Low number of IFATCs

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Q) Why there is a low count for IFATC controllers ?

Apart from EGLL, and airports included in the charter for a month, rest all other airports remains deserted.

Q) Is the rigid selection process is causing a hindrance to the expansion of controllers ?

Let’s table some suggestive solutions for this issue.

Let the debate begin.

" Why not nominate regional point of contacts for approving regional IFATCs. There are users who have more than 10-15k ATC movements while controlling on training server. IFATC team can self nominate them for an assessment or may be an option in the app can be given which suggests required improvements to the said controller before he/she gets ready for an actual assesment.

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there is 622 IFATC members right now and i think that is plenty

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What happens if they don’t want to become a part of IFATC? Kinda ruins the whole point, doesn’t it?

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But we don’t see even a half of them or upto 10-20% being active.

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I would say no. Quality over quantity.

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Yes we do, but not at the same time for obvious reasons.

To add;
Without digging too deep, at least 100 different controllers have been active during the past 24hrs.
And on top of that, this time of the year equals a lot of travelling for a lot of people = less time for controlling.

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Coverage at airports vs number of controllers being there (actual count not known) , is still very less or even negligible.

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There’s 30.000 airports. I think that says it all tbh :)

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If we take 5 regions NA, LATAM, APAC, MENA,EMEA, and only keep two major airport hubs in those regions, hardly we see airports having an active IFATC over there.

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Yes we do.

But are you awake all 24hrs of the day?
That’s also something you have to consider.

Here’s the thing which you won’t be able to get away from;
People want quality controllers on the Expert Server. What else would be the point of calling it the Expert Server? And you can’t force people to apply for IFATC as that’s something they will do if they’re interested and you can’t force people that are IFATC to control all the time.

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I would like to differ here.

There are regions which are nearly neck to neck in timezone comparison, even if we take only one region, the state of airports having an active control is just appauling.

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That logic only works assuming there’s a balanced number of controllers spread out over the world. That’s not the case.

Most of the controllers are in the US region or W. Europe and I would say they control mostly around evenings. With you being located in India, I’m afraid that puts you in a situation when you’re most likely sleeping at the time most controllers are active.

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I think you’re referring to the recent decrease in staffed airports on the daily. People are busy this summer, this does not suggest IFATC is short staffed, not at all dear friend.

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Regional points of contacts would hinder quality ATC. I have 8900 ops currently and in the process to become IFATC. Yet, I still am no where near the knowledge of an IFATC. The number of ops cannot correlate to the quality of ATC service.

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We are in mid-July, which is when a vast amount of people go on holiday.

While yes, a lot of popular holiday places have good enough internet to play Infinite Flight, a lot of us just want to have a week or so to rest.

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It’s weird that I sort of miss the day pre-global when we were still bound to regions. As much as that sucked we’d get full ATC service pretty often. Nowadays when I log on it’s JFK AND LAX. What am I supposed to do with that lmao.

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To be honest, you’re not wrong :)
Could be a massive pain in the behind to have an approach line stretching around the entire region though ;)

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There isn’t.

That’s not true, I’ve seen plenty of other airports not listed on the ATC schedule (assuming that’s what your talking about), one great example would be events because most of them get ATC

I have 8000 operations and I have no problem controlling on Training.

If the IFATC team nominates them based on operations that probably would not be the best way to do it. You can have 10k operations and be the worst or you could have 100 and be the best. If they were to nominate it would have to be on skill’s which is assessed during the practical in the recruitment process

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if it’s such a huge deal to you then why don’t you just join IFATC yourself and help solve the “problems” ;)

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This^

You can find info to apply here, just need 80% on the written and then pass the practical. Good luck!

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