On a four-mile VFR final in the Cirrus SR-22, the tower controller broke us out with a 360 degree turn for a Corvallis on a three-mile right base because he thought the Cessna was faster. There’s simply no reason for a controller to wait so long to clear the next airplane for takeoff in the first case, nor to rush a student like in the second. I watched a Waukegan controller the other day clear a training aircraft for an “Immediate” takeoff when the nearest airplane was on a six mile final approach. Having spent 10 years of my life as an FAA controller myself, I have very little patience when I sitting in an airplane holding short of the runway for takeoff, long after the landing aircraft has cleared the runway. Sure being safe is important to the best ATC system in the world, but VFR towers should be delivering efficiency too.
I am an air traffic controller 3 mods how to#
My gripe is that no one seems to be training these controllers how to move traffic … quickly. Kenosha and Waukegan are contract towers run by a private company where the controllers are not NATCA members. My focus here is on the less busy VFR towers, specifically the ones in the Chicago area where I still fly some 200 hours each year, airports like Chicago Executive (KPWK), Waukegan (KUGN), Kenosha (KENW) and DuPage (KDPA). Those kinds of results come from superb mentors teaching recruits how it’s done. Think shoot the gap, which translates into never wasting 60 seconds of airspace when you can put an airplane into it. There’s no way controllers at JFK, ORD, ATL or LAX could push out as many airplanes per hour as they do unless they were operating with plenty of adrenalin in their system. When I say service is not today what it used to be though, I don’t mean at the nation’s busy facilities. Having been around in the old days – like the 70s – when traffic at most towers was insane by today’s standards, I think I have some solid data to measure against. The service delivered by some ATC facilities today is just not what it used to be in the old days before the PATCO strike.
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