Should we have to “say approach request” when it’s busy? It might be easier to just assign to us what is needed for better traffic flow. It would reduce radio chatter and reduce pointlessly requesting an approach that isn’t granted.
Preferably yes, most of the time we do want to know what you want and in some cases, these can help us be more efficient.
The worst case is just us assigning you a type of approach, nothing wrong with that either.
When contacting approach I’ve always read that you should say approach request straight away rather than a check in as that saves two radio messages, then the controller can change approach if required at that point.
Approach requests should be there in my opinion. Even in a busy airspace removing them would provide no benefit.
- you have to contact approach either way, and currently the correct way is to ask your approach request. Removing approach requests would actually increase chatter since you’d have to first check in → radar contact → approach assignment, as opposed to an approach request → approach assignment.
- if someone checks in, controllers have the freedom to assign an approach they want immediately. But many like to hear tthe pilot’s approach request.
Correct, I was just wondering if this should be necessary because 1) it can be long winded and 2) you’ll sometimes get assigned to a different runway anyway
I hear you. I guess the approach check-in just seems long winded sometimes compared to “N4SC is at 15,000 with Alpha”, and often times we’ll be assigned a different runway than we requested anyway.