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Midweek Madness Ends


Ben Wright

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Hello Everyone,

 

After much consideration, the Marketing Team have decided that the weekly Midweek Madness events will not continue into October, thus Manchester Midweek Madness on the 29th of September will mark the final installment of the event for the foreseeable future.

When the event started in February 2020, we did not expect it would grow anywhere near as popular as it currently is. For those of you who were active on the Network prior to the pandemic, ATC coverage was thin during weekdays and traffic levels were nowhere near what they are today - 40 arrivals/departures would have been a lot for a Wednesday night! We had a relatively small group of controllers who logged on each week, and few positions needed to be opened. Fast forward 6-12 months and were reaching numbers far beyond the real world capacity, ground delays, enroute holding, and fuel diversions. We were rostering 10+ area splits, London and aerodrome coordinators, support controllers for approach and delivery, plus a dedicated planner frequency. This was CTP levels of staffing and organisation all for a weekly event! None of these positions had even existed a few months prior, but thanks to a lot of hard work on behalf of the Operations Department we found ourselves running Midweek Madness events smoother than ever.

Naturally this isn't something which could be sustained long term, gone were the days of putting together a roster in 15 minutes on a Tuesday evening, and the number of controllers required to open that many positions was far beyond what we normally had at our disposal. It came as no surprise then, that once the world started reopening we began to struggle for controllers, particularly at an area level. The changes we made to Midweek Madness in March were to try and increase variety and bring back some of the controllers who were no longer interested. Unfortunately this hasn't been effective, and this is why we have taken the decision to end the event after over a year and a half of (almost) continuous running.

I understand that some of you will be disappointed with this news as you may have become accustomed to flying and controlling in the UK on a Wednesday evening. We always strive to deliver the best events possible and we want to uphold the reputation our division has rightly achieved for delivering a top quality service on the Network. We feel that it is no longer possible to continue doing this, as stretching a small number of C1/3's over large positions for over 3 hours leads to over-congested frequencies, burnt out controllers, and a less enjoyable event for all.

Back in February 2020, there were only a handful of weekly events (Madrid Wednesday and Zurich Night spring to mind). Now you'll find a find an event every night of week in Europe so if you're a pilot don't worry; you'll still be spoilt for choice! The Marketing Team and I would like to personally thank all the people who have helped create new procedures, rosters, graphics, and livestream during the events. Not to brag but but the event even had it's own Youtube trailer! We hope everyone will enjoy our future events, and we look forward to hearing you all on the airwaves over the UK.

 

All the Best,

Ben, Loui, Tom, and Piers

(The Marketing Ladz)

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Dylan Cathrine

Posted

I remember sitting on the ground for 2 or so hours waiting for push one time at Gatwick. Those were the nights! Thanks to everyone who contributed to MWM in some way. 🙏

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A huge thank you to everyone who has played a part in making this event work, especially through the lockdowns. As we said above, so much hard work went into this…. streaming, rostering, briefs, controlling and much more. 
 

Hopefully we will now be in a position to run more events in our regular series. 
 

Loui

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David Etheridge

Posted

I can’t say I’m not disappointed but at the same time I can understand the reasons behind the decision seeing the same names every week and growing shift lengths. 
At the last Heathrow MWM I ended up controlling throughout the event due to lack of controllers and one or two no shows. I loved it but 4.5 hours controlling at any time is hard work, at a MWM much more so. 
For a lot of controllers, myself included, it was the only regular opportunity we had to control ‘an event’ with the associated levels of traffic that comes with it. 
Thank you to all the controllers and MWM organisers for their hard work over the past events and of course the great pilots we had an opportunity to control
 

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I would like to take a moment to say a MASSIVE thank you for the opportunities MWM has brought. Having the chance to regularly control a busy APP position was something I really didn't think was possible.

I think I can speak for many here, that MWM has helped a LOT in developing my skill set whilst providing a very fun environment.

Let's knock it out the park one last time this evening ✈️

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Menno Korthoff

Posted

As a newer pilot to flying on the network, the first few Wednesdays I flew into the UK were mindboggling. So much traffic, so many new procedures I had to learn on the fly, even sitting on the ground, waiting for my planned pushback, just listening to other frequencies and learning from everything. Midweek madness was amazing, I will definitely try to make this last one. 

Everyone involved, thank you. You've been amazing!

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I am most certainly gonna miss the 15 plane queue at the hold whilst trying to get everyone out as quick as possible on TWR. It was a good run! Hopefully it'll return in the future!!

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Proud to be a part of MWM and is truely something that will be missed throughout the community 😢

A huge thank you to:

  • The team in organising rosters, airport choices etc.
  • All ATC controllers for volunteering their time and effort
  • Pilots from around the world, especially those who endured hours of waiting either on the ground or in holds 😉 It's worth it...

 

Here's to the next adventure! 🍻

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MWM has been peak controlling for a lot of us, ever since I got my Gatwick Endorsement I've put in interest for it. It's been an amazing year and a class event, but I'm a bit lost on what to do on Wednesday's now!

Cheers to Marketing and Rostering for their week to week work on it.

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Been a pleasure running the runway camera, to watch and listen to planes arriving and departing at unreal levels and with such professionalism. 

Well done to all the organisers & controllers who give up their time every week to put it on, it will be missed!

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I remember saying to Loui and Ben back in the planning stages of MWM that a weekly event at Gatwick would never work.  Shows you how much I know!!

Thanks to the marketing team for making this an amazing series of events and to everyone who took part.  It's been one of the highlights of the Region's event calendar.

 

 

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Samuel Lefevre

Posted (edited)

RIP Midweek madness, quite literally ended in madness

 AYks2Yp.png

Edited by Samuel Lefevre
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Graham Drabble

Posted

A massive thank you to those who've controlled. Flying into busy, well managed, airspace is what VatSim's all about and MWM certainly provided that.

However, it's worrying that we're short of controllers, we've got a waiting list months long for all levels of people wanting to control and a training team getting people through training at an incredible rate and yet we still don't have enough controllers to run what was VatSim UK's premium event. Understanding why that is would be very interesting. Particularly sad to see the loss of the feature week, the opportunity to fly into smaller airports with full atc and other planes around was great. Not sure what the plans are for going forward but a last Wednesday at the month to a randomly picked (or rotated) airport would be awesome.

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Marco De Sanctis

Posted

A massive thank you to everyone. I remember having been on hold for 20+ minutes on my way to EGKK one evening! I'm sad to see this coming to an end, but since this is mainly due to life slowing getting back to normality, well, it's definitely better this way!

See you all in between FL300 and FL400 😉

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Zak Kilpatrick

Posted

Its a shame to see midweek madness come to an end, but what a brilliant event it has been.

Hopefully new doors will open.

Also, just for @Piers Austin-Foss
's sake, please can we add the last names to the signatures, it's all he seems to go by these days. 

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Ben Wright

Posted (edited)

On 30/09/2021 at 12:26, Graham Drabble said:

A massive thank you to those who've controlled. Flying into busy, well managed, airspace is what VatSim's all about and MWM certainly provided that.

However, it's worrying that we're short of controllers, we've got a waiting list months long for all levels of people wanting to control and a training team getting people through training at an incredible rate and yet we still don't have enough controllers to run what was VatSim UK's premium event. Understanding why that is would be very interesting. Particularly sad to see the loss of the feature week, the opportunity to fly into smaller airports with full atc and other planes around was great. Not sure what the plans are for going forward but a last Wednesday at the month to a randomly picked (or rotated) airport would be awesome.

Our worry was that having such a busy weekly event was contributing to the burnout that, particularly our area controllers, are experiencing. I know the ATC training team are having similar issues with mentors who've done a lot of mentoring over the past year and a half. Now we're all able to go out and enjoy ourselves a bit more, it's likely people are taking a bit of a break from VATSIM and rightly so! We plan on returning to a more sensible amount of events and we're confident that people will return with time.

Now MWM has gone, this frees up our calendar to run other events during weekdays for those controllers and pilots who aren't free during weekends. We always try and spread events out across the UK, so events at smaller airfields won't be going away any time soon!

Edited by Ben Wright
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Simon Laqueur

Posted

Sad to see that Midweek Madness is ending, however I fully get as to why.

Probably it is best to finish on a high before it goes down in the drink.

I just hope to find an event or two in lieu

A massive THANKS to all who were insane enough to do this!

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