Cyprus-Forum.com

[Londonrake]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56261670

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[Kikapu]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56261670

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Destined to fail me thinks. It will be like having a hamburger without the patty, no?

We fly out of necessity to get to our destination we choose and want and not to spend anymore time than necessary in the plane. To take off in a plane, fly for few hours and then land back where you started from has to be very unsatisfying. Kind of reminds me few years ago where many aircraft would return back to Europe after flying halfway to the USA due to some "terror threat" because of a suspicious name on the plane's passenger list. Ask those passengers how they enjoyed their 10 hours of flight to nowhere.

[Kikapu]

I took a drive to Zurich airport today to do some plane spotting and take some photos at the end of runway 14, but there were only about 6 landings and 3 take-offs of commercial aircrafts over the hour I was there. In fact, there were so few planes that the planes were landing on runway 14 and taking off on runway 34, which would be a no no under normal circumstances at a very busy airport, a recipe for a head on collision in the air close to the airport. So few planes are coming and going these days at ZRH.

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[Londonrake]

We usually spend late spring to about the end of October sitting outside here in the evenings when we're at home. The Larnaca in/outbound streams are passing overhead a lot of the time. It's not a big deal to us interference-wise. More nav lights than sound sort of thing. Last year was straight out of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring though.

They say there were 48,000 less air traffic movements here in Cyprus during 2020. I can well believe it.

[Kikapu]

Skies over Zürich is very empty these days. I would be very lucky to see two planes in the air at any one time. I did however see two planes in the air yesterday in a distance going at high speeds making sharp turns in an oval shape pattern about 30,000 ft up, leaving a trail behind. It was most definitely military jets chasing each other, no doubt one trying to avoid being missiles lock- on and the chaser trying to do just that. Skies (empty) are the limit for military jets these days to play a “cat & mouse” games when the civilian aircrafts are not around as much as they use to be.

[Paphitis]

Going into Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne or Perth usually means a NOTAM for 30 minutes of holding fuel to account for the extra burn due to speed restrictions for flow management, and or a few holding patterns.

Only got that once the last few months going into Sydney and that was because the 2 parallel runways were closed and only the criss runway being used because of the strong crosswind.

But other that that one time, there were no speed restrictions or holding patterns and even descending through the transition altitude (10,000ft) we are told to cancel speed restrictions which is air traffic control telling us to cancel the requirement to reduce speed to 250 knots indicated.

So we descend like a shower of shit then reduce our power to idle about 10 nautical miles from the ILS and get all our drag out to slow us down from 400 knots to 170 by the initial approach fix or at the top of the ILS.

We do anything to save a couple minutes.

People are complaining snout the noise when we activate our spoilers to reduce our speed. It’s a very distinct noise.

[Kikapu]

Going into Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne or Perth usually means a NOTAM for 30 minutes of holding fuel to account for the extra burn due to speed restrictions for flow management, and or a few holding patterns.

Only got that once the last few months going into Sydney and that was because the 2 parallel runways were closed and only the criss runway being used because of the strong crosswind.

But other that that one time, there were no speed restrictions or holding patterns and even descending through the transition altitude (10,000ft) we are told to cancel speed restrictions which is air traffic control telling us to cancel the requirement to reduce speed to 250 knots indicated.

So we descend like a shower of shit then reduce our power to idle about 10 nautical miles from the ILS and get all our drag out to slow us down from 400 knots to 170 by the initial approach fix or at the top of the ILS.

We do anything to save a couple minutes.

People are complaining snout the noise when we activate our spoilers to reduce our speed. It’s a very distinct noise.

Are you guys able to fly direct to final approach these days or do you still need to enter downwind, base and then final approach?

[Paphitis]

Going into Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne or Perth usually means a NOTAM for 30 minutes of holding fuel to account for the extra burn due to speed restrictions for flow management, and or a few holding patterns.

Only got that once the last few months going into Sydney and that was because the 2 parallel runways were closed and only the criss runway being used because of the strong crosswind.

But other that that one time, there were no speed restrictions or holding patterns and even descending through the transition altitude (10,000ft) we are told to cancel speed restrictions which is air traffic control telling us to cancel the requirement to reduce speed to 250 knots indicated.

So we descend like a shower of shit then reduce our power to idle about 10 nautical miles from the ILS and get all our drag out to slow us down from 400 knots to 170 by the initial approach fix or at the top of the ILS.

We do anything to save a couple minutes.

People are complaining snout the noise when we activate our spoilers to reduce our speed. It’s a very distinct noise.

Are you guys able to fly direct to final approach these days or do you still need to enter downwind, base and then final approach?

We usually get track shortening these days. For example, Brisbane to Sydney. Usually there are a number of waypoints but as soon as you take off from Brisbane, and are handed over to Departures, traffic flow instructs us to track direct to the Sydney Initial Approach Fix at the beginning of the ILS. But when you are handed over to Sydney Approach they vector you over the Pacific for a long downwind, base turn and turn onto finals 2 miles from the IAP over Botany Bay fir Runway 34R.

If you are on runway 16L or 16R it’s straight in.

Before COVID we were not allowed to ask for track shortening. Air Traffic Control started getting pushed off with planes asking for it. They sent our company a letter to desist. I was one of the main culprits as I always asked for it. In the end they actually recognize voices and they know who the PIC is and they have our mobile number. So whenever they hear me, you can almost here the sigh of despair.

One time I got called into the office because ATC put in a complaint.

Now you don’t even need to ask for it. You just get it most of the time and you also get “cancel any speed restrictions) including the 250 knot requirement descending through the transition altitude.

There is a bit of a running joke in our company with other pilots joking and putting bets on whether or not I ask for track shortening when we were told not to. One of the other captains comes on to the company frequency to say “thanks Paphitis, you just made be $50”

In Australia, the J curve or eastern seaboard airspace between Brisbane, Canberra, Sydney, and Melbourne is among the busiest airspace in the world. Busier than any of the routes into Heathrow or even Newark. There are 2 routes there in particular which are actually the busiest in the world. So we have air traffic flow management there. So that aircraft arrivals and departures are put into very tight slots.