Turns out you don’t really need tower controllers. Works just fine without.
It’s interesting that all the pilots seem quite comfortable with untowered procedures, presumably because it happens to them at weekends when they go fly their RV6s. I wonder how it would work out elsewhere in the world?
It works in the US because the pilots there have been properly trained
It also helps that at somewhere like McCarran, everyone is transponding and everyone is ADS-B OUT equipped.
I want to see these guys landing there right now. If they do, I really hope somebody records it.
Commercial traffic at untowered (after tower operating hours) fields is not unheard of or even that out of the ordinary although on this scale maybe it is. I remember returning from doing night landings at another airport at KTTN while Frontier was arriving. They announced maybe every 5 miles from about 20 miles out. The 2 aircraft in front of me had time to land and taxi off, while I just made a big 360 on downwind as they landed.
I imagine the typical Air China pilot has never made a flight to an untowered airport (unless they have trained in the states).
Dimme wrote:
I want to see these guys landing there right now. If they do, I really hope somebody records it.
In several Kennedy Steve recordings the aircrew seem confused about the “cleared into the ramp thing”. Is it common in the US to have a separate ramp controller that the pilots are supposed to contact on their own accord separately from the ground controller — I mean without handover or coordination.
How do they do that without a radio operator telling each aircraft “19 in use, left hand circuit, QFE 1001” ??
johnh wrote:
presumably because it happens to them at weekends when they go fly their RV6s. I wonder how it would work out elsewhere in the world?
Well that’s the difference between a Euro ATPL and a US ATP. You can have the first with 140hrs in an integrated programme. The other requires 1500hrs. Not counting the copilots with MPLs.
Funnily, both cost about the same
I could have chosen to become an airline pilot, but I’m so glad I didn’t, seeing how it works in Europe.
Jujupilote wrote:
You can have the first with 140hrs in an integrated programme.
Not true. That would be a CPL. ICAO ATPL requires 1500 anywhere in the world.
Sorry, was emptying my airline-bashing bag I meant getting a seat in an Airbus/Boeing cockpit.
FYI, Airbus and ATR have introduced extra training for cadets from Asia, before starting the type rating course in Toulouse.