Recently came back to the app after a few years, and so far have been shocked at the quality, professionalism, and overall skill level that I’ve seen on the expert server so far.
This morning, I was flying patterns at a busy Key West airport (thank you to ATC for doing your best!) - and some of the flying done was terrible - I’d need to grow an extra arm (or 3!) to count the amount of LOS events, pilots not understanding (or to be frank - ignoring) ATC instructions, and runway incursions resulting in forced go arounds. Not to mention similar scenes yesterday in California, it seems like users simply don’t know how to properly fly (or just choose not to).
I mean, compared to five years ago, it seems like a mess. It begs the question - do we need stricter ES entry requirements?
I know it’s a pretty small sample-size here, so I would really appreciate hearing if anyone else has any similar experiences/grievances? Especially for long-time users, how have you found the ES quality recently?
I know, ES pilots often behave in an absolutely not “expert” way, and it is something that has been bothering community for a while now. But staff recently published 2 expert server feedback forms, to allow users to express their opinion on this, so we might have changes about this at some point !
Hey, I was controlling Van Nuys yesterday which had 14 planes in a pattern lol and as you can expect many rule breakers and just pilots who did things to make things harder for ATC. It is true that many pilots don’t know the rules of flying here but we have to understand that many users are beginners and may not know what to do. A lot of users don’t care about ATC and just want to fly in expert server and it bothers the many that want to fly seriously. I think more interactive tutorials which are compulsory, rather than telling everyone to read a manual would be a useful solution to these pilots. But IF has confirmed they will be doing something to fix this as getting violation is also not good for the pilots also….
However, does this not defeat the purpose of having a casual and training server? 14 aircraft in a pattern does sound hectic (and kudos to you for dealing with that!!), so having to manage absolute beginners surely just compounds the already huge workload for ATC, no?
Oh amazing, great to hear! Is there a link where we can find this?
I also don’t think harsher enforcement of violations is the answer, but potentially a way to incorporate tutorials with the multiplayer environment could be a mitigative action here. In the end, there has to be a standard set for the expert server - users who want to fly properly should not have to deal with users who disregard ATC, rules, and generally mistreat the privilege of flying on the ES.