IFR Communications: Routes & Clearances

Transcription

1 Transcript IFR Communications: Routes & Clearances Featuring: John Krug and Bob Adelizzi Copyright PilotWorkshops.com, LLC. This material is available to members of the PilotWorkshops.com web site, which is the only place it can be legally obtained. If you received this material from any other online or commercial source, please let us know by sending an to

2 Bob M: I think it could be safely said that the national air space system provides solid support to IFR flying. But I think we have to readily admit that the complexities and the variables associated with flying IFR -- whether the experienced level of the participants, the aircraft mix can bring the aircraft system to its knees when we find pilots that are operating from a venue of either ignorance or arrogance. So, in this workshop, we are going to provide pilots with the opportunity to get inside the system. We want to look at the big picture with regard to air traffic control as opposed to the little picture where we sit inside our cockpits. Perspective is very, very important. And today, we have tremendous resources available to us. We are going to tap into these resources today by talking with Bob Adelizzi and John Krug to share their perspectives and their insights into the Air Traffic Control system, specifically IFR flying. I think we need to say -- and the system demands -- that IFR pilots are held to a higher standard. And unless we maintain this higher standard, we are going to create problems out there. So, let s take a look at how the system operates and what we can do as pilots to facilitate our use of the system and make it as efficient as humanly possible. Let s start with the typical IFR flight. We will go through the process from preflight planning all the way to engine shutdown, and discuss both towered and non-towered airport operations. John, let s look at pre-flight planning and some of the things that you would recommend that a pilot can do in the pre-flight portion of flight to make our interface with air traffic control as efficient as possible. John: Okay, Bob. Obviously, there are several obvious items that you want to start with: weather, NOTAMs, aircraft performance, weight and balance, fuel requirements. We are not really going to get into that, but you just want to make sure that all the basics are covered, that you are not filing to an airport that is closed, that the approach navaid is out of service, that your aircraft performance is sufficient to get in and get out of the destination airport, that you have enough fuel. And that is all basic piloting. One of the things that we always get questioned about is -- the very first thing is - - how do I plan a route? What I want to talk about is, as a controller, how you wind up issuing a clearance or how you wind up formulating a route. And really what it starts as, it is kind of a top down system. The centers initially control all the air space. They delegate air space down to the approach controls to the TRACONs, who then control the tower center underneath their jurisdiction. Copyright PilotWorkshops.com 1

3 So we think of it as a top-down system and it is a very structured system. The closer you get to a major metropolitan area, the more structured that is going to be, and the more structure that their needs to be, because of the volume of traffic that is flying in and out of it. If you think of routes, we fly Victor Airways, generally. You think of those really as like interstate highways. Interstate highways are designed to flow between cities, between geographic areas. Victor Airways are much the same. And interstates have on ramps and off ramps. You can t just jump on an interstate anywhere you want; you can t just jump off on an interstate anywhere you want. And our routes are really much the same way. We have flows. They are arranged around arrivals and departures with exits and entry points. The on ramps, we call them SIDs. And the off ramps, we call them STARs. Once you get in the flow, it just makes it so much easier. So understanding all that is kind of key to figuring out how you as an individual pilot will fit in into the system. So in order to answer our question -- what route do I file and why I don t get what I file? There are some resources out there that you can look at -- one of them is the green book, the Airport Facility Directory -- has a lot of city pairs. They are generally grouped by approach controls. They don t necessarily list all the airports; sometimes they have to do some interpolating to figure out where your particular arrival or departure is going to fit in that. Jeppesen also publishes in the front of their book something similar -- not really the easiest to read. What we have discovered and what I use on an almost daily basis now is an Internet service it s called flightplan.com -- probably one of the best sites I have seen for that type of flight planning. And you can put in pretty much any city pair, any airport pair, and it s going to list the route that people have filed before. After about 10 minutes it will show what the expected ATC route is. It ll come back and give you a pretty good idea of what you can expect. If you do choose to file with Flight Service, really all that they can do is confirm that the flight plan is accepted. They cannot really give you much guidance. They do not have any information on the routes. So, they will accept just about anything that you give them. Bob M: We solicited and received some terrific questions from pilots that used the web site. They raise some very, very interesting issues. The first of these is, what sort of things frustrate controllers with regard to pre-flight planning. And what are some of the common mistakes you see from pilots that make life more complicated for you that it needs to be? John: Well Bob, some of the things that we see is, obviously filing the wrong route or too complex of a route. Very often you will see people file to an initial fix, Copyright PilotWorkshops.com 2

4 pretty much everything that is done today is an airport clearance. You are cleared to the destination from on the ground to the destination airport. I see people going through this, and even with some IFR students that is a very common thing where they go through an exercise, and find an intersection on an airway, and then the transition and then the outer marker, and we just do not do business that way anymore. Everything is an airport clearance. So, do not even waste your time trying to figure that out. And, if you use the flight planning tools that I have talked about, you will generally get the correct clearance. But let us talk about what happens when you do file a route to a distant destination that does not comply with the letters of agreement with adjacent facilities. Remember when we talked about the top down systems, so whatever approach control or tower you are dealing with is going to have someone that they are getting their clearances from. The approach controller may be responsible for amending the flight plans, the tower controller may be, it depends upon the local equipment and local procedures. But some of the things that frustrate controllers is spending time looking up a route, whether they look it up in an automated system, they look it up in a loose leaf binder sometimes. And, whatever they re going to have to do to look it up. The example that I was discussing is you are on the ground at Bedford and you are sitting there in your Baron and you want to file to Springfield, Illinois. It is 800-miles away. You ve got a GPS that will enable you to navigate that way. Controller on the ground has no idea where that airport is. What kind of airspace it interacts with. What fixes to start out with. So they are going to have to get out a chart and kind of eyeball it, and take a look at what kind of route and how they can plug you into that on-ramp that is going to get you to the highway, that is going to get you there. Lots of small airports, the ground controller is also the clearance delivery person, sharing those two responsibilities. If you are going to take a controller s time to fix a route like that, it is going to put you pretty far down on the priority list. So, it is in your interest to try and learn the best possible way of filing. Generally, if you will look at these routes that go out of an area, you can find a couple of common fixes that might be within 50 miles of the airport to 50 miles, something like that. Find a fix, file over that and then go direct to the next fix. And when you do that, file VORs, do not try to file RNAV, especially tower en route low altitude things, it is just not going to work, Lat Long fixes or RNAV fixes such as a fixed radial distance. It is just not going to work. Bob M: John, we received a terrific question from a pilot in the New York City Class B Airspace Area that certainly is universal to people operating out of complex airspace. It certainly involves what you have been talking about, the big Copyright PilotWorkshops.com 3

5 picture versus the little picture. I am sitting at a little non-towered airport in complex airspace. Why is it so difficult to get my clearance and to get it in a timely fashion? What do I need to know about the big picture that is going to help me operate in a little non-towered airport in busy airspace? John: The closer you get airports in proximities to each other and the closer the interaction is between those airports, is going to impact getting a release. The clearance should not be too much of a difficult issue. The issue is going to be more getting a release out of a congested area when there is such an interaction. For example, in the NOTAM book, the FAA publishes a chart that shows the interaction between Caldwell, Teterboro and Morristown, probably three of the busiest satellite airports in the New York City Metro area. In all three of those airports, the final approach courses overlap at the same altitudes. The Class D airspace all abuts. So anything that happens at one is going to affect another. The other thing that is going to be an impact there is the interaction between that tower and approach control that overlies and controls the releases getting out of there. You may be sitting on the ground at one airport, and you are filed over a VOR, whatever direction, you are going southbound out of Caldwell. And you are sitting there thinking, Well there is no one else around, why I can t get a release? But there is a pilot on the ground at three or four or five of those other airports that are all within five miles, and they all want to go at the same place at the same time. So, the tower controller and the approach controller have to negotiate something to get a release sequence going in to that. Bob M: All the more reason, as you said, to keep it simple as opposed to making it a complicated request. John: And if what you filed required a re-route, you are definitely going to the end of the list. Bob A: I think one thing that does complicate things is when you are dealing in an area that was just described here. They will try to get the faster airplane out in front of the slower airplane, and just sometimes it is just not available, and sometimes it does not happen. I know what we deal with the Bedford Airport -- we ask them to the sequence their airplanes if they have multiple departures all at the same fix at the same route. Let s get the fastest one out in front, and then the rest of it usually works out quite well. But in something like this, when you really have maybe one way out and you need x amount of distance to accomplish this, it does slow it down. I was asked at one time, Well I am at a ground here, why can t I get out VFR? You probably could but, Why can t I get a release? Maybe if you can t do it that way, there is Copyright PilotWorkshops.com 4

6 probably a good reason why they can t accept any more airplanes in the sky. They just don t want them. Bob M: I think you bring up a good point, Bob. And that is a lot of times, pilots in their impatience or their zeal to get airborne say, Well I ll just pick up my clearance airborne. And the complexity that adds to the system does not help you and really exacerbates the entire general area. Bob A: And just to add to that too, they may have filed as John mentioned, a direct route. And he is got it all plugged into his GPS or his RNAV system; he is all set to go. And he is actually maybe going the wrong way, because the PDR now takes them instead of west it s going to take them south first, and then west. And so now you are maybe in a position where you are flying the airplane, and trying to pick us up, trying to stay VFR. And now we just gave you a route that is totally different than what you are expecting. And now that either requires a lot of writing down or punching in to something and who is flying the airplane? Bob M: So a lot of patience both on behalf of the pilot and the air traffic controller. And you can see, and we often wonder how frustration mounts, how people get yelled at by ATC or the pilot loses his temper. But once again, understanding that there is a big picture of which we are a very small part in, and just appreciating our role in that big structure helps us to achieve the desired result. John: Right; controllers do not like to delay airplanes. That is just not in their mindset. Every controller that I have ever met always wants to move the airplanes. So if you are sitting there, it is for a reason. It could be as Bob said, you need a reroute and you are going to get back into the flow. It could be an in-trail. A lot of times in the summer, especially in the Northeast, there will be in-trail restrictions to some of the island airports. Yes, you can take off VFR, but now you are going to fly circles for 30 minutes waiting for your slot time to come up. So, where is the safest place to be from your point of view, on the ground wishing you were in the air, or in the air wishing you were back on the ground? Bob M: So, I think that what we are saying here is obviously, prior planning prevents poor performance -- planning to succeed, making sure that we have done our homework so that air traffic does not have to do that for us. And so, if we do our planning, our preparation, and also keep it simple, we are probably going to get the best results. John, since we have done our pre-flight planning now, let us look at what it takes to pick up our clearance. What are some of the things we can do to make this as smooth and seamless as possible? Copyright PilotWorkshops.com 5

7 John: Well Bob, obviously we are at a towered airport right now. So we are going to call clearance delivery or ground control, whoever the appropriate controller is. Initial call very brief -- you want the aircraft identification, you want to state your destination. And this is important because there s times that there may be multiple flight plans in the system. Lot of things can happen that could cause a duplication, and it is important that it is a double check -- both you and the controller. The ATIS code, in most airports they re going to want to know your location very briefly, usually just the name of the FBO or something like that. A lot of times they will write that on the strip also, so that the ground controller knows where you are. You want to be ready to copy, as soon as you ask for it because it is going to come right back at you. It is going to get back in the standard format. One of the acronyms that is very handy is CRAFT, Clearance Limit Route Altitude Frequency and Transponder. It is always going to come back in the same format. Another item that is really good is again flightplan.com. When you print out your flight plan from them, they have a great format, especially for inputting into GPS. It shows all the turn points along the way. Each one of the intersections has a good format right on there for copying all the information that you need. SIDs will be routinely issued whether you ask for it or not; they will usually be issued. A lot of people will put in their remarks: no SIDs or STARs. Most of the time those SIDs are going to be routinely issued. However, the departure procedure will not be routinely issued. That is a pilot s responsibility to comply with it. What does the controller want to hear? Controller wants to hear you read back the numbers, the important numbers: the altitude assignment, the transponder code, the frequency. Those are the real important things. There is kind of a movement afoot now. You ll read a whole lengthy clearance, and the pilot will just read back the transponder code; Got it. Well, that may be good enough for some people but I want to hear at least the initial altitude and some of the other important pieces in there. You may also want to get into a dialogue at that point whether there is any gate hold or delays, or any other information that the clearance delivery person can give you at that point. The one thing that you do not want to get into with clearance delivery or ground control is any kind of re-route or altitude request. Most of the time they re at the bottom of the pipeline. They ve gotten a clearance out of the computer and they are not really able to do very much to accommodate a route or altitude request. Copyright PilotWorkshops.com 6

8 The time to do that is much further down the line after we have taken off, after we re at cruise altitude. Probably talking to the en route center controller is the appropriate time to start doing that kind of stuff. Bob M: Bob, how about from your perspective -- anything that you have seen that might help out? Bob A: Well as John was talking about, this one thing that did come to mind is the pilot that does file a direct route or GPS direct to destination. And then we get what is called the PDR that prints out on the strip. And we are required to read that. As a courtesy to the pilot, the controller should say, I have a full route clearance; advise when ready to write. So therefore, he is not sitting there waiting and well, This is what I will get. And he is expecting to be cleared as filed, and suddenly there are maybe four or five VORs, a couple of airways and so forth, and he was not expecting that. So, he d able to write this down. I think that would be much more beneficial. Bob M: PDR, of course, is the preferred departure? Bob A: It is, yes. Bob M: One of the things I know from a pilot perspective that makes me a little bit crazy is people trying to copy the clearance while they are doing something else. We are all multi-taskers, and you probably have seen an airplane taxiing as he is requesting his clearance. And there is a reason why, even if you have two pilots in the cockpit, that both of them should be focused on what you are doing. So, if you are taxiing and trying to copy a clearance, well you say, Well the first officer s doing it. Well guess what? If you are taxiing the airplane, you are not listening to the clearance. You are not backing each other up, and it is an excellent opportunity for errors and for creating problems. The other thing that I think is so very, very important is that, we all have sat there and tried to copy a clearance just as fast as we can from the guy that is speaking at the speed of sound. And sometimes quite frankly, we need to have parts repeated. Clearing up confusion is meant to be done on the ground, not on departure climb out. Any thoughts of you guys? Bob A: I think you are right, because I think there may be a little hesitance on the part of some of the pilots not to ask the controller to say again, because their fear of, I told you; stand by. And then they get pushed down the line a little bit. But in any type of an ATC clearance, if you do not understand it, you don t get any part of it for some reason -- you have poor radio reception and maybe you are at a bad part of the airport, and every other word is coming out -- you might definitely want to ask to be read a clearance again. Copyright PilotWorkshops.com 7

9 It s only going to find the problem later on in your flight -- that if you somehow take a route that you think you re going straight ahead, but the route that you were issued but didn t hear, is now a left turn to a certain spot or different route you re got problems. Bob M: And quite frankly, don t say that you are ready for the clearance unless you are ready for the clearance. Have the pencil ready. Have the paper ready. Have your clearance there in front of you because you do not have to write the whole thing down if you already have it printed out there in front of you. So, being prepared and being ready, and obviously, you cannot do that if you are doing something else. John: Right. Your head has to be in the game at that point. And, that is the time to pay attention and the time to ask the questions. Bob A: And there is one thing that you mentioned about having a two-pilot airplane. There probably isn t anything bad if you are in a single-engine airplane or GA-type small piston airplane, if you have somebody that s got some pilot experience to make them part of the crew with you, whether it is the clearance, taxiing, looking for other airplanes as you take off in the terminal environment start looking for traffic, make them part of the operation. Bob M: Resource management at its best. Bob A: Excellent. Bob M: Okay so now, we are to depart, clearance in hand, GPS is all loaded up. John what comes next? John: Well, we want to call the ground control. Tell them we are ready to taxi. Want to mention -- very important that we re IFR because that can have a bearing on a lot of different things. The controller is going to look for strip now, instead of just taxiing us out as a VFR airplane. I can recall several times where we had situations like that at satellite towers where an airplane would taxi out, not say it was IFR. Ground controller just says taxi to Runway Two, it gets there and local control says clear for take off, and he was IFR. And the clearance is still sitting on the back shelf. And now you ve got an IFR airplane in the system without a release and in an appropriate spot. So, it is a good double check on the whole system to make sure that you mention that. And your location on the airport -- that is required now also. Make sure that we guard that all important runway. If you are at strange airport, especially a larger airport, you might want to ask where you can do your run-up, some things like that to help fit in the flow -- because where you do your run-up, if you re sequenced with other departures, or Copyright PilotWorkshops.com 8

10 as Bob was talking about before, you maybe two or three or four in line out there, but a faster airplane gets to go first, or whatever, you do not want to plug-up the taxiway. So, when in doubt, ask. Bob A: Another thing, too, is that if they are running delays, or the control is not sure they can get you released right away, and they have other aircraft that either can be released or are VFRs, they may hold you some place on the ramp. Put you on inactive taxi or inactive runway. Have you hold there, and then they can run the airport a little bit more efficiently than having you at the head of the line in suddenly there is no place else to put you, and then they are holding up the whole airport, too. Bob M: And just one other pilot s suggestion that I think makes all the difference in the world is making sure you have an airfield diagram out and ready. A picture speaks volumes. And with regard to confusion and staying ahead of the airplane, that picture will really help you get where you want to be without hitting some areas that you do not want to be involved in. John: Absolutely. Bob A: So the next thing is we call the tower, and what happens from the tower s point of view? The local controller, as ATC refers to it, and as a pilot you would call it the tower -- it has some requirements before they can release an IFR aircraft. Sometimes they have to request a release from the controlling facility whether it is a TRACON or even in some cases an en route center. Sometimes they can release on their own authorization. But regardless, they are going to have to comply with some in-trail requirements, possibly assign you a heading or an altitude. As a matter of fact, off a towered airport, you should always be assigned a heading if it is not part of the SID. That is one of those things that you want to ask for, and make sure that you understand -- whether you re to fly runway heading to turn to a specific heading or you are cleared on course. So that is something that you want to make sure. Bob M: What are some of the things that make you crazy on take off, John? What are some of the things that pilots throw at you? John: Well, not acknowledging a frequency change. When you check in with departure with too much information, and by that I mean if the tower controller says turn left heading 230, cleared for take-off. And when you check in with departure control, the only that the departure controller wants to hear is the altitude that you are leaving and the altitude that you are climbing to. Any other information should be exchanged by the controllers between each other on a landline or through the letters of agreement or their standard procedures. That is not to say that if the tower control does tell you, tell Copyright PilotWorkshops.com 9

11 departure you are on heading or doing something that if you had been instructed to do it, you definitely do it. But you should not volunteer because all it s going to do is clog up the frequency. Bob A: One thing that I ve noticed occasionally, it does not happen a lot. It does not particularly pertain to small aircraft. It is the not calling. They re still on the tower frequency or they are lost on what we call, Frequency Land, where they re on the wrong frequency for some reason. And this happens off major airports, and we start going back, and make a couple of calls, no acknowledgement, and you go back to the tower: Will you try so-and-so again. We re not talking to them. Well, in most environments, it is not a big deal. If you are at a smaller airport where you do not have a lot of vertical airspace to work with, and you ve just tied up 2000 feet. But we re not sure if the aircraft is going to be climbing on its own, we do not what is going to be happen because now we re sort of in that what we call NORDO radio -- with no radio -- what is going to happen to the airplane so now we start sterilizing airspace in and around what is going on. It does not happen a lot, but it does happen. Another thing too, is that if you are maybe a couple of three miles away from the airport, and you still have the tower. And they have not said: Contact departure, go back and say you are still on departure. Because maybe they forgot, too. It happens. Bob M: So, active listening is really -- push a point in the flight for making sure -- things are happening bang, bang on departure. John: A good rule of thumb is probably within a half mile to a mile off the end of the runway, if you are not switched over to departure, and the tower controller has not said for some reason, Stay with me because I have traffic or something like that, that is the good time to ask. Bob M: Okay, I guess asking for a re-route on climb out would not be a great deal? John: No, that is definitely not one of the things that you want to get involved with. The departure controller is busy. They are trying to get you climbing as quickly as possible to your requested altitude. You want to get up out of the low altitude turbulence or get on top, whatever. So wait a while before you start doing any negotiating. Bob M: Okay gentlemen, one of the questions submitted to the website concerned vectors after take off and then ATC clears you on course. What are my actions? Do I fly directly to the next way point? Do I intercept the airway? What are my actions when cleared on course after a vector? Copyright PilotWorkshops.com 10

12 John: Well Bob, one of the things that a controller is required to do any time a vector is issued -- the purpose of the vector has to be issued also. So, you should know what the vector is for. If the controller says, it is a vector for an intersection, if it is a vector for an airway, then you know. The big thing is, if in doubt, ask. The AIM says that, Resume all navigation is issued after the completion of the vector. You need to know what the vector is for. If in doubt, ask. Bob M: John, how about the situation where I filed GPS direct to a fix or destination? My clearance is via an airway and in departure, I am again cleared direct. Why the confusion? Why the run around? Can you explain any of this to us? John: Sure. Well Bob, as we talked about earlier, there are routes. The computer software will normally assign a route based upon the departure point and the destination or an en route fix. And the controller will normally start out with a lot of separation. We start out by putting an aircraft generally on a route, getting the aircraft established. And then you take a look at it, and you can chip away at it a little bit at it until you can issue the direct clearance. So, even though you ultimately got what you filed, for a lot of reasons the controller needs to start you off on a route that is going to have some structure to it. Because at the time that the clearance is issued and by the time that you take off, a lot of different things can happen. So you pretty much have to accept that you are probably going to get the short cut but you got to wait for the appropriate time. Bob A: And then there are some times -- I can just address this one route it s a route that it comes out of the Boston north satellite airports in Lawrence, Bedford, Beverly, and it goes into Bradley s airspace for maybe about 8 miles, and then you make a left turn and go down to Norwich. Sometimes, Providence who will eventually get this aircraft, will call and say, Send so-and-so direct Norwich. And we bypass Bradley. It saves a little bit of time in needless frequency change, quite honestly. So that s stuff that happens that you don t hear on the frequency, it happens with us internally, and it works out sometimes. So, there are things that are going on all the time that either we coordinate it, they coordinate it, somebody calls up and volunteers a short cut or something, and it works. So, that is probably something that might happen. Bob M: It all goes back to the big picture perspective. Once again, in our little airplane, it certainly creates confusion. But we have to understand that there is a bigger broader airspace system out there, much of which we do not have a broad knowledge of. So we need to exercise patience and go with the flow. Copyright PilotWorkshops.com 11

13 John: It s a dynamic situation. Sometimes, you can do it; sometimes you cannot. But if you filed that direct Norwich, as Bob said, you are not going to get it. But as controllers, as I said before, we like to get rid of airplanes as quick as you can. You just going to have to trust that the controllers are going to do the best they can on that. Bob A: And I can speak from the facility that I work at. Everybody is very aware of what it s costing to fly these airplanes, whether it is airlines or GA guys. If we can shorten up someone s day -- fine. Copyright PilotWorkshops.com 12