I'll preface this by saying 75+% (perhaps even more) of pilots I see on the network while controlling are great. They know their stuff, or if they run into something where they don't, they know where to find information or how to ask for help and are receptive to feedback.
However, those that don't fall into that category can be so distracting that it completely outweighs the positive enjoyment I get. There's been some research on things like this and on average, people perceive bad experiences about 3-4 times worse than equivalent good experiences. It only takes one bad pilot to completely ruin a controlling session because we're in the unfortunate circumstance where a competent pilot is almost unnoticeable compared to a bad pilot who can't turn the right direction, or hold a heading, or even give readbacks. Our bad experiences, even before accounting for perception, are worse than good experiences.
In the past week in about 6 hours of online time, I've seen instances of
- Missing the first call for an instruction every time. Every single instruction took 2 calls
- Multiple instances of pilots having an amended route in their flight plan (presumably they read it back at some point, they came from controlled fields), but flying something completely different. On asking them, they event sent back the correct route that matched their flight plan, but for whatever reason they never bothered to reprogram their aircraft
- A stuck mic for 5+ minutes and the pilot not responding to anything via text
These are just the occurrences that stand out because they were more obnoxious than usual. On top of that, there's the tons of unresponsive or AFK pilots, and the usual lack of chart-reading or improper FMS programming or not knowing how to hand-fly a departure procedure. We've collectively just come to accept these, but why? All of the lack of pilot competencies increases controller workload. I regularly have to message neighboring controllers asking if they got a pilot on comms because they don't even reliably read back comms transfers.
Until there is a robust means of enforcing stuff that's already in the CoC (B8 for example), I'm not convinced a change in the CoC or other network rules will be effective. What happens after I wallop someone? Usually a SUP contacts me and says they're on it and after some time the pilot either calls me or gets disconnected. If they get disconnected, then is there a follow-up action? I would hope so, but as a regular member of the network, I have no visibility into that, and I don't have way to know that action is in fact being taken. Suppose they do call me, this is actually sometimes more of a problem because more likely than not, the reason I had to call a SUP to begin with was because they don't know what they're doing. I may now have someone who I have to hand-hold, or someone who is barely responsive, or in the worst case, someone who is actively causing problems on my frequency (stuck mic, or has bad radio etiquette, or is actively hostile towards me).
I'm sure I don't have the best solutions to these problems, but from the perspective of a regular controlling member, it doesn't look like management/governance at the VATSIM level really cares about the controller perspective. Every time I've seen a forum thread on this (usually on the VATSIM forums), discussion about stricter enforcement of rules gets shut down or brushed aside. I think stricter enforcement of the rules we currently have would go a long way to making things better. Give controllers the confidence that when they do report something, that something longer-term than just kicking the pilot off the network is being done.
Controllers tend to be the most skilled and highly trained people on the network simply because we have to go through all this training. Empower us and put more trust in us to do the right thing. I shouldn't have to send 3+ messages to a SUP describing in depth what the problem is to get a problematic pilot kicked (this is rare, but if it does happen, and I'm very busy I often can be covering en-route top-down, it's
very annoying). Give us a way to report pilot deviations that don't require calling a SUP in. While annoying, I can work around someone who lands on the wrong runway or doesn't join the localizer. I don't want to go through the wallop rigmarole nor do I want to waste SUPs' time with things that are smaller infractions but infractions nonetheless. (As an aside, why is it that when I connect with the wrong vis range, I almost instantly get a message from a SUP, but it can take 5-10+ minutes to get a problematic pilot removed? Is this an automation issue? If so, all the more reason to empower controllers. Let us help the supervisors.)
Having a pilot record would also, in my opinion, go a long way towards creating stronger incentives for pilots to actually read and learn the material in the pilot resource and learning centers. Right now, once you pass the entrance exam, you can get away with learning nothing else and if you don't care, all the encouragement and asking nicely from other people isn't going to do anything (leading a horse to water vs. getting it to drink and all that).
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