Okay, my turn. I know, I know, duck and cover. Another loooong boaring post
Well, here it is, for better or for worse.
Gentlemen, you have tried very hard not to turn this discussion into whose controllers are more flexible or have more skills, or are better suited to deal with the pilots than others. In that you have seceded pretty well I think. Everyone has also fought he urge to simply blame every pilot, everywhere, every time and accept that sometimes it is us There we go, I said it, they aren't all bad, so let's accept the fact that no matter what, all of us will occasionally make that odd mistake. Happens. So now, since it happens on occasion, what can we do about it? Well, the first thing we need to do it recognize that no matter how we hard try it will just happen. There are so many distractions for the pilots and our controllers anyway, so sometimes we just have to cut them some slack .
I also saw where someone said we need to make pilot training mandatory. Well, try as we might, I don't think we will see that happen anytime soon either. Ahhh, but what I do see is a way to begin leaning on the pilot community to raise the stakes a little.
I did a quick scan of the opening page of all of the VATUSA ARTCC web sites just now. Four of them list VATSTARS as a Partner organization. ZLA has it's own pilot program. Boston has BVA. By my count that's 6 out of 22 ARTCC have the ability to affect pilot training. Now that may not sound like a lot, 6/22, but we all know that VATSTARS isn't tied only to the Division and can issue training anywhere.
My suggestion, take Shane up on suggestion and stop providing good feedback to the VA's who ask, and then go directly to those same VA's and tell them the truth; if your pilots don't learn how to fly better they well no longer be invited to fly here (wherever
here is). I don't see any reason we, as the controller can't require a higher standard. If VATSTAR wants to issue a certificate to me I better know to push a button and spin a dial. If I don't that pilot is not welcome back.
Guys, this is the short version. I know there will be lots of discussion about what we ca and cannot do about this. Yes, as a training school VATSTAR has earned a good reputation. Well, quite frankly, I'm not interested in his reputation or the number of pilots he has trained. More power to him. But if he has trained all that many pilots how come the same ones show up every Friday night, but stay home on Saturdays? Or are we only talking about the same dozen or two pilots, and is this discussion really about accepting 30 aircraft an hour when the airport can only handle 25? Because if that is case that's a different kettle of fish!
My point to all of this is that if you want to hold the pilots responsible than stop waiting for the Board to make it mandatory. What you should be doing is bitching to the Division that it should have some sort of liason officer whose first assignment is going to be to
sit down with the various VA's and ATO's and suggest (yea, as in strongly suggest) that they teach their student pilots two things that we absolutely need. The first, which hand is the left and which hand is the right. The second thing that they need to add some meat to is the section on communicating with the controller. Tighten those two subjects up and I think it's a great place to start.
And that's my two cents about this...…..
