Riddle me this, pilots

"Stan Gosnell" wrote in message
...
"Chip Jones" wrote in
:

long story snipped...

Given this traffic scenario, would any of you guys have followed my
suggestion to turn to a 180 heading, or was I wasting my breath?

I think I would have turned in the direction you gave, since I couldn't
see
the traffic & presumably you could, at least on radar. You have a much
bigger picture than I do. Either he misunderstood you or he's a lot more
arrogant than I like to think I am. If he knows he's faster than the
converging traffic, a turn away could work, but how could he know that?
OTOH, if you really, really want him to turn to a heading, give it as an
instruction, not a suggestion.


The only problem about issuing the 180 heading as an instruction instead of
a suggestion is that I do not have separation responsibility between an IFR
and a VFR in this class of airspace. Because of that, I have to follow the
7110.65's provisions regarding safety alerts and traffic alerts, and the
7110.65 requires me to make a suggestion instead of taking control with an
instruction in this case. In fact, the 7110.65 even instructs me to use the
phraseolgy "immediately" if I offer a suggested course of action. Hence, if
your best course of action was to hold your present heading, and I suggested
this to you, I would actually have to key up and say something as ridiculous
as "N123, traffic alert [insert appropriate information here], suggest you
fly your present heading immediately for traffic!" Silly, ain't it?

The logic is that during an alert, the FAA doesn't want ATC issuing
*instructions* to a controlled aircraft that might cause it to collide with
an uncontrolled aircraft. Say I instructed a 180 turn just as the unknown
VFR made a radical turn to the west to avoid ( know it's very very
unlikely). In such a collision, the ATC instruction would likely be
identified as the *cause* of the collision and as the controller I'd be hung
for not following the book. This was drilled into me a long long time ago
when as a young pup I assigned ATC vectors to a VFR aircraft in distress
(IFR pilot in VFR-only airplane stuck on top in winter clag looking for a
friendly airport). Eventually I vectored the pilot down into an airport
safely and then got reamed by facility management for not *suggesting* the
vectors instead of assigning them. My chewing for that event went something
like this- "Good job Chip. The pilot called to say thanks- he wants to buy
you a beer. HOWEVER, assign ATC headings contrary to the 7110 again, you
moron, and you will be decertified...you could have killed that guy."

Chip, ZTL




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"Chip Jones" wrote in
:

The only problem about issuing the 180 heading as an instruction
instead of a suggestion is that I do not have separation
responsibility between an IFR and a VFR in this class of airspace.
Because of that, I have to follow the 7110.65's provisions regarding
safety alerts and traffic alerts, and the 7110.65 requires me to make
a suggestion instead of taking control with an instruction in this
case. In fact, the 7110.65 even instructs me to use the phraseolgy
"immediately" if I offer a suggested course of action. Hence, if your
best course of action was to hold your present heading, and I
suggested this to you, I would actually have to key up and say
something as ridiculous as "N123, traffic alert [insert appropriate
information here], suggest you fly your present heading immediately
for traffic!" Silly, ain't it?

Any similarity between logic and government regulations is purely
coincidental and completely unintended. But if you ever see me heading for
another aircraft, please point me somewhere else, whatever phraseology you
can come up with that will satisfy 7110.65. If we have a midair, you'll be
down there blameless in the FAA's eyes, but I'll come back and haunt you.
;-)

--
Regards,

Stan

Stan Gosnell wrote in message ...

Any similarity between logic and government regulations is purely
coincidental and completely unintended. But if you ever see me heading for
another aircraft, please point me somewhere else, whatever phraseology you
can come up with that will satisfy 7110.65. If we have a midair, you'll be
down there blameless in the FAA's eyes, but I'll come back and haunt you.
;-)

Stan,

Doesn't this sound like a good title for a thriller?

"The Haunted Controller"

Best,
Sydney

In article ,
Snowbird wrote:
Doesn't this sound like a good title for a thriller?

"The Haunted Controller"

While I don't know of any that actually involve ghosts, the concept of
"Controller spends the rest of his life thinking about people who
died because of something he thinks he did/didn't do" has been done,
well, to death.

"Airport" had one, "Turbulance" had one, and I'm sure there are lots
more...

Tina Marie
--
Life is like an analogy. http://www.tripacerdriver.com

If the Baron pilot ever gets a chance to read this, I suspect he might
follow ATC suggestions in the future. As for your question: I cannot think
of a time that I have not followed ATC suggestions for traffic avoidance.

Perhaps the Baron did seen the traffic.

"Chip Jones" wrote in message
...
The other day, I had an air traffic situation I wanted to bounce off of
the
group. Those of you who don't know me, I'm a Center controller down here
in
Atlanta. Here's the deal.

I was working a Center departure sector mixing Atlanta terminal departures
of every ilk and kin with enroute overflight traffic north of metro
Atlanta.
The sector weather was typical summer MVFR down here- lots of convection,
hazy, hot, humid etc with building thunderstorms here and there impacting
the sector. I had received my briefing from the previous controller and
had
just assumed responsibility for the airspace. Part of my technique is to
do
one more quick traffic scan *after* I take over (while the previous
controller is still at hand) to ensure we didn't fumble a situation while
we
changed the guard.

I am working a Baron IFR at 7000 flying from Chattanooga TN to Charleston
SC, on course heading of about 110 or so. Doing my scan, I see he has an
IFR off the nose about 15 miles at 6000 and another IFR guy crossing from
the NE at 8000 and 20 miles, so he is separated. I notice additional
traffic for this guy, a VFR indicating 6600 about six miles south, heading
about 055 or so, converging with him. I ask the previous controller if
she had issued traffic, she said she hadn't.

I made the traffic call.. "Baron 123, VFR traffic one to two o'clock, six
miles, northeast bound converging, altitude indicates six thousand six
hundred." The response I get is "Baron 123 is IMC, no contact."

I make a few unrelated routine calls to other traffic, keeping an eye on
this VFR target. His Mode C indicates that he is in a climb, and the
conflict alert activates (both data blocks begin to flash). I make
another
call at four miles. "Baron 123, your traffic now two o'clock, four miles,
northeast bound, altitude indicating six thousand niner hundred VFR,
converging right to left." The Baron responds "123 is IMC, no contact."
The situation now has my undivided attention.

At three miles converging (next update), the traffic is indicating 7000.
The next update, the traffic is still at 7000. This guy is flying VFR
where
one of my IFR's is IMC. I swing into alert mode. The target slashes are
a
mile long each and the radar display is delayed a bit from actual position
so these guys are getting close and closing fast. The Baron needs to yank
it right most ricky tic and get behind this guy.

In the most professionally bored voice I can muster, I key up and say
"Baron
123, traffic alert, traffic two o'clock, two miles converging from the
right
indicating 7000, suggest you turn right heading 180 immediately." The
Baron
pilot says "We're turning left to 090, no contact." I then watch as the
Baron swings into a left turn, prolonging the collision vector another
minute. His left turn away from the traffic puts him wing high with
closing
traffic off the right side. The Baron also descends four hundred feet
during the maneuver as the targets merge. To me, this looks remarkably
like
a TCAS maneuver because of the altitude change. I key up and say "N123,
are
you TCAD equipped, do you have traffic avoidance avionics?" He gives me a
curt "Negative, we do not have the traffic." The targets have merged
thanks
to the left turn, and I cannot distinguish the one from the other.
Anything
I say now about the traffic would be a dangerous guess because I have lost
the flick between these two aircraft. Instead of responding to the Baron,
I
issue a vector to the IFR traffic at 6000 to get him away from Baron 123
(who is now well below assigned IFR altitude). At the next position
update,
I have tail to tail between the baron and the VFR. I tell the Baron,
"Traffic no factor, maintain 7000." He responds "We never saw him..."
[The
unknown SOB in the VFR remains at 7000 for the next fifty miles- his
profile
never changed and I have every reason to believe that he never saw the
IFR,
IMC Baron].

My question for the group is about the Baron pilot's decision to disregard
my suggestion to yank it towards the traffic and instead to turn away from
him. From a controller's perspective, the quickest way to achieve "Oh
Sh*t"
lateral separation with crossing traffic is to aim one airplane right at
the
other. The idea is that as both aircraft are moving through space, the
maneuvering aircraft is steering for a point where the traffic *used* to
be
but no longer is. Once the nose of the turning aircraft swings through
his
traffic's vector, every additional second buys additional separation.
When
we do this with IFR traffic, we call this a "Wimpy Crossover" or a "Bubba
Turn". If an aircraft turns away from conflicting crossing traffic, every
additional second of turn sees the targets get closer until either they
merge or else they *finally* get to the point of course divergence. The
closer the targets are when an away turn is initiated, the less effective
an
"away" turn is.

Given this traffic scenario, would any of you guys have followed my
suggestion to turn to a 180 heading, or was I wasting my breath?

Chip, ZTL

"Chip Jones" wrote:
Here's the deal.

An interesting choice of words :-)

In the most professionally bored voice I can muster, I key up and say "Baron
123, traffic alert, traffic two o'clock, two miles converging from the right
indicating 7000, suggest you turn right heading 180 immediately."
[...]
Given this traffic scenario, would any of you guys have followed my
suggestion to turn to a 180 heading, or was I wasting my breath?

Hard to say for sure, but I can offer a few insights from my own
experiences. As a general rule, if the controller says, "immediately",
I put my life in his hands, follow orders, and ask questions later.

I've only once heard the phrase "traffic alert". I was IFR, the
controller was not talking to the other guy. It was not solid IMC, but
there was plenty of IMC around. I can only guess the other guy was not
legal VFR.

In this case, the controller did not issue a suggested heading. My
response was to turn 90 degrees away from the direction the traffic was
being called. I can certainly see your point where turning directly
into the traffic would have put me behind him, but that wasn't my
instinctive reaction.

I suspect your traffic call may have been by the book, but on the other
hand, it was probably too verbose to really be useful to the pilot. I'm
guessing that with each successive traffic call leading up to the alert,
the pilot was getting increasingly antsy about the unseen traffic, and
already working out an escape plan -- "bad stuff to the right, I gotta
get left, away from the danger". All it took was hearing the words
"traffic alert" to trigger that plan into action.

I just timed how long it took me to calmly read the above clearance.
Seven seconds between "traffic alert" and "heading 180". At standard
rate, the guy's already 20 degrees into his left turn before he knows
you want him to turn right (and I'm not sure I would limit myself to
standard rate in response to a traffic alert). More than the physics of
changing heading, consider the human factors -- he's already made a
decision and acted on it. He's already made the mental leap from
obeying instructions to acting on his own. It's not going to be easy to
get him back into the fold quickly.

My guess is, by-the-book or not, a better way to say it might have been,
"Barron 123, traffic alert, immediate left turn, heading 180". Get it
right up front what you want the guy to do.

I fully understand the reason the book wants the phrasing the way it
does. It's the PIC's decision, and the controller is just feeding the
PIC information which will let the PIC make an informed decision. The
problem is, I don't think it works that way in real life. It's hard
enough working CPA problems (Closest Point of Approach; do they call it
that in the ATC world?) looking at a screen or a plotting sheet. It's
damn near impossible in your head with nothing better than an O'Clock
traffic call, some dubious WCA, an unknown speed and cardinal heading on
the target, and no formal training.

PIC-correctness, legality, and liability issues aside, the fact is the
controller is the one with the best picture of what's going on, and it
makes the most sense for the controller to take charge and issue an
unambigious instruction, with no extraneous information to get in the
way of communicating the one thing you really want to communicate: which
way to turn.

It's a pity there's no mechanism to plan stuff like this a little
further in advance. At the 5-mile point, it would be nice if I could
hear, "Hold current heading for now. If you don't see him in another 3
miles, I'm going to turn you left to pass behind him". Does "the book"
allow for such a conversation?

My other hobby is racing sailboats. A very important part of the sport
is judging crossing situations. I'm here, you're there. I'm on this
heading and speed, you're on that heading and speed. Will I cross in
front of you? Will you cross in front of me? There's often a big
tactical advantage to me crossing in front (as opposed to changing
heading to make sure I cross behind), so there's a lot of incentive to
learn how to judge these things closely.

You don't want a surprise. If we're not sure of the crossing situation,
we want to have a plan as far in the future as we can as to what we'll
do if it gets to the decision point and it's still not clear we can make
it across the other guy's bow. That way, when the time comes, I don't
have to explain what Plan-B is, we just have to tell the crew that
Plan-B is what we're doing.

Think about what was going on from the pilot's perspective. You kept
telling him, "Something bad might be happening soon. I know the best
way to deal with it, but I won't tell you what it is yet. Don't worry,
though, at the last possible second I'll clue you in on the plan and
then expect you to react immediately".

Well, anyway, that's my take on it. Other people will probably have
different opinions.

"Roy Smith" wrote in message
...
"Chip Jones" wrote:
Here's the deal.

An interesting choice of words :-)

Ya well, as we say in Class E between IFR's and VFR's, "no dent, no deal".


Hard to say for sure, but I can offer a few insights from my own
experiences. As a general rule, if the controller says, "immediately",
I put my life in his hands, follow orders, and ask questions later.

I've only once heard the phrase "traffic alert". I was IFR, the
controller was not talking to the other guy. It was not solid IMC, but
there was plenty of IMC around. I can only guess the other guy was not
legal VFR.

I don't routinely have to issue traffic alerts either. Usually this sort of
call eventually results in "traffic in sight, thanks Center".



In this case, the controller did not issue a suggested heading. My
response was to turn 90 degrees away from the direction the traffic was
being called. I can certainly see your point where turning directly
into the traffic would have put me behind him, but that wasn't my
instinctive reaction.

I agree it is counter intuitive, and no matter what the controller is safely
on the ground regardless of where the pilot ends up. Not trying to be
cynical, either.


I suspect your traffic call may have been by the book, but on the other
hand, it was probably too verbose to really be useful to the pilot. I'm
guessing that with each successive traffic call leading up to the alert,
the pilot was getting increasingly antsy about the unseen traffic, and
already working out an escape plan -- "bad stuff to the right, I gotta
get left, away from the danger". All it took was hearing the words
"traffic alert" to trigger that plan into action.

Thanks for the insight Roy- I follow you.


I just timed how long it took me to calmly read the above clearance.
Seven seconds between "traffic alert" and "heading 180". At standard
rate, the guy's already 20 degrees into his left turn before he knows
you want him to turn right (and I'm not sure I would limit myself to
standard rate in response to a traffic alert).

I'm betting that's exactly how it went down. I did not observe the Baron's
maneuver until well after it began, so I can't really judge when it began.
I didn't even catch the altitude bust until a couple of updates later.
You're right, he was probably ready to execute a maneuver as soon as he got
the TA.

More than the physics of
changing heading, consider the human factors -- he's already made a
decision and acted on it. He's already made the mental leap from
obeying instructions to acting on his own. It's not going to be easy to
get him back into the fold quickly.

Well the PIC was definitely decisive in the event. He didn't bandy any
words, and it was clear that he was set on the left turn because he didn't
hesitate one instant when he told me he was turning left.


My guess is, by-the-book or not, a better way to say it might have been,
"Barron 123, traffic alert, immediate left turn, heading 180". Get it
right up front what you want the guy to do.


That's good advice. I'll put that in the bag of tricks.


I fully understand the reason the book wants the phrasing the way it
does. It's the PIC's decision, and the controller is just feeding the
PIC information which will let the PIC make an informed decision. The
problem is, I don't think it works that way in real life. It's hard
enough working CPA problems (Closest Point of Approach; do they call it
that in the ATC world?) looking at a screen or a plotting sheet. It's
damn near impossible in your head with nothing better than an O'Clock
traffic call, some dubious WCA, an unknown speed and cardinal heading on
the target, and no formal training.

I can't even imagine. We don't call it CPA. We call it Point of
Convergence down here. Dunno if that is FAA standard.


PIC-correctness, legality, and liability issues aside, the fact is the
controller is the one with the best picture of what's going on, and it
makes the most sense for the controller to take charge and issue an
unambigious instruction, with no extraneous information to get in the
way of communicating the one thing you really want to communicate: which
way to turn.

No doubt about that. I will point out that when I suggest something on
frequency like in this event, I do use the command voice. I don't hesitate
on the radio when I am working airplanes. The only difference in my
transmission between a suggestion and an instruction is the word "suggest".
Otherwise I try to make it sound calm but imperitive.


It's a pity there's no mechanism to plan stuff like this a little
further in advance. At the 5-mile point, it would be nice if I could
hear, "Hold current heading for now. If you don't see him in another 3
miles, I'm going to turn you left to pass behind him". Does "the book"
allow for such a conversation?

If you ask for it, certainly. And I have been known to issue timely ATC
instructions to IFR aircraft to avoid VFR aircraft in Class E, which is
stretching the rules but can be justified as "good judgement". I find it
easier to do this between a known VFR and IFR rather than between an IFR and
an unknown intruder.

In the actual event though, I did not recognize that this particular
situation was developing into a close call until after it was going down.


[snipped]


Think about what was going on from the pilot's perspective. You kept
telling him, "Something bad might be happening soon. I know the best
way to deal with it, but I won't tell you what it is yet. Don't worry,
though, at the last possible second I'll clue you in on the plan and
then expect you to react immediately".

Well, I can see how the pilot could have that perspective. However, I
truely didn't know the best way to deal with it (south vector) until about
four miles because the VFR was maneuvering vertically according to his mode
C. I was banking that the VFR and the IFR would see and avoid if I only
gave the IFR a few good traffic calls. (Wrong!) This event occurred on a
Sunday around 1300L in Class E about 50 miles NE of ATL. This airspace sees
an awful lot of unknown VFR's because it is convenient to the Atlanta
terminal area, is outside of Tracon airspace (and the Class B rings) and is
a good place for the various flights schools at the satellite fields like
RYY, LZU, 47A and PDK to conduct flight training without getting a KingAir
or Citation enema. (You can't swing a dead cat inside the terminal area
without hitting a VFR target on a Sunday afternoon). I could have vectored
the Baron early "for traffic" only to have this unknown VFR swing back
around towards Atlanta and right at him or something.


Well, anyway, that's my take on it. Other people will probably have
different opinions.

No doubt, but as always I do appreciate your take.

Chip, ZTL




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"Chip Jones" wrote in message

My question for the group is.....

I was taught long ago that when a controller uses the word "immediate",
compliance should be thus. I still believe that to be good policy. Too bad
you couldn't nick the guy for disregarding.

Regards,

John Gaquin
B727, B747

i'd make both file a report with the ATC manager - I think FAR's say
something about how even though a rule had not been broken (or maybe it had)
if you have both N#'s you can just request them to file a report (or next
time)

Matthew


"John Gaquin" wrote in message
...

"Chip Jones" wrote in message

My question for the group is.....

I was taught long ago that when a controller uses the word "immediate",
compliance should be thus. I still believe that to be good policy. Too
bad
you couldn't nick the guy for disregarding.

Regards,

John Gaquin
B727, B747

In article ,
Chip Jones wrote:

In the most professionally bored voice I can muster, I key up and say "Baron
123, traffic alert, traffic two o'clock, two miles converging from the right
indicating 7000, suggest you turn right heading 180 immediately."

Why did it get that far? If I'm the Baron I'm thinking, "I can't see
the traffic, I won't see the traffic in IMC, why is this guy waiting
for me to spot this plane?" If you *believed* that he was really in
the soup, why not just pretend the VFR target was a lost-comms IFR
guy and gotten the Baron out of the way?

Plus if two aircraft are 2 miles apart and you turn one 90 degrees,
by the time the turn is completed they will have both covered a mile.
My mental image of this is that you're turning a situation where the
two course lines would converge to a sharp point into a situation
where they would converge in a nice rounded corner.

--
Ben Jackson

http://www.ben.com/