i feel like, if we can’t have both (i.e. high quality with high quantity) then I would pick quality 12 times out of ten. It makes it so much more enjoyable when it goes smoothly. And if that means, i gotta wait an hour until my slot opens, then so be it :man_shrugging:

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26

Yeah definitely, and I think a lot of users within this community does not realize the “business” aspect of IF…

Placing harsher restrictions or implementing a so-called “super expert” server is just isn’t feasible

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27

I’m a former professional pilot.

IRL, you’re under ATC control from origin to destination where you receive a series of handoff’s between controllers from begining to end. Additionally, there is clearance delivery which provides you with an IFR clearance.

As you go through handoff’s between controllers, you’re under positive control - this includes both speeds and altitudes - with IF, pilot speeds are all over the place. I regularly see pilots at the same altitude, on the same flight plan (i.e. group flights) doing anywhere between Mach .76 and Mach .90.

As much as it pains for me to say this, as an IFATC controller, many of the flight plans I see are severely deficient, incomplete, and/or contain bad data such as waypoint crossing altitudes. In addition to altitudes, STARs also have speed restrictions; pilots are required to adhere to crossing altitudes and speed restrictions, unless advised otherwise by ATC. This would require pilots to not only obtain arrival and approach charts, but be able to read, understand, and follow them.

As much as I’d love to see this, I’d say it’s asking a bit much.

Flight plans must follow established procedures with correct speeds and altitudes to work.

Similar to Arrival (STARs) and Approach procedures, Departure Procedures (DP’s) have published waypoint crossing altitudes and speeds. Altitudes must not only be correct, but pilots need to follow them, including on departure. Published altitudes are designed to keep departures from conflicting with arrivals. Pilots have skin in this game too.

Many ES pilots have no knowledge or interest in following airport departure procedures. At JFK, as an example, less than 5% pilots (I’m being very generous here) actually fly a valid departure procedure. When I have the JFK departure frequency open and attempt to vector pilots onto a valid departure procedure:

  • Some pilots UNABLE the instructions,
  • Many leave LNAV engaged and ignore them,
  • Some attempt to follow, but are so slow in complying that it becomes pointless.
  • A small percentage promptly follow the instructions or attempt to, to the best of their ability.

This is on top of all the requests I get for Flight Following or Radar Vectors, which are VFR services. I can’t report every pilot who fails to follow vector instructions onto a departure procedure, it’s simply too many.

When traffic volume exceeds an airport’s arrival rate, you can’t just tell pilots to continue as filed in constrained airspace with severely deficient, incomplete or incorrect flight plans – you’ll have a collasal mess with pilots everywhere. IRL, when airports/airspace become constrained (with pilots following valid IFR cleared flight plans), an approach facility will contact the appropriate center to request 10 or 15 miles in trail (MIT) separation between arrivals on a specific STAR. Center then slows traffic and makes further requests downstream.

If demand is too high, a ground stop or ground delay program is initiated, delaying departures on the ground to the constrained airport.

I control airports and airspace I’m familiar with, but as a former professional pilot, there’s also a lot of airports and airspace I know inside out – at a level I would not expect other controllers to know.

On a final (gasp), closing remark, in the same way you suggest controllers should take time to get familiarized with airports, how about asking pilots do the same? As said above, I think that’s a bit much to ask, but it would go a long way – important thing is finding the balance.

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28

You can’t have both though. Higher prices will drive away customers but when things don’t work the way they should then people will leave too.

I took a 3 months break from IF just because of the same issue ive mentioned above.

You’re going to drive aqay customers regardless because you cant make everybody happy

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29

Oh yeah, absolutely. Pilots and ATC Controllers should bith be familiar with approaches, runway lengths and altitudes of the airfield.
Maybe even have an alternate airport on file, just in case.

I do :man_shrugging:
And you, being a “former professional pilot”, do too. Probably. Maybe. :wink:
But this isn’t supposed to be a pilot focus. Its supposed to be an IFATC issue that’s been the same issue for years and there arent really any ideas of how to improve it.

I get your points, and yes. Some pilots are id… not smart people but it goes both ways.
My flight plans are (usually) planned like the real life deal because it makes my life easier.

And yes, control talks to you from gate to gate but you don’t have that in IF and you cant have it in IF.
We dont have check ins either.
(You’re right, what you’ve listed was a little bit too much to ask for)
Thats why they limit it to FL180.

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30

Speaking as a non-IFATC pilot.

I would much rather divert, than get caught up in an incomprehensible mess of arrivals where both the ATC, and I know, that there is simply no way that the airport can realistically handle such a large volume of arrivals safely in a short amount of time - which usually results in extended delay vectors or holds of over an hour.

Even if not explicitly requested by ATC to divert, the ability to make prudent aeronautical decisions as such is a major factor in the “professionalism” of the Expert Server that ATC so often desires from pilots, but is unfortunately lacking in many - e.g. would diverting after a certain point be more sensible than continuing to burn below the planned minimum arrival fuel and risk running out entirely, in the arrival sequence where there is no guarantee that I will be on the ground in a given amount of time? Or would it be better to declare minimum fuel after spending ages in the arrival pattern, and as a result messing up the flow of arriving traffic because ATC has to prioritize a plane at the back of the sequence all of a sudden?

100%. I am one to pull out charts for effectively every airport I fly to and from - even those I am more familiar with - so that when flying without ATC, or instructed to continue as filed, I can ensure that I am not causing problems for other traffic in the airspace and fly the procedures safely as intended.

Now if even 50%, or even better, 75% of people did this when flying on ES - same applies to ATC when controlling - it would be a massive improvement over the current situation and would cause far fewer headaches for other pilots and ATC alike than otherwise.

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31

Simbrief flightplans often leave pilots too high on flightplan, having too steep descent profiles, too close to the airport. Unfortunately, Simbrief accounts that the whole flightplan will be flown, and so it assigns the altitudes accordingly. This becomes more obvious and problematic at airports with long arrival procedures, like OMDB, EDDF, LTFM. Normally, these arrival procedures have lower altitudes, so IRL, controllers give direct shortcuts to manage traffic effectively. Unfortunately, with these Simbrief altitudes, pilots end up flying at FL280 or higher, when they are already in the Approach airspace boundaries (~50nm), descending at crazy rates. This becomes very problematic, and causes aircraft to be too high to give shortcuts towards the final. To avoid flying the whole flightplan, which can extend the final at airports with long procedures, controllers descend those “high Simbrief aircraft” to reasonable altitudes when they are further away from the airport, so they don’t affect other traffic by flying their whole flightplan. This is what happens most of the time from controllers’ perspective. Most pilots use Simbrief procedures and end up too high, too close to the airport, making it harder for controllers to integrate them into the traffic flow, so we use 360s/holds. It’s better to use the STARs already integrated into IF, since they have the reasonable IRL min/max altitudes, which enables us to shortcut the flightplans. No good flightplan leaves aircraft higher than FL180 AAL, closer than 50nm from the airport while contacting the Approach controller.

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32

I’ll address a couple things here:

First of all, taking aircraft off of flight plans is completely normal and actually common practice. I cannot tell you the last time I flew an entire STAR in real life. Unless you’re flying into a large hub, ATC will almost always remove you from your filed FPL to either increase efficiency or sequence you. In short, STARs and routing are simply there to assist with traffic sorting. There is no reason why someone has to fly a full STAR.

As for large descents, unfortunately that is mostly pilot error. In real life, an IFR aircraft is issued their initial descent by a center controller. However, we don’t have full coverage in IF so it ends up being mostly pilots discretion. Unfortunately, not everybody plans appropriately for this.

As for the extended finals, I agree it is a serious problem. I do not enjoy seeing anything more than 20nm final. I think the problem is in part caused by IF’s poor holding pattern mechanics, and part due to over-reliance on keeping aircraft on their FPL. If it’s busy, take them off and give them delay vectors!

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33

I agree with a lot of the things said in here.
But what I’m getting conflicted with is people saying "IF and IRL are operated differently " but then go on and say “but irl they do this”

Okay, which is it? Pick one or the other. If you say, IF can’t handle the plane traffic because it’s more than irl, why are we comparing things to reality?

I’m very well aware, that real life procedures are different than on here.

Yes, the controller will guide the plane down along with the flight plan. Theyre tools and you use them as much as you can as they make your life easier.
Once you hit the point of lots of traffic or vectoring would be easier for everybody, the controller will "break " you off the flight plan and adjust it accordingly to give you space, altitude, doversions, priority, whatever.

The reason why i said, we shouldve followed the flp, is because the Ifatc controller was clearly overwhelmed and i still had 100 miles to go.
Like i said, why not use the tools for as much as you can to make everybody’s life easier?

Im not here to ‘bash’ on any controller but I’ve never experienced it on IF or irl that a controller made you descend 17000 feet all at once.
They do that in incriments.

I agree that the pilot needs to understand and be able to handle IFATC in general but especially when it comes to featured airports.

Having said that, I also think that IFATC should be especially prepared when it comes to festured events.

Sure, it’s a stressfull situation but you chose to control it, so deal with it. Nobody told you to control a busy airport with 100 plus arrivals, you did that yourself.

Same with the pilot, they chose to fly there so it won’t run completely smooth. I get it, but there’s always this divide of “but the pilot…”
We should work together to find a solution and I feel like, it’s much too big of an umbrella to point a finger into a single direction.

I can’t expect every pilot to have a great flight plan or to act professional.
But IFATC put themselves on that stage by saying they have a high standard but then complain about pilots.

Ifatc controllers went through training and check rides but the ES pilots just had few requirements to meet to be able to fly and deal with ifatc.

In my opinion, we should work out the ifatc problem first. We cant fix the other pilots, but we can (at least try) to make IFATC a little smoother when it’s a 100 plus arrival airport.

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34

It is good to see the conversation being approached in a respectful and constructive way!

That said, I think this issue is already somewhat addressed within the current structure. If you know that the featured hub is going to be overwhelmed, as is often the case, you do have the option to fly into the secondary hub, which typically has more manageable traffic levels. At those airports, you’ll usually find that controllers can provide more realistic, accommodating service. In fact, you’ll often find more experienced IFATC working the secondaries for exactly that reason - myself included.

As for structured arrival/departure slot control: we do technically have that functionality available. The challenge is manpower. IFATC simply doesn’t have the 700–1000 additional members we’d need to realistically staff and manage such systems across multiple airports, which is why those features are not currently used.

So overall, I would say: if you’re aiming for realism and less chaos, take advantage of the secondary hub. It’s already built into the system as a practical alternative and, most days, it is where you will get the most satisfying experience.

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35

I just finished reading all the posts here, and I want to express my opinion.

I just joined the IFATC officer team yesterday. When I was a Specialist before, I paid as much attention to realism as possible. When I open control,in I lived in the city of ZUUU/ZUTF, I implemented almost the same airport operation as reality. Although this is sometimes questioned, even the VA headquartered in Chengdu ，VA‘s pilots deny my realism control for ZUTF… I completely follow the IRL program, but they say ”Why“

Our ES sky needs to be more realistic, requiring IFATC, VA/O and pilots to bear it together. Although I don‘t care about some users who don’t use IFC much, I hope that VA and some IFC users who want to improve themselves will abide by IRL procedures as much as possible…

I‘m afraid of my future Officer career. Under normal radar training-time conditions, only 8 pilots will participate. Although I’m in the CR stage, after that, I can open any airport without restrictions. I‘m afraid that one day I will be in a hurry.

Of course, practice mades skill, but I don’t want to practice on ES pilots, but the truth is that I can only practice on them…

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36

Thank you very much for your nice explanations.

This is why it’s so important to know your limits. Dont rush and open a big frequency just because you feel like you have to.

I also appreciate that you bring the reality aspect with you.
I do the same with the airports I’m familiar with. With airports im not familiar with, i stay away from.
As much as i can

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37

Would be nice if they can implement holding patterns integrate with the AP like irl, manually holding is a mess. But AP is also mess so no chance until they rework on it.

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