the current atc system is much better because people can choose where to control, so they dont have to control at the featured airports if they think they are boring and pilots dont have to fly to those airports in order to get atc, but this makes it hard to predict where atc will be present. I think we should let controllers comment on the schedule saying where they plan to control, so people can have some notice (they dont necessarily need to follow the recommended airports)
obviously this is optional, some people might just decide spontaneously or change their mind but if people have an idea of where they wanna control in advance it would be helpful for people doing long haul flights. similar to the training server atc thread
this has been on my mind too!
i did a flight from klax to yssy and at a point on appr yssy atc closed and then there was klax atc open even thought klax was not on the atc schedule list and was not there anywhere between 5 days of the incident
I feel like there’s usually enough air traffic controllers so that the majority of featured airports get featured along with some extra airports, at least i haven’t really encountered that problem
Though this is a good idea, I personally don’t believe it’ll help anymore than with comments turned off. I would argue that it would just be flooded with off - topic chats and it’s not really worth any moderator’s time to sit there and delete off - topic posts as that would take hours maybe.
there is an official featured schedule now but controllers do not always stick to it so if they post in advance where they plan to control people can also fly there, and people will know which featured airports will be open cause a lot of the time not all of them are
I completely understand the sentiment with this idea, but most ATC staffings are not planned. When I decide to open a frequency, I haven’t planned to open that frequency for a while, I just see it’s available and open it because I have free time. At that point, you can just see what airports are open and fly to those. If you see a Class Bravo airport, know that those will generally stay open a little longer than a class Charlie, so it’s a safer bet to fly into it for ATC service. Still, I understand why it might be frustrating and that’s why we have the ATC schedule. Yes, controllers may staff anywhere at any time, but you can almost always find someone staffing the HUB, so it’s a good bet to fly there for Atc coverage.