Something fundamentally wrong with our air traffic control

IvanOpinion

Maybe I have been unlucky, but since COVID, every flight I have been on (bar one) has been delayed - between 1 hour and 26 hours. More times than not passengers have been boarded and then sit in the plane, on the apron, for up to 3 hours.

Multiple times I have seen the captain come off the flight deck and make an announcement about how they picked up an air traffic control restriction earlier in the day; have been unable to make up the time; they have now missed their slot yadda yadda. Despite flying with different airlines, the script is exactly the same - blame air traffic control restrictions so that they do not have to pay compensation.

The captain then announces that they have negotiated a take off slot some 2 hours away but they have given the 'ready' signal and are trying to get an earlier slot. Then an hour later the captain announces that they have managed to negotiate an earlier slot (what a hero!!) and will be starting engines in 15 minutes. Half an hour later engines are started and then a very very long taxi takes place (over an hour last week in Gatwick) and we take off at roughly the same time as the original 2 hour delay would have meant.

I have heard every excuse (air traffic restrictions, airport restrictions, COVID, not enough staff, no baggage handlers, run out of hours etc.), but there is something fundamentally broken with our flight systems.

bagand96

Some insight into European ATC flow management from the people that mange it: What is a slot? | EUROCONTROL

Weather has played a big part this summer Aviation's summer impacted by the weather | EUROCONTROL

eskbanker

IvanOpinion said:

I have heard every excuse (air traffic restrictions, airport restrictions, COVID, not enough staff, no baggage handlers, run out of hours etc.), but there is something fundamentally broken with our flight systems.

Not sure it's valid to lump all those together and conclude a fundamental breakage of "our flight systems" - your title and most of the post suggest ATC but adding baggage handling into the mix dilutes the point?

Seems to me that most of these ultimately boil down to the staffing, which seems a contributory factor to most of the others, especially at Gatwick, which had had some well-publicised ATC staff sickness issues in recent times.

There was obviously the national system outage at the end of August, which was unfortunate but appears to have been a one-off, and wouldn't seem to be related in any way to the staffing problems.

But yes, difficult to avoid the suspicion that airlines mention air traffic control restrictions (and crew going out of hours) more frequently than before, in order to discourage compensation claims....

IvanOpinion

eskbanker said:

IvanOpinion said:

I have heard every excuse (air traffic restrictions, airport restrictions, COVID, not enough staff, no baggage handlers, run out of hours etc.), but there is something fundamentally broken with our flight systems.

Not sure it's valid to lump all those together and conclude a fundamental breakage of "our flight systems" - your title and most of the post suggest ATC but adding baggage handling into the mix dilutes the point?

In the last flight I did, the flight picked up an ATC restriction that meant it was running about 2.5 hours late. The target airport had a restriction that did not allow landings after a certain time at night, and it was obvious we would be well beyond that. The choice was another nearby airport which did not have such restrictions, but despite being open and air traffic saying they would accept the flight, the baggage handlers said they would not unload it.

It would probably have been cheaper to make the flight and then distribute the luggage the following day.

eskbanker

IvanOpinion said:

eskbanker said:

IvanOpinion said:

I have heard every excuse (air traffic restrictions, airport restrictions, COVID, not enough staff, no baggage handlers, run out of hours etc.), but there is something fundamentally broken with our flight systems.

Not sure it's valid to lump all those together and conclude a fundamental breakage of "our flight systems" - your title and most of the post suggest ATC but adding baggage handling into the mix dilutes the point?

In the last flight I did, the flight picked up an ATC restriction that meant it was running about 2.5 hours late. The target airport had a restriction that did not allow landings after a certain time at night, and it was obvious we would be well beyond that. The choice was another nearby airport which did not have such restrictions, but despite being open and air traffic saying they would accept the flight, the baggage handlers said they would not unload it.

It would probably have been cheaper to make the flight and then distribute the luggage the following day.

Yes, I'm sure that there are any number of war stories that people could cite as wider examples of a poor experience when flying, but the attitude of the baggage handlers there can hardly be seen as contributing to something being fundamentally wrong with air traffic control?  ATC is the responsibility of airports and national authorities, whereas baggage handling is generally contracted by the airlines....

Westin

“there is something fundamentally broken with our flight systems.”

Perhaps we should all be prepared to pay a little more for our flights so that the support services are able to pay a better and more attractive wage to those baggage handlers, special assistance staff, check-in staff, cabin crews….

bagand96

Most slots are allocated tactically in advance base upon the departure time on the flight plan the airline file.  Problems can arise when airlines don't update their flight plan, or keep working towards a slot time that realistically they are not going to make.  They then have to delay their departure time at short notice, and get reallocated a new slot with a huge delay.

For example say an airline has a flight from the UK to Greece with a departure time of 1400.  There's capacity issues en-route in German airspace and at the Greek airport, so taking those factors Eurocontrol have allocated a slot of  1435.  Not too bad a delay.  However the aircraft arrived late at the gate from it's previous flight, say 1330.  An hour turnaround should be achievable so everyone cracks on.

Unfortunately the special assistance provider is late to disembark wheelchair passengers, meaning the inbound crew and pax aren't fully offloaded until 1350.  Outbound crew board ASAP, do their checks efficiently and start boarding at 1400.  But whilst the handling agent staff in the terminal are doing a good job boarding quickly, unfortunately on the ramp it's not great news.  Desperately short staffed means the bags don't even turn up at the aircraft until 1420.  Again everyone does their best but the doors aren't closed with paperwork completed and a tug attached until 1435.

Aircraft won't make it's takeoff window so the airline/ATC have to delay the flight plan.  At which point a new slot gets allocated of 1610.

Airline delay, airport delay or ATC delay?

[Deleted User]

They like to blame ATC because it means the airline doesn't have to pay out. It's often difficult to prove that it was really the airline's fault.

That said, with a combination of low pay/poor conditions, and allowing COVID to rip through organisations like ATC, it's probably not going to improve much.

Grumpy_chap

[Deleted User] said:

That said, with a combination of low pay/poor conditions, and allowing COVID to rip through organisations like ATC, it's probably not going to improve much.

There have been a couple of posts referencing low pay.
In the case of ATC, I understand the pay scales are quite generous.

Indout96

We were held up coming back from Cyprus on 06/10 due to a problem with French ATC but of course as its not UK it does not hit the news and everyone thinks its just us.
Our plane was delayed setting off and had to travel home via a different route which took a bit longer but they got us home so all was well.

jimi_man

I’m not aware of any safety issues or fatal accidents with our ATC so on that basis I would say there is nothing wrong with them at all. Any problems affecting flight delays are caused by too few slots for too many flights - often caused by weather affecting flow rate. Single runway operations such as Gatwick are particularly affected. But these aren’t ‘fundamental’ problems with ATC at all.