Is it just me or does the departure frequency seem infrequent? I had some great departure vectors out of KJFK this morning and it was refreshing. Why do controllers not want to control departures or they just sit on the frequency and give you a frequency change?
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This is a good question. I think it comes down to who is familiar with realistic procedures and who isn’t. One of the benefits of IFATC is that controllers can open anywhere in the world, but the downside is that knowledge of real-world procedures can vary.
I do agree with you — I really appreciate it when controllers provide realistic departure vectoring.
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As a frequent radar controller, the biggest issue with Departure actually isn’t the vectoring aspect - that is a fairly simple. Personally I prefer to alt restrict vs arrivals → but that is by the by.
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The issue is there is a tendency to spam by pilots who don’t understand the commands, for example:
- “Check In” means you can follow the flight plan you have filed, including altitude. A controller will only intervene if they spot a conflict.
A) A huge number of pilots will spam for alt change requests which takes capacity.
B) Even more pilots will then incorrectly request Flight Following either instead of Checkin In. Again this takes capacity from the controller to correct them.
This sounds small per aircraft, and it is, but when it is happening every 30 seconds and when you also have 20+ aircraft on App frequency, it really hurts your ability to provide an effective approach service. So simply, at busy airports, people (me included) tend not to open a Dep freq if opening Approach.
I 100% agree with @Trey , it would be awesome to more regularly see standalone dep frequencies open. In other words, a dedicated Dep controller.
Hopefully, with the recent polls instigated by @Dan last night, some of these issues can start to be remedied 
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Hope this helps to give a bit more context from an IFATC perspective 
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Agreed! This is a huge problem which, in my opinion, has gotten worse in the last year or so. It may seem trivial to some but it takes away from the authenticity of the game
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