Airways 2009 Main Trunk Pilot Survey Results - Tower summary

Tower services at Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch were surveyed.

Key : 1 is not good, 5 is good

Tower Services 2009

 

What aspects of our Tower services would you rate as meeting your expectations?
1
 Generally very good all round.
2
 No real issues here. Wellington tower are very good at their job.
3
 All aspects, especially accomodating training requirements in busy airspace. This helps our fuel budget and makes training more efficient.
4
 Don`t change anything. It`s working fine.
5
 General demeanour and attitude of tower controllers is excellent
6
 N/A
7
 LVOP's working well

What aspects of our Tower services do you believe could be improved?
1
 Consistency in the way clearances are delivered. Most towers give the name of the STAR if it is part of the clearance e.g. NOBAR THREE BRAVO for 05 R at AA but at Woodbourne they just say "STAR for 16" at WN. I know there is only one STAR for WN but when you are given this sort of clearance for the first time it is confusing.
2
 AA needs to be more like WN when dealing with arrivals and departures.
3
 Utilisation in Auckland is poor. Often held for long periods at holding points when clearly a departure could have occurred. Often crew comment to me about the poor utilisation and delays, especially when compared with WN.
4
 Better utilisation of the runway in Auckland. Often large gaps are left between arrivals and departures which other towers have no issues utilising.
5
 n/a
6
 waiting for takeoff in a line of arrivals.......some controllers manage to get us out in less space than others.
7
 AA - A tendency to hold large aircraft high on the later stages of approach while accommodating smaller/VFR traffic. Accurate track miles to be flown are an important part of the flight crew's approach planning.
8
 Can find the switch over to ramp a little fiddly and adds to workload, not sure it is justified at an airport of this size.
9
 N/A
10
 PDC requests
11
 Some inconsistency at AA Tower as far as frequency change instructions from Ground to Tower when approaching the Holding Position for Take Off. Would suggest that ground signage (as used in the US at many major fields), instructing A/C to change to Tower on passing a specific point on the taxiway would be a more efficient and less ambiguous system.
12
 Manoeuvring area surveillance would be better to avoid issues such as those that occurred at Malian.
13
 CH seem a grumpy lot with and carry on from the local radar service as noted above
14
 WLG Tower uses non-standard phraseology. Delays on the runways for Takeoff at WLG and CHC are common - especially when a turboprop is released in front of a turbojet - while priorities are ebign correctly applied this can result in delays to the jet service. Turning SIDs for jets off AKL and WLG may allow better runway utilisation. Priorities for non-circling jets at WLG on fine days could be reassessed to minimise delays to those who are able to circle.
15
 AA is very poor at allowing hard right turn off the runway when there is no other traffic about.
16
 Wellington tower control less ambitious
17
 Complex taxi instructions for a very simple airport ex international apron. Have a greater awareness of our fuel burn in comparison to other company aircraft eg. Beach 1900. Our taxi fuel is probably what they would burn flying round NZ all day.If Air NZ approve give us greater priority.
18
 Less use of 128.2 and 121.9 combined at CHC and WLG
19
 Aircraft separation for takeoff and landing clearances are often too conservative. At times, there is excess separation and/or clearance resulting in missed opportunities to allow aircraft to take off or land.
20
 Better co-ordination of traffic flow to avoid heavy jet wastage of fuel waiting at the holding points for T/O. The gap/separation between T/O and Landing aircraft (or T/O, T/O and Ldg/Ldg) is far higher than other places we operate to eg LAX LHR SFO. Why the difference between ICAO states?
21
 Handover to Apron seems unnecessary however with a new tower, better vision, that should fix that.
22
 Some times domestic Traffic gets preference out of sequence to international traffic .In nor fairness to them its a practical solution not a fuel consideration of larger jets idle burn say 20kgs per minute compared to 3kgs per minute. Just an observation not necessarily a criticism.
23
 Comments as above re using numbers in R/T that sound like numbers but are not. Pilots are as bad as controllers.
24
 when atis changes dont just say that it has changed, tell us what the changes are as per standard practice overseas.
25
 Less separation between landing and taking off. fits more traffic and less fuel wastage.
26
 Generally good
27
 Could AA Ground also do the international apron?. Apron professionalism has a long way to go to catch up to airways.
28
 Priority given to heavy jet operations vs. light aircraft traffic. Recently held for 6 minutes while a PA28 formation was given clearance to land. We could have easily departed and still given the formation proper wake/jet blast protection.
29
 Consistent taxiway markings from the apron to taxiways (and vice versa) e.g D8 should lead into B8. Have seen confusion from foreign carriers in particular.
30
 I would like to see more vigilance on the part of controllers concerning bird activity. I am frequently cleared to take-off with birds sat on or near the runway. I would expect tower controllers to check for bird activity prior to issuing a clearance and to make more use of bird control facilities. The training activities at Hamilton and, to a lesser extent Palmerston Nth are posing a significant risk to our operation, in my opinion. Hamilton tower controllers seem to be permanently overloaded and this is compounded by the two frequencies in use and no ground frequency. I believe Airways need to look at Hamilton in particular and come up with a solution fast. In the meantime I believe you should throw more man/lady power at the problem as a matter of priority.
31
 Auckland and Wellington Tower handover procedures between tower and ground(on landing)/ ground and tower(on taxi) are very distracting. The procedures at Christchurch are much better.
36
 departure sequencing - a higher number of departures between landings.
37
 nothing

 

Survey Results