ATC Education Group Weekly • 8-14 October 2019

[Trio]

This week, I covered several topics on atceg.net, here’s a recap of all the posts from this week. Click the link to read the post, if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below.

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• Stopping at an exit
• Having a good line of communication while tagging
• Keep working on it
• Off-Route Obstruction Clearance Altitude (OROCA)
• Proactivity and Reactivity
• Practicing on your own
• ATIS winds are magnetic
• China RVSM at work
• METAR cloud heights messured in hundreds
• Ask Me Anything with Julien Lim
• Calculating passenger cargo for your flight

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[Mattheus]

I will be on final to give them a look.

[Trio]

Interesting time to read but I’m not complaining.

[Mattheus]

You can read whenever you want.

[AppleMan]

Hi Im a little curious how some ATC are able to change runway operations like the red and green indicated on the map? Are only IF certified controller are able to do that?

[TaipeiGuru]

The red and green runways are determined by wind, not the controller. It’s the controller’s discretion on what runways to use (although we follow the winds if possible).

[AppleMan]

Yeah but how come there was one instance where a IF atc broadcast a “runway change in progress” and then it when from all green on all sides of the runway to just one sides? Any IFATC can weigh in this? Just rlly curious

[TaipeiGuru]

As controllers, we can switch the direction of the runways we’re using, if the wind is favoring the other direction. Here’s a post by Chris on how the red/green runways are determined:

Active Runway

People are trying to help and it is getting way too heated. Your question seems to change so it is leading to confusion. What does that mean? Peak winds are not red as planes take off and land into the wind, not with it. What were you basing your winds off of? Real life or the METAR? Winds at 8k feet will often be different than at the surface of the airport due to the various reporting elements. For future reference: Color Wind Orange Above 3kts and wind angle is greater than +/- 4…

In your case, I assume that the controller noticed the change in wind direction/speed and decided to change runways, which can be explained by the runways going from all green to green and red. We are unable to change the colors of the runways ourselves.

[Trio]

We look at the TAF while controlling which is a forecast for future weather, so we’ll sometimes base things off of that. Runway changes can take a long time to go into affect as well. Also, the METAR can update for some before it updates for others so that may be why.

They should update ATIS if they’re changing runways, so when they tell you to check the ATIS, it should have the updated wind information they have.