Possible pilot deviation...any comments from the controller experts?
- Thread starter Falcon50driver
- Start date
NORDO requirements for us to report is 5 minutes. So when I give you a traffic call for merging targets 1000ft apart and you ignore me/don't listen, there is a reason i'll ask if you heard me, because I am now looking at the clock and you got 5 minutes to respond to my next few transmissions of hey are you here. I don't go and turn you in at 5 minutes, I call on guard, I call AIRNC, I call other company planes on freq to get a hold of you, because when I do turn it in the supervisor is going to tell me to do all those things. When those all fail, and you are now going into the next sector as a NORDO, I have to tell them, and in turn tell the supervisor. They then have to report it to the DEN (domestic events network established post 9/11), they will then monitor you for any changes of flight path/altitude without instruction and you will have some friendly foes off your wing if that starts to occur. Worst NORDO I have had flew at altitude for over an hour without contact, they came up on guard looking for a frequency 20 miles from destination. We were all wondering when they would want to descend from FL410 to land. I never spoke to them but I am sure they were chewed out as well by the ops manager, as there were fighters enroute when they finally spoke up. I never mind a call of "hey you still there it is quiet out there" silence is not golden when you are in the air.
As a side note, maybe if you all weren't tools on guard, pilots would listen to it more, so we could get a hold of you on guard. We have to silence it sometimes too, because if we are working 2 frequencies we usually put the second on speaker, and guard is also on speaker, and when the guard police and ensuing fights flare up we can't hear our traffic. Or when some idiot is playing clips from a movie, farting noises, chewbacka noises, or any number of other stupid things we can't hear anything else out of our speakers. The worst I have had is trying to find a location on a pilot who on guard declared an emergency with an engine failure, and every other transmission was stepped on with "ON GUARD" yea no kidding its a damn emergency you f tards.
I never turn pilots in for any petty crap. If I turn you in, it is because of 1 of 2 things happened. 1) You lost separation with another aircraft and it was auto reported via the snitch. 2) A supervisor happened to be standing behind me (very rare they move from the desk) and you did something you shouldn't have.
When there is weather, we are busy as all hell. I will do everything I can to let you do what you want, and will try to guide you to the area everyone else has found as a good way around it. Obviously weather builds, moves and can be somewhat unpredictable, I will never unable you if you ask to deviate without some sort of option. If I am actually out of options, declare an emergency and do what you have to do, I will try to point out the traffic you are going to be in conflict with and try to come up with an option as soon as possible. Just because I can't legally give you the clearance doesn't mean you don't have options. Likewise, if you operationally cannot take a clearance, I expect you to give me an option or options, if you cannot take anything, then I am going to be skeptical, as you should have been of me.
As a side note, maybe if you all weren't tools on guard, pilots would listen to it more, so we could get a hold of you on guard. We have to silence it sometimes too, because if we are working 2 frequencies we usually put the second on speaker, and guard is also on speaker, and when the guard police and ensuing fights flare up we can't hear our traffic. Or when some idiot is playing clips from a movie, farting noises, chewbacka noises, or any number of other stupid things we can't hear anything else out of our speakers. The worst I have had is trying to find a location on a pilot who on guard declared an emergency with an engine failure, and every other transmission was stepped on with "ON GUARD" yea no kidding its a damn emergency you f tards.
I never turn pilots in for any petty crap. If I turn you in, it is because of 1 of 2 things happened. 1) You lost separation with another aircraft and it was auto reported via the snitch. 2) A supervisor happened to be standing behind me (very rare they move from the desk) and you did something you shouldn't have.
When there is weather, we are busy as all hell. I will do everything I can to let you do what you want, and will try to guide you to the area everyone else has found as a good way around it. Obviously weather builds, moves and can be somewhat unpredictable, I will never unable you if you ask to deviate without some sort of option. If I am actually out of options, declare an emergency and do what you have to do, I will try to point out the traffic you are going to be in conflict with and try to come up with an option as soon as possible. Just because I can't legally give you the clearance doesn't mean you don't have options. Likewise, if you operationally cannot take a clearance, I expect you to give me an option or options, if you cannot take anything, then I am going to be skeptical, as you should have been of me.
genot
Well-Known Member
I'm not defensive, the multiple posts were a result of a late night and oh I can't let that go either and reliving that one single time that one pilot was out of line.
We're on the same page and on the same team (hopefully). I truly think the difference is in reporting and awareness outcomes. We aren't perfect. I just watched a newly certified controller do his job safely, but be overwhelmed a bit at working all the sectors combined with a NORDO or two tossed in and not do exactly the best job (safe, but not the most efficient). Standard new guy stuff. I had the frequencies keyed ready to take over, but it wasn't needed. What I did learn listening in was how expertly and tactfully every airline pilot handled the situation. IE Airliner 123 over the marker now switching to tower.
In that same light what you don't see on the other end are the emphasis items we get hammered on. Pilot said "Miss the 737, cleared visual approach runway XX" Or maintain visual separation from the Boeing 737 N123 Alpha Pop He didn't say maintain visual separation (or include his technically correct call sign), that was a dangerous situation you placed that pilot in. People could have died! Died! Its exactly as bad as a near mid air in the minds of the powers that be.
We recently had a spate of TCAS RA's. Turns out several airlines en masse decided we don't actually do SIMU VIS anymore. Nevermind we advertise them constantly and I ran trips last week, TCAS stays in traffic mode now per airline management. I don't fault the line pilots for following the RA's, I don't mind that as a result hours of tapes of ours will be pulled for review, I do think the airline's management in question could have given us a heads up though. Maybe some pilot in a CL30 didn't give me a picture perfect read back on visual/wake and I'll be charged with a deal. Maybe not. I'm not about to start holding a grudge against pilots.
The thunderstorm angle. I'll say this. Certain airframes have zero qualms about flying right through what my display paints as bright red death. Others want nothing to do with what I paint as light. If every other pilot I've talked to hasn't balked at the down winds, I'll keep using them. Opposing down winds in hemmed in weather situations tend to balance a final. Its a logistic decision.
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Roger Roger
Bottom of the list
More pilots need to know those emphasis areas. It drives me nuts listening to a guy have to read back his hold short 3 times because he kept leaving required bits out of the read back.
The absolute best things pilots can do is visit a busy facility, especially during thunderstorm season. You will see what we do to get 2,500+ aircraft into/out of places like Atlanta and Chicago. You will see that we don't jerk pilots around, but action will be taken to separate a pilot who wants to go against the "plan" from other traffic (example: keeping you at a lower altitude so that pilots who are abiding by ATC instructions keep getting higher and going to center as safely and efficiently as possible. You will see we constantly get PIREPs (If the 717, 737, RJ, et cetera all said it was "light rain, light chop" it is light rain, light chop regardless of what your fancy weather display depicts otherwise they all wouldn't have flown through it!) You will see that system weather, in fusion, is a thousand times better at displaying all the weather (front, middle, and back of storms/cells) than your most advanced weather of an aircraft. We are here to provide a service for all aircraft, not just a single aircraft that thinks they have the best idea ever, when they depart, even though that don't know squat about what has been going on the last two hours a controller has been sitting there!
genot
Well-Known Member
Obviously you're worried or you wouldn't have posted this on the other website. I'd ask you to relax. You didn't blow a clearance, you endangered no one. Overshooting your destination by an hour is one thing, this happens every day. Seriously, this is a monthly thing. As a TRACON guy its stupid easy for forget so and so has checked in on an RNAV STAR (or not). Next thing you know you aren't talking to the plane on downwind. Uh, hey Center try that Falcon again. That's the end of it. Technically the aircraft was NORDO from 240 to low level, but its muddy waters as to who exactly is at fault. I won't start the shooting match if you wont (but believe me I was completely cognizant of where your aluminum tube was screaming in from and I was vectoring around you, be it VFR/IFR Falcon or otherwise).
We aren't out for blood.
We aren't out for blood.
GolfChuck
Trustworthy Source
I sent him a little story via PM that happened in my area a few weeks ago, because he was so worried I thought it might have been the OP. It wasn't, so I am going to share it with everyone now. I don't think a NORDO gets much worse than this...except maybe those FedEx's in that "breaking the chain" video they make us watch every couple of years.
As far as I know, that pilot did not receive a Brasher warning, and I think that is what has the OP concerned. I have never, in my short career, seen a pilot issued a Brasher for simply being NORDO.
As far as I know, that pilot did not receive a Brasher warning, and I think that is what has the OP concerned. I have never, in my short career, seen a pilot issued a Brasher for simply being NORDO.
FM_Weasel
Well-Known Member
IFR NORDO more than 5 minutes is now a mandatory reporting item no matter whether it causes a problem or is suspicious or not. Because it involves at least some level of investigation by the facility, the brasher warning must be issued. I've never seen it escalate into actual deviations against a flight crew in my short career, and I imagine it wouldn't go down that way unless something else was awry.
Frankly I hate issuing the verbiage because even though it's really just an advisory call, it sounds like an admonishment, and over something that I feel reasonably sure isn't actually a pilot deviation, but it has to be said. Don't fret over the verbiage, it's just robot-talk from the good book.
Falcon50driver
Well-Known Member
Really like your quote at the bottom of your posts!
Falcon50driver
Well-Known Member
Well thats one of the things i am set out to do ...go to a air traffic control facility to see the other side of the story,im sure things have changed a bit since the last time i was in one in 1979
genot
Well-Known Member
My final things to add here.
I've learned a ton about culture at other ATC facilities. If the pilot is cruising along fat, dumb, happy and SAFE, my 5 minute clock doesn't start until I needed to get ahold of him/her. I've got too much on my plate generally to do back track algebra and figure out when the 360th second occurred. VFR change of destination is also a mandatory reporting item, but the last time I reported it I got a nice "WTF would you tell me about that?" I still to this day pop that out to Supes who aren't paying attention to the operation. Despite being in the binder and being a rule, each and every time they tell me I'm an idiot for telling them and refuse to call it in (in fact now it includes IFR). Ruling by memo has its problems. IE, 20 some odd memos from a now retired OM I no longer follow that were never rescinded.
I've learned a ton about culture at other ATC facilities. If the pilot is cruising along fat, dumb, happy and SAFE, my 5 minute clock doesn't start until I needed to get ahold of him/her. I've got too much on my plate generally to do back track algebra and figure out when the 360th second occurred. VFR change of destination is also a mandatory reporting item, but the last time I reported it I got a nice "WTF would you tell me about that?" I still to this day pop that out to Supes who aren't paying attention to the operation. Despite being in the binder and being a rule, each and every time they tell me I'm an idiot for telling them and refuse to call it in (in fact now it includes IFR). Ruling by memo has its problems. IE, 20 some odd memos from a now retired OM I no longer follow that were never rescinded.
jtrain609
Antisocial Monster
The guys in front of and behind delta 191 got through just fine, but that one unlucky airplane and everyone on board got to find out what happens when you say to yourself, "well, the last guy got in" and don't perform your own weather avoidance.
Also, your radar doesn't show the tops of a lot of build ups, I've found. And I'm here to tell you, I'm not punching through a build up at FL350 just because you guys can't see it.
If someone is three-four miles in front of you and there is someone three-four miles behind you and they all say "light rain, light chop," there is absolutely no way that your aircraft is affected that much differently in an eight mile gap. That would be some incredible weather cell to not affect the B717 in front of you, then affect you and only you, and finally not affect the CRJ2 that departed right behind you. You're talking about a cell that affects a specific flight, at a specific point and no one else around them for literally 30-45 seconds. If everyone goes through it and says the same they are either all lying, the weather is targeting you and only you, or your opinion of chop is different than everyone else!
jtrain609
Antisocial Monster
Have you ever had a chance to ride up front during thunderstorm season? If you haven't, you should, it'd likely be an eye opener for you.
genot
Well-Known Member
As for me it would be I'm sure and I plan to. Nobody is equipped with perfect WX radar. Lesson on ATC WX radar for anyone interested. Ours has full picture with no altitudes and weak penetration. On board radar is powerful and can scale altitude if used properly, but its a narrow beam. I've had days where everyone is balking about something my radar doesn't depict. Those days I ask exactly where it is and what it's extent is. Other days the glowing red of death is light chop. My and your best bet are PIREPS. Launching under the assumption that you'll be in the flight levels in 10 minutes is absolutely the worst thing you can do though.
That's where I get the most grief. That same departure hole you're banking on is an arrival's way in. I can give you deviations all over the place, but it won't be conducive to normal ops to you so don't anticipate a continued climb. .
jtrain609
Antisocial Monster
I'm not sure if you guys are aware of this, but we do nearly all our deviating using the Mk.I eyeball. If we're below the bases, it's easy to see where the rain is coming down. If we're above the tops, we can easily see where we absolutely cannot go. If we're dealing with embedded thunderstorms, we're going to give a thunderstorm one hell of a wide berth because we only know where the precip starts and ends, not where we're going to get pounded.
Also, with regard to deviations around build ups that you guys can't see, we normally get the same picture you do on our radar. A few weeks ago I had a controller question our request for a deviation, because all we were painting was a small, 5 mile in diameter light intensity return and that's all they likely saw too. But the tops of that beast went up above FL350, and there's no way we're going to fly through those tops. If we survive the severe turbulence with our wings intact, the engines likely won't function very well after eating a bunch of hail. There simply wasn't enough precip in that storm to create a return, but flying through a buildup at that altitude is asking for the kind of trouble that ends very, very poorly for us.
Bernoulli Fan
Controller
This thread has taken a turn toward helpful information exchange, which is nice.
With regard to deviations, I'll give you whatever you need without much question no matter what I'm depicting, but I don't agree that onboard radar shows the same as ATC mosaic. Onboard does not penetrate very far into the precip as radar naturally attenuates quickly. The advantage of ATC mosaic is we can see how far along the route the precip extends, but we only have a picture of the bottom of all the weather. Onboard's advantage is you can tilt up and down a bit to find better altitudes, though you can't see very far into it. This was probably contributory to AFR447.
jtrain609
Antisocial Monster
Well, a few things.
First, some carriers have access to that same mosaic that you're talking about through on board EFB's. Not many, but a few.
Second, that mosaic isn't valid from our perspective for avoidance, but only planning and long range decision making. This is where you'll hear us say, "If you can just give us [X] shortcut, we can avoid the weather," what we mean is not that we want a shortcut, but instead that if we're given a small turn from a long distance out, we'll be able to make a strategic decision about avoiding weather, instead of having to tactically avoid the weather in 100 miles. But, the level of fidelity that is reflected in mosaic pictures commonly has nothing to do with what we're actually dealing with once we're into the flight levels. This is why you guys will commonly advise us about some horrible looking storm cell that we're about to penetrate in cruise, and we'll verbally shrug because we're so far on top of it with no build up coming out of the top of those cells that we didn't even notice we were about to fly over a cell.
Third, I've never actually used the tilt function to find a better altitude to punch through weather. I'll scan a cell at a few different altitudes to see if it's a legitimate cell (there's a lot of crap that shows up on the display that isn't actually weather), and then I'll also use those multiple views to get a determination of how far away from it I want to fly.
Fourth, on both EMB products I've flown, the onboard radar has an attenuation function that shows where rain shadows are pretty well. If the radar isn't able to penetrate to the other side of a cell with this function turned on, it'll paint everything behind it in blue. This warns us that the radar doesn't know what's back there, resulting in the assumption that it's probably another cell and that we shouldn't fly anywhere near it.
In summary, I think pilots and controllers look at weather deviations in some fundamentally different ways. Where controllers are forced to view deviations through the prism of the weather radar mosaic that you have provided to you, juxtaposed against the information that pilots feed to controllers in the way of deviation requests. Pilots, on the other hand, do 90% of their deviations visually, simply spinning the heading bug until we're not going to fly through something that looks like it will hurt. And what hurts? I'd say any build up that extends above about 15,000'.
ChasenSFO
hen teaser
There's a big difference between a "Oh, actually our callsign is..." tone and a "DAMN IT! YOU'RE WRONG AND I'VE STILL GOT URINE COVERED CORNFLAKES IN MY TEETH, OUR CALLSIGN IS..." tone. Most guys talk in the first tone, but it's more than a few who jump right into the second any chance they get. I don't take it personal because then I'll hear them do it with on Ground then Tower if they get the chance too. I personally usually only see controllers get snippy with "that guy" and not the guys who politely correct them. But hey, bad apples on both sides.
I've had an "oh crap" moment or two where a pilot caught something for me and I was very grateful. But if he was met with attitude and denial, I'm sure he'd get snippy with me real quick, and rightly so. It's bad enough that a small portion of the ATC-foamers make it their life's mission to expose the media to irregular stuff on the frequencies, we don't need both sides making reports on things that didn't directly jeopardize safety on a regular basis. Working along-side the Feds at SFO, I've learned that they're almost all really cool and fair people who don't want to bust anybody unless they have to. I only had to ever write one report, it went to the FAA and the City so I'm not sure if it was a violation or not. Long story short, you read back a push back clearance and then ignore the radio and sit at the gate for 10 minutes? Awesome. You start moving back not listening to pleas to stop and almost hit a 777 and make it have to turn on a dime then head back out into FAA territory and swim upstream when the manager of the tower is looking over the controllers shoulder and the FAA line rings? You're gonna have a bad time. Even then, I felt bad while I filled it out and hoped it wouldn't get to far up the chain of command. A higher-up at the airport was pissed I didn't give the guy the number(has any ramp tower done that...ever?) and chew him out on top of the report. Being a former controller, he said, "That's the best part!". So there you have 2 totally different reactions to the same problem. Every voice has a personality.
Be polite, admit your mistakes(when you need to), and doesn't hurt to say thank you on either end of the mic. I screwed up an OAK transition yesterday and I could tell ATC was frustrated, but after a sincere thanks, he sounded a lot more friendly.
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Boris Badenov
Fortis Leader
Sounds like weakness to me!