ATC Training

Members who want to control on a particular day should book it and looking at booking recently not many do and there are many slots available. I know that some airports are training airports and therefore less slots may be available.

My own thoughts are that you should book a maximum two hour slot and if no one else is booked after you,  carry on if you want to, or be prepared to handover  the slot If required by another member. If you want to control on consecutive days, don't block book, I suggest you look at the CTS booking daily and if the slot is available, book it. This has worked for me in the past without any problems, and curtesy always works wonders in solving booking requirements.

Should be able to book a maximum 90 mins slot at any given time on CTS calendar, controller can exceed the 90 mins shift over online if controller wishes to do so

I don't see any logic in restricting booking lengths. If bookings were restricted to a certain length, what's stopping controllers making two consecutive bookings? If a controller doesn't want to control for the full booking, then they can just log off, seems much easier that way.

On 30/01/2019 at 17:25, Tim Smith said:

Should be able to book a maximum 90 mins slot at any given time on CTS calendar, controller can exceed the 90 mins shift over online if controller wishes to do so

As Oliver mentioned, it is about 'excessive' bookings, and the term 'excessive' means different things for different aerodromes at different times. Controllers simply have to remember to be courteous when booking a position, and to make sure that they don't hold the position for themselves. Restricting bookings lengths could in this case be counter-productive, and still doesn't stop the controller from booking the same position multiple times throughout the week, which also counts as an excessive booking.

Edited January 31, 2019 by Tom Szczypinski

Is this actually a big problem?

From what I've seen everyone seems to be courteous and I've not noticed bad practise.

Restricting a length of a book or amounts of booking a seems unfair when at present it doesn't seem to be abused?

 

40 minutes ago, Joe Burberry said:

Is this actually a big problem?

From what I've seen everyone seems to be courteous and I've not noticed bad practise.

Restricting a length of a book or amounts of booking a seems unfair when at present it doesn't seem to be abused?

From my time in ATC, I can assure you that we get our fair share of tickets saying "so and so booked a yuge time plz delete". The vast majority of these cases are people who are unaware of the rule and they don't do it again after - I can't remember a case of someone doing it deliberately.

Thank you for the insight.

So at least it does sound rare.

Personally I don't agree with restricting all bookings to a set time, however with that you cannot tell people not to book for more than two hours for peak hours but can book 7 hours over night.

While there is no restrictions, continue as normal HOWEVER put some effort into ensuring pilots stay for their whole booked time online, and if not start restricting those controllers.

If Manchester is booked up on a Friday night between 5 - 7pm when you wan't to control for example, go and control at another airport. This is the problem with Vatsim UK the level of control is disproportionate, with guaranteed control usually at Manchester, Gatwick, Heathrow for example with other airport's forgotten about. 

Any one who is wiling to control for any length of time should be encouraged and embraced as long as they are online for the full time they have dedicated themselves too, encouragement should be made to controllers to learn more than one airport to increase the base coverage across the UK.