Hi all,Hope everyone is doing well.I came across a great link on the VATSIM-ZLA forum (www.laartcc.org) regarding real world incidents related to the RNAV procedures out in Las Vegas.Sort of makes you appreciate the amount of work that we all have to do while flying single pilot IFR in our 767's. As some of you may know - Las Vegas has changed their procedures 3-4 times in the past few years and IMHO all it has done is REALLY confuse all of our fellow VATSIM pilots out there.Looks as if we in the virtual world are not alone.http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/report_sets/rnav.pdfIan ElchitzCalgary, AB

Ian,an interesting read. It certainly highlights some of the problems faced by Flight Crews and ATC at LAS. Part of the problem seems to be MIXED MODE RUNWAY OPS, with both the 19's and 25's being offered at various late stages for Departures or Arrivals.

sorry, my mistake:)

Ian,This same kind of crap was happening about a year and a half ago up at KPHX when they tried to do all the RNAV DPs and STARs. There were like 20 something procedures, many of which were almost completely identical to the normal VOR radial versions of the procedures and they had all these wierd named fixes in real close to the airport etc... As far as I know, (been out of the ZAB loop for too long I suspect) the CHEZZ2.DRYHT is still the only RNAV procedure being used up there because the TRACON controllers banned all the other ones after the incidents...Ryan

Interesting to note that many (not all) of these incidents were preceeded by last minute local ATC changes to the arrival / departure...perhaps the problem is not entirely the frequency of procedure changes at KLAS and/or crew error, but rather the last minute nature of the ATC changes causing a 'rush' to re-program the FMC/Nav Aids and/or re-orientate (aka - a distraction). Perhaps ATC should be prohibited from making -last minute- ammendments to a procedure -that a flight has already been cleard to fly- unless, of course, absolutely necessary? A delay(s) may result, but better to delay/hold the flight rather than cause the last minute rush. One pilot even commented he would gladly hold until 'they' get the TFC situatiuon sorted out rather than rush an approach/runway set up/execution.Just my uninformed, armchair critic's 2 cents worth.Rob.PS - BTW - next time some non-creative, 2D thinking - VATSIM ATC gives me a '360 degree spin for traffic' (instead of vectors/speed/altitude alteration), I will not "let them push me around" - quote from the reports cited above :-) I make this comment as it seems to be getting more common for controllers taking the 'easy way out' with 360's. Over many years of listening to the scanners, I have never heard ATC (save for GA at small aiports) give a jet aircraft pilot a 360 for spacing...it is usually a HOLD or it's vectors / speed changes for traffic. I feel better now.Rob.

Rob,what you say at the end about vectoring on Vatsim is so true. A while back at work,2 aircraft were making visual approaches, and the 2nd didn't have enough spacing and asked for an orbit for spacing.It was night, 1st a/c was 737 2nd was A320. ATC told the A320 pilot Not Permitted, and to fly the missed approach procedure and get vectored back around. No doubt on Vatsim you would have got your 360 orbit.

i have heard it, yet it was a EGF320 out of ORD with an emergency... they were losing control of the plane and had trouble getting good attitudes therefore they were too high so they asked a 360, ATC approved(of course)Cheers

Rob,I have to bite. I think that in the majority of cases - last minute changes for arrival runways or approach types are due to the overwhelming traffic levels - and the need to get people in as quickly as possible and on time.There is no doubt that the workload skyrockets - but shouldn't the two guys up front be ready to deal with this sort of thing?A delay(s) may result, but better to delay/hold the flight rather than cause the last minute rushI don't think I've EVER encountered a situation where the PIC of ACA856 put safety for his PAX ahead of being on time. MUHAHAHAHA. The next time I have a last minute change or a tight situation for you - I'll be sure to stick you in a hold - LOLOLOLOL.In all seriousness though - when I read that bit by the pilot who said he's rather hold while they fix their issues - it makes me feel good to see pilots who think that way.Finally - regarding the 360's on VATSIM. I'm going to try and defend the practice from the ATC perspective before I dump all over it. Let's keep in mind that many of the controllers on VATSIM are not used to heavy traffic situations or aircraft in tight proximity with one another. Many of us panic when aircraft get within 20 nm of each other and the resulting inexperience in both handling tight traffic and getting yourself out of it is for the controller to issue a 360 degree turn.This entire thing is exacerbated by pilots asking controllers about traffic 22 miles at their 3, opposite direction and level 3000' above. When all the pilots start trying to get the controllers to point out traffic like that (I'd tell the guy to take a hike) they end up getting jumpy about the pilot's proximity to others.Now that I've tried to explain it from the controllers perspective - I'll dump on all that I've said. Most of the time extra separation can easily be accomplished by using speed control, step down descents, a series of 30 degree vectors, or any combination of them all. I'm not sure why people constantly issue these 360's or why they get all nervous when two guys are on final 10nm apart (I've always wished for a 747 to stick between them at that point ).My PledgeI hereby pledge to you Rob aka ACA856 to never give you a 360 for added separation - and instead to always keep you as close as legally possible for your approaches with other traffic in order to highten your excitement as well as my own.Hey wait - I already do that.Now after re-reading this post I realize that I am merely rambling. I've got a 4 day weekend coming up here and I am hoping to have my "cockpit" set up again Friday afternoon so that I can take to the skies once again in my beloved PIC and again terrorize VATSIM controllers.come on clock - tick-tock me back home.Ian.

Yes I quite agree I mean what's the point of being treated like sheep. What's the point of going abroad if you're just another tourist carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Coventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors, complaining about the tea - "Oh they don't make it properly here, do they, not like at home" - and stopping at Majorcan bodegas selling fish and chips and Watney's Red Barrel and calamares and two veg and sitting in their cotton frocks squirting Timothy White's suncream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh 'cos they "overdid it on the first day. And being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellvueses and Continentales with their modern international luxury roomettes and draught Red Barrel and swimming pools full of fat German businessmen pretending they're acrobats forming pyramids and frightening the children and barging into queues and if you're not at your table spot on seven you miss the bowl of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup, the first item on the menu of International Cuisine, and every Thursday night the hotel has a bloody cabaret in the bar, featuring a tiny emaciated dago with nine-inch hips and some bloated fat tart with her hair brylcreemed down and a big arse presenting Flamenco for Foreigners. And then some adenoidal typists from Birmingham with flabby white legs and diarrhoea trying to pick up hairy bandy-legged ** waiters called Manuel and once a week there's an excursion to the local Roman Remains to buy cherryade and melted ice cream and bleeding Watney's Red Barrel and one evening you visit the so called typical restaurant with local colour and atmosphere and you sit next to a party from Rhyl who keep singing "Torremolinos, torremolinos" and complaining about the food - "It's so greasy isn't it?" - and you get cornered by some drunken greengrocer from Luton with an Instamatic camera and Dr. Scholl sandals and last Tuesday's Daily Express and he drones on and on about how Mr. Smith should be running this country and how many languages Enoch Pow ell can speak and then he throws up over the Cuba Libres. And sending tinted postcards of places they don't realise they haven't even visited to "All at number 22, weather wonderful, our room is marked with an 'X'. Food very greasy but we've found a charming little local place hidden away in the back streets where they serve Watney's Red Barrel and cheese and onion crisps and the accordionist plays 'Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner'." And spending four days on the tarmac at Luton airport on a five-day package tour with nothing to eat but dried BEA-type sandwiches and you can't even get a drink of Watney's Red Barrel because you're still in England and the bloody bar closes every time you're thirsty and there's nowhere to sleep and the kids are crying and vomiting and breaking the plastic ash-trays and they keep telling you it'll only be another hour although your plane is still in Iceland and has to take some Swedes to Yugoslavia before it can load you up at 3 a.m. in the bloody morning and you sit on the tarmac till six because of "unforeseen difficulties", i.e. the permanent strike of Air Traffic Control in Paris - and nobody can go to the lavatory until you take off at 8, and when you get to Malaga airport everybody's swallowing "enterovioform" and queuing for the toilets and queuing for the armed customs officers, and queuing for the bloody bus that isn't there to take you to the hotel that hasn't yet been finished. And when you finally get to the half-built Algerian ruin called the Hotel del Sol by paying half your holiday money to a licensed bandit in a taxi you find there's no water in the pool, there's no water in the taps, there's no water in the bog and there's only a bleeding lizard in the bidet. And half the rooms are double booked and you can't sleep anyway because of the permanent twenty-four-hour drilling of the foundations of the hotel next door - and you're plagues by appalling apprentice chemists from Ealing pretending to be hippies, and middle-class stockbrokers' wives busily buying identical holiday villas in suburban development plots just like Esher, in case the Labour government gets in again, and fat American matrons with sloppy-buttocks and Hawaiian-patterned ski pants looking for any mulatto male who can keep it up long enough when they finally let it all flop out. And the Spanish Tourist Board promises you that the raging cholera epidemic is merely a case of mild Spanish tummy, like the previous outbreak of Spanish tummy in 1660 which killed half London and decimated Europe - and meanwhile the bloody Guardia are busy arresting sixteen-year-olds for kissing in the streets and shooting anyone under nineteen who doesn't like Franco. And then on the last day in the airport lounge everyone's comparing sunburns, drinking Nasty Spumante, buying cartons of duty free "cigarillos" and using up their last pesetas on horrid dolls in Spanish National costume and awful straw donkeys and bullfight posters with your name on "Ordoney, El Cordobes and Brian Pules of Norwich" and 3-D pictures of the Pope and Kennedy and Franco, and everybody's talking about coming again next year and you swear you never will although there you are tumbling bleary-eyed out of a tourist-tight antique Iberian airplane...Daryl ShuttleworthDS 3339http://vatsim.pilotmedia.fi/statusindicato...tor=OD1&a=a.jpg

Thank you. And now for something completely different...

Thanks for clearing that up :).Cheers,Gosta.http://www.hifisim.com/images/as2betateam.jpg

Sound's like random drug testing might be in order at KLAS ATC.

Sounds more like DS wouldn't be passing any drug testing random or anything scheduled in less than 6 months!

Seems to me, that DShutt wants to be the new Ferd Berful....Regards, Roger