Dear fellow members, regardless if you’re a pilot, ATC, or both,
As an ATC in training, i’d like to emphasise the frustration we have as ATCs. Here are a couple of points:
- Aircrafts not communicating with controller
- When there’s a bunch of aircrafts in the area that are meant to be communicating with the tower but they are not. As pilots, please keep your awareness high and keep an eye on the controllers. If they are online ane if you’re in their control zone, call them and check in.
- When ATC buzzes you, you now flood the channel
- Okay so this might sound stupid after me asking you to call controller but then now i ask you not to flood the channel, but here is the thing. We are humans and it is impossible to process 50 requests at once. Pilots, to help with this situation, please be patient, follow the instructions and just chill. We will get back to you when we are done dealing with aircrafts with more priority (i.e. closer to airport, risk of collision etc)
PS on this topic - if a new request comes in, the older request will sink straight down, so just please, chill out on the contact.
- Do what the ATC told you to do.
- If you’ve been sequenced into a particular runway (say 01L), please dont fly straight in to 01R, or every other runway other than 01L. If we asked you to do a left circuit (pattern), do a left circuit (pattern) but not right. If we asked you to do a left 360, do a left 360
- Be sensible
- Don’t do 350 knots on finals. Not only you’ll get tonnes of violations, but you’ll mess up with the ATC
- If you’re cleared to land, number one, dont talk again until you’re on the ground.
- IF you’re cleared to land on number one, just land. You dont have to announce crosswind, base or final. Just land the aircraft. Unless you need to, or you were told to go around, and while on the ground, respond to take the next taxiway when asked.
So there are a few points that i can think of right now.
Here is a quick guide that somehow i couldnt find on the forum. it is probably somewhere anyway.
Who you should contact and when (in sequence)
Ground for pushback and taxi → Tower when ready (Don’t ask ground for permission to change frequency. On your taxi clearance, you’re cleared to contact tower when ready.) → Departure when tower asked you to do so (or Approach if Departure is not available) → Centre when departure/approach asked you to do so (if applicable) → approach (when centre ask you to do so) → tower when approach asked you to do so → ground while on the ground, cleared of the runway (i.e. on the taxiway)
What ATC expects you to do by default
Small props: +/- 500fpm
Medium Props (Q400 etc) +/- 1000 fpm
Medium jets +2500/-1500fpm
Heavy jets +2500/-1500 to 2000 fpm
Numbers vary depending on temp, pressure, load and other contributing factors. This is only a brief guide on ascent and descent.
Thank you for reading this far. I hope this is helpful for everyone thats new to the community (said the new guy Lol) and new to flying.
Caleb (Qualified Flight Radiotelephone Operator under Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority)