FSS vs VFR Roles, Responsibilities, Paychecks

[SierraPoppa]

I work at a 60k movement airport and have had over 300 movements in an hour.

???

Have to agree with lilfssister. I seriously doubt a 300 movement hour at almost any airport let alone one that only runs 60,000 in a year.

300 movements in one hour equates to 5 movements per minute or one every 12 seconds. In today's world of ATC that is just not possible.

In the late 70's I worked an airport that did 241,000 movements a year (YBW) and we never ever came close to 300 movements per hour, even without the restrictions that have been put in place over the years.

I left ATC in 1999 and it was impossible to do those types of numbers then so I doubt that you could do them today.

The rest of your post was reasonably good, too bad you had to resort to a little hyperbole at the start and ruin your credibility.

[grimey]

Would it be a reasonnable idea to look into "seasonal" tower services in some of those sites?

Not really. Alot of the job has to do with familiarity with the area, doing a complete staffing change every 6 months won't allow for that. It's also make everyone's life hell, having to move twice a year.

[scrambled_legs]

sorry my mistake, I meant 300 in a 16 hour day. My busiest hour was around 60 movements. Towers have there peaks too, not only seasonal but daily. I misread the PG comment. How many movements do you get in a day/year at your unit?

An example of this is i had 5 fire fighting ( 3 air tractors and 2 CL415's)aircraft come off a fire 10 miles north all lined up on final for rwy 23. One aircraft inbound southeast and one from the north west. Got the inbounds fit on final into holes that i could see. Then to make matters worse a Saab inbound rom the south decides it would be best to land opposite rwy 05. All of a sudden 7 aircraft start spinning. Got everyone worked out so they didn;t go bang then got them all on the ground. Yes it can be difficult but well short of controlling and with the co-operation of the pilots you can do it efficiently and safely. Maybe controlling them would have been more efficient but it still works.

This is a prime example of why a control tower is more efficient and safer than an FSS. The Saab requests rwy 05, you say unable. How exactly is it that you had 7 guys within 3 miles final spinning, without it being inefficient or unsafe. Either your perception of distance is skewed or you had a disaster waiting to happen.

All itinerant aircraft are the easiest to deal with, especially with the same types (air tractors and CL415's). They can all stick to each others tails and go the same speed. It ends up being a formation of one but add a couple of jets and it turns into a gong show. It takes the avg jet 3 minutes from 10 miles out to touch down. It takes a cessna 3 minutes to turn base, do a touch and go and get airborn. You let your circuit traffic get to far out on the downwind with a bunch of jets lined up and your going to have to work your ass off to recover. Giving adviseries would not be able to safely solve this situation.

As far as the comment about FSS being seasonal work, welcome to ATS in general. The only units that get fairly consistent traffic throughout the year are the large internationals and even they get moderate peaks.

Sierra Pappa... 240k at YBW??? Wow that must have been fun to watch. The tower I'm at has gotten pretty slow over the last 20 years. It used to be one of the busiest in Canada and we still have all the left over tools from those days, so when it gets hopping we can run it tight and if an aircraft waits more than 2min. on a taxiway before departure, its probably because he's waiting on the back end. I wish we were back at your levels, it'd make the day go faster.

[bigfssguy]

sorry my mistake, I meant 300 in a 16 hour day. My busiest hour was around 60 movements. Towers have there peaks too, not only seasonal but daily. I misread the PG comment. How many movements do you get in a day/year at your unit?

I'm in YYQ now and we only do about 11,000 mind numbingly slow movements a year. My example was from YTH during the summer of 2003. That year was a little bit busier with 45K that year if i remember correctly. It is a lot slower now with certain aircraft operators going under.

This is a prime example of why a control tower is more efficient and safer than an FSS. The Saab requests rwy 05, you say unable. How exactly is it that you had 5 guys within 3 miles final spinning, without it being inefficient or unsafe. Either your perception of distance is skewed or you had a disaster waiting to happen.

They were strung out over probably 6 miles actually. Sorry never explained myself enough. As for a disaster no not really. Situations like this happen almost daily, the FSS just learn to deal with them. They aren't unsafe, not pretty at times but still reasonably safe. Like i said they happen all the time at stations all across the country and no major disasters happen (Me knocking on wood). One of our jokes has always been if a controller ever saw how close the planes get they would have a heart attack, SL you have just proven our joke! We have even had IFR controllers watching on the YTH radar call us up and comment on how close they all were. It just comes with comfort, you learn to deal with it and it just becomes normal after a while.

[SierraPoppa]

Sierra Pappa... 240k at YBW??? Wow that must have been fun to watch. The tower I'm at has gotten pretty slow over the last 20 years. It used to be one of the busiest in Canada and we still have all the left over tools from those days, so when it gets hopping we can run it tight and if an aircraft waits more than 2min. on a taxiway before departure, its probably because he's waiting on the back end. I wish we were back at your levels, it'd make the day go faster.

YBW is a very different place these days and runs siginificantly less traffic too but it is more of a mix rather than mostly flying training.

After the drop in traffic of the early eighties down to a low of around 108,000 in 1988 things picked up to around 160,000 in 2001 then dropped again to 120,000 in 2004 and last year climbed back to around 134,000.

I would guess that with the limitations in how clearances are issued and phraseology it would be impossible to run 240,000 at YBW today. I also think the guys out there are a lot smarter nowadays and limit the number of aircraft in the circuit to a more manageable figure instead of the "let her buck" attitude we tended to have back then.

Most of that traffic back then tended to be from 8:00am to 5:00pm so the day shift went fast but evenings after 5:00pm were a drag. It wasn't unusual on Saturdays or Sundays to run anywhere from 1,000 to 1,100 movements and most of them were in the hours I mentioned.

I'll tell you taking over the tower position when you went in on evenings was a real shock to the system, talk about going from zero to sixty in nothing flat, now that was an adrenalin rush. Back then we thought it was fun but after a quad bypass in 1996 and an angioplasty in 2003 I now have a different take on it.

Cheers
SP

[scrambled_legs]

Actually there was 34,296 movements in Thompson in 2003. Yes it would scare the shit out of me to see how close the aircraft fly in an FSS with no control. That's the reason that the FSS can't check out here. They just let things go and hope for the best instead of keeping them close together and controlling the situation. It's not that the aircraft are close together, its that the aircraft are that close together with no control.

SP, the old guys here keep telling me the stuff that they used to pull to run traffic back in the day. Now that we have everything spelled out in a rule book, they say they can't push half the traffic that they used to.

[bigfssguy]

Actually there was 34,296 movements in Thompson in 2003.

There were 10K movements off the river (3 nm south) and two adjacent helipads(2 1/2 and 6 nm south respectively) that don't get counted in those stats. Now that 88's are added again we will get credit for those movements. 34K was just the movements from the areodrome itself.

Not being arguementitive just don't want to loook like i'm lying to everyone.

[scrambled_legs]

hahaha... ok well if we're talking 88's then I work in a 100,000 movement airport.

You had 34,296 movements of which 315 were jets. You had very few medium aircraft although you don't have to apply wake turbulence seperation so it doesn't matter, they were all relitavely the same speed and all landing on one strip of pavement with only 1700 circuits.

The point being you say that you are a damn good FSS and I have no doubt that you are, as this is one of the busiest FSS units in Canada. Unfortunately being a damn good FSS does not make you a damn good controller. Any controller pushing this kind of traffic calling himself a damn good controller would be laughed at. You were at the top of your pool and the bottom of the tower pool. Yes there will be some similairities but when it comes to moving lots of traffic, you can't compare ATC to FSS and to say giving suggestions rather than controlling would produce better service is ludicris.

Whitehorse is probably the easiest tower in Canada and they're pushing 23,243 of which 8,600 were circuits, 2,646 were jets and numerous mediums with no radar. From a controller's standpoint, even though they have 10,000 less movements, I'd still say that their aircraft numbers present a more difficult scenario than Thompson does. Oh and ask them how many 88's they are missing from their float plane base, helicopters, water bombers and American's trasiting their zone.

[bigfssguy]

The point being you say that you are a damn good FSS and I have no doubt that you are, as this is one of the busiest FSS units in Canada. Unfortunately being a damn good FSS does not make you a damn good controller. Any controller pushing this kind of traffic calling himself a damn good controller would be laughed at. You were at the top of your pool and the bottom of the tower pool. Yes there will be some similairities but when it comes to moving lots of traffic, you can't compare ATC to FSS and to say giving suggestions rather than controlling would produce better service is ludicris.

I never once said i was a good controller, i never once said i wanted to be one or that i thought i could do control movements or that FSS is more efficient or busier or harder than any tower. I stated that they were totally different jobs but if push came to shove an FSS could slide into a slower tower and do the job. I never said it was going to happen or that i wanted it to happen. I will never say "suggest that one or the other is harder, i don't really care to be honest i do my job, you do yours we both get paid and go hoem for our wives to spend it. I don't pull out my johnson and start saying mine is bigger, i truly don't give a crap. Please don;t read any ulterior motives into my posts or that i'm a wanna be controller or i'm saying i'm better than anybody else. I just want to do my job and to hell with everyone else i have no beef with anyone. Case closed!

Ohh and by the way i found out that when i applied that i was near the top in all 3 pools IFR, VFR and FSS. They just offered me FSS first and i was laid off so i took the first opening............

[scrambled_legs]

woaaa... slow down. Wasn't this whole topic about how the lower grade towers could be changed to FSS in order to lower costs without any change to the service level of the user???

I'm not saying that my Johnson is bigger than yours, I'm simply saying that controlled airports are safer and more efficient than FSS. The one example that you gave me about a time when you had a lot of traffic sounds like a disaster. 7 aircraft spinning, all within 6 miles final and a SAAB landing opposite end. Your response that this happens daily and no-ones been killed yet (knock on wood) does not make me feel any better. If this happend in a tower, someone would be sitting in front of a board.

I was simply showing you that the 3 FSS units that have comparable or higher numbers to towers, don't really have the complexity that the low grade towers have. Yes the FSS in these 3 units may be able to handle the traffic at the bottom of the tower pole but from the sounds of it, it wouldn't be pretty. I would hate to be the guy in Ft Mac being told to keep these planes from running into each other but don't tell them what to do to keep from running into each other. In order to have a safe, orderly and expeditious flow you need one picture with one guy forcing that picture to be painted. Almost sounds like poetry . We should be talking about why there aren't towers being put into places like this with huge traffic jumps, not why the towers in place aren't being downgraded.

Have any regrets for taking the first opening, or do you like being bushed???

[bigfssguy]

Nope love it up north, people spend tens of thousands of dollars to come here and i get to live it. PLus i make almost 100K and my Fiance works for an airline up here so i get out all the time for next to nothing. I thought about transfering into ATC but the politics are too much for me. Most people check out on there merits alone but the few who get a bad or bitter OJI who thinks that "FSS can't do my job he's out of here" . Personally that scares me that someoen can wash them out for little or no reason. But that is for another Thread!

The situation i told you about was just fine, remember that you are looking at it from a controllers viewpoint. At no point was there anybody in terrible danger beyond the normal danger of flying a bus in 3D. This is commonplace in our world and happens all the time, if it was dangerous or unsafe then the company would step in and take steps to rectify it becasue remember we are only certified and we are working under the companies liability policy and they protect that more than there children.

Also when looking at numbers for workload is not a good way of looking at it. We have differnt rules and different ways of doing things. I might do 30 movements in an hour and be pretty busy where as a controller wouldn;t take his feet off the table for that but give him 60 in an hour and he is doing the same workload as the FSS and his 30 movements. Thats just an example i made up and by no way exact. I have heard that thru worload surveys and other company goodies that a busy FSS site has a comparable workload to an AI 2-3 tower. Now this isn't my assesment before anyone jumps down my throat i have heard it from management types. It sounds reasonable to me since we have different rules to better deal with different situations

I guess i'm saying that though we have very very different jobs we do have similar workloads it all depends on how the rules are being applied. And i really don;t believe you have to have a controller to be safe, yes for higher movement airports they need control but if you put a controller in YTH (since we are talking about it), he wouldn;t be any safer than the FSS just more bored! Since SL you love the stats, can you find stats that say YTH was safer as a Tower as opposed to an FSS? Never hear of anything but maybe there is something out there. In the 10 years it has been an FSS there have been no accidents other than equipment malfunctions and in the last 5 years i only know of 3 Fact finding boards.

[lilfssister]

It has, obviously (or NC's legal eagles would be worried about liability), been determined that a certain mix of traffic/complexity is safe using ATF/Unicom/FSS/Tower in all the airports in the country. Some that are one and should be another, have, in some cases been saved by politics from having their service changed. It's not up to any of us to decide what what should be where. It's up to the users (who don't always have the full picture, unfortunately) and whatever presentation our unions make in an official capacity at Level Of Service meetings (again, not always a 100% accurate view from the unions...they are trying to save jobs and their own bottom line). The process isn't perfect, but it is what we have to work with.

If you don't like the discipline of ATS you've chosen, put your time in, learn, and when able, apply for another.

[scrambled_legs]

well big guy, you had 3 AT8T and 2 CL415's and 2 itinerants doing orbits within 6 miles final. Since an air tractor takes between 1 and 2 miles turning radius and a CL415 around 3, please tell me how this was a safe situation. Did you have 500' seperation? did they have each other in sight (for this to be true, the CL415 second from the end at best would need to see 2 air tractors in front of him and 1 CL415 behind him.)? Did the "controller" look out the window and see that the situation was safe? Did the PPS's not touch? I'm running out of seperation standards but to have 5 aircraft within a mile of each other orbitting is not in any way a safe situation especially with 2 CL415's in the mix and when you have one within 3 mile's either side inbound. It sounds like this was a last minute decision as the front guy must have been no more than a mile final. How is it that you managed to pass traffic to seven aircraft within the 30 seconds that they all must have banked into a hard turn?

As far as complexity goes, it's 2 different ball games. You have your rules and procedures and we have ours. Yes I believe that you have more things that you have to do but we also have more things that we have to ensure such as seperation standards especially when considering IFR's and ADR.

Would YTH be safer as ATC than FSS? Yes, the situation you described would invlove 5 losses of seperation and a fact finding board. Just because you never had a fact finding board because the decisions were made by the pilots, doesn't make it a safe situation. You can break every sep loss rule in our book and not have a single fact finding board.

[lilfssister]

sorry my mistake, I meant 300 in a 16 hour day. My busiest hour was around 60 movements.

Just for chuckles...was that air only or ground and air and/or air and ground and clearance delivery?


editted to add: In a lot of cases, FSS is doing all of the above at the same time.

sorry my mistake, I meant 300 in a 16 hour day. My busiest hour was around 60 movements. Towers have there peaks too, not only seasonal but daily. I misread the PG comment. How many movements do you get in a day/year at your unit?

Have seen about 200-225 over 18 hours with one person doing it all.

[SierraPoppa]

I will agree that some towers you deserve that, Pearson, Trudeau, Vancouver, for example. But alot of the other towers have the numbers because they have 2-3 flight schools, and more private traffic giving them the circuit traffic movement, and I can tell you, a monkey can be trained to deal with circuit traffic.

You ignorant arrogant son of a bitch.

You really don't have a clue do you.

[lilfssister]

well big guy, you had 3 AT8T and 2 CL415's doing orbits within 6 miles final. Since an air tractor takes between 1 and 2 miles turning radius and a CL415 around 3, please tell me how this was a safe situation. Did you have 500' seperation? did you they have each other in sight (for this to be true, the CL415 second from the end at best would need to see 2 air tractors in front of him and 1 CL415 behind him.)...Just because you never had a fact finding board because the decisions were made by the pilots, doesn't make it a safe situation. You can break every sep loss rule in our book and not have a single fact finding board.

Not to nitpick, legs, but those rules don't apply so there was no loss of separation. I'm pretty sure those AT's and 415's probably fly a lot closer to each other when fighting a fire than standard ATC sep rules would allow and take responsibility for their own separation as they do in an MF environment.

[lilfssister]

I will agree that some towers you deserve that, Pearson, Trudeau, Vancouver, for example. But alot of the other towers have the numbers because they have 2-3 flight schools, and more private traffic giving them the circuit traffic movement, and I can tell you, a monkey can be trained to deal with circuit traffic.

You ignorant arrogant son of a bitch.

You really don't have a clue do you.

Much as I hate ATC support (oh, wait, that is part of my job, but in a different way ) I gotta agree with you SP

[scrambled_legs]

Not to nitpick, legs, but those rules don't apply so there was no loss of separation. I'm pretty sure those AT's and 415's probably fly a lot closer to each other when fighting a fire than standard ATC sep rules would allow and take responsibility for their own separation as they do in an MF environment.

That's exactly my point. The rules we have are developed to ensure a safe operation. When you can break 5 of my rules in one incident and claim it to be safe, you're not seeing the whole picture. When the 415's are fire fighting they have a birddog plane up acting as their controler, passing traffic telling them what to do and they have each other in sight. They would never have the planes spinning circles with overlapping paths and no clue what the other pilots are doing or where they are other than seeing the guy in front spin and start the spin themselves.

I don't know if you fly yourself but I used to fly in both busy uncontrolled airspace and controlled airspace and believe me that SAAB would be hearing from me. I've flown into Teterboro, Van Nuys, Pittsburgh, Las Vegas, Little Rock, Dallas Love, Ottawa, Boundary Bay, Victoria, Montreal, etc. etc. and I've never been in such a shit show as you just discribed. Those are some of the busiest airports in North America too. You had 5 medium sized aircraft and 2 itinerants all within 6 miles final spinning overlapping circles with no lateral, vertical, or visual seperation and you think its safe???? You don't seem to think it is a big deal but I bet you every pilot was talking about it afterwards. Why don't you ask the 250,000 movement Sierra Poppa if he would be concerned if he had 3 air tractors and 2 415's and 2 itinerants spinning in a line within 5 miles of each other and no time to pass traffic. When controllers spin aircraft they do it with control. The last guy would start orbiting first then the guy ahead of him then the guy ahead of him etc. and we'd ensure that the paths wouldn't overlap. Then when it was sorted out, we'd start the first guy out again, then the second guy etc. In your situation we'd never allow the SAAB to land opposite end.

Lilfss those numbers are strictly air movements as we don't count vehicle movements or 88's in our numbers and for 90% of that day I was working by myself on tower ground and clearance. To work a 200-250 movement day by yourself is common place. I was friends with some of the guys going through FSS and number for number you have to do a lot more talking, writing but as far as actually ensuring seperation or safe orderly efficient flow, that is up to the pilots. As I said before, talk to some of the guys that have crossed over 0/3 have made it here and it had nothing to do with the FSS stigma and everything to do with them not being able to control the situation rather then give adviseries.

[lilfssister]

Well I would hope said SAAB was written up (much as that will open up the WTF are FSS writing up people for? debate). Have had a similar situation, active runway opposite end of what someone decided they were going to use (4 acft using other end), and certainly was written up and acft crew using other end was fined.

And are you telling me that you worked a full shift on a 300 in 16 hour day with no breaks? Hard to believe, but if so I have to take your word for it. I'm talking one FSS working about 90-95% of that traffic on a 12 hour shift with no breaks.

editted to add: probably about 40% IFR traffic in there, and those are all air movements. Although we count them in workload, vehicle movements are not considered in staffing levels/grade, seems only air traffic counts.

[scrambled_legs]

no, no, we took breaks but there's generally only one person upstairs at a time and it's an 8 1/2 shift. The numbers are not what I personally worked but what we had total over the day. Our tower isn't difficult at all, it's on the low end of the pole. I'm just letting you know what we work not trying to lay claim to the Superman title like some people on here.

I can see how you would think the low end towers do nothing and get paid everything in comparison but that's not neccessarily true. They are very different jobs and I would never claim to be able to do yours but will say that ATC is a safer more efficient way to move traffic, hence all the seperation standards. That's why ATC operate the high density towers. FSS do much work that I don't do but their position is not designed for high density work and to have people claim that FSS can push traffic just as well or better than ATC is a joke. That's like saying a CARS operator is as safe and efficient as an FSS.

I agree with you about writing up the SAAB, what a bonehead move.