Is it really that bad to come in early?

[Dave Blake]

You hit one of the reasons right on the nose, the gate is not open yet. One of the other reasons is the ATC scheduleing. ATC has to handle thousands of flights every day. They expect flights to be at a certain place to keep everything moving smoothly. If you show up early then that may mess up the ATC planning for everyone else.

SAX has a 24 minute window (+/- 12 minutes) for each flight to be graded as "on-time". With proper planning most flights should have no problem meeting this on-time window. If you run across a flight that may be way off please post your findings to the "Flight Schedule Routes and Clearances" forum folder.

This post should help you with your flight plan timing: http://sunairexpress.com/saxforum/viewtopic.php?t=200

[David Vega]

Correct. But also because you would be arriving perhaps outside of your designated arrival time. In other words, ATC is expecting you to arrive within a window of time. This window of time is given to the flight before departure. This is a way for ATC to control traffic flow. Again, not my area of expertise. We do happen to have a professional ATC in our staff, and I'm sure he'll correct and/or expand on this answer.

Dave Vega

[David Vega]

I and others have noticed that some SAX pilots tend to arrive early at their destination and proceed to enter orbits or give city tours from the air. How have I noticed...the map plots the route of flight. What contributes to arriving too early, or outside of your arrival window? Sometimes this is out of our control, like when the tail winds are extremely strong that day and no matter how much you slow down, you're going too fast. Sometimes ATC, if you fly on VATSIM or IVAO, changes your route of flight, like clearing you DIRECT to a waypoint. Notice these two examples comes from the real world. In this case, we're too early, and that is just that; take the hit, your virtual passengers will love you for it. What about when we do things that make us be early that aren't real world?

The things pilot do that may make them be early occur when a virtual pilot thinks about himself/herself only and not about the simulation they are into. I've seen some pilots just don't report any passengers. I can't tell if your airplane was physically empty when you don't report passengers, but if you do your airplane would be very light potentially contributing to an early arrival. On the other hand, I've seen pilots that fill up their fuel tank as a standard practice, even for short flights (though this could actually make you late). I've seen pilots that do not use the company routes and prefer simulator-generated routes that tend to be direct. The simulator isn't aware of types of airspace, protected airspace, etc., so it generates the most direct route. Our routes are based on real airline routes. I've seen pilots that push the throttles to the limit flying as fast as they can go (probably the same pilots that load their fuel tanks to "full"). Why cheat yourself of a more realistic airline environment?

Return fire welcome.

Dave Vega
SAX702

[Marty_Becker]

There is also a pattern in certain flight logs where pilots who arrive TOO early and then sit on the ground or taxi VERY slowly for 20, 30 minutes or more before setting their parking brake, thus "arriving on-time."

[David Vega]

Thank you Marty, I've seen that one also. Pilots that arrive too early because of weather or ATC should just gate in and then tell me about it. Many of you already do, and most of the time we adjust the flight times. This usually happens with long flights since the winds change seasonally. If we adjust the flight times, we adjust the filed flight report. The ideal is to fly as real as it gets instead of being too worried about being on time. But, before anyone ask, we do not adjust your flight report if you arrived too early for non-realistic reasons. I would be glad to answer any questions anyone may have on timely arrivals, using company routes, passenger loads, etc.

Dave Vega
SAX702

[chriszdc]

as a real ATC, hit my 20 years btw this weekend

when the fuel prices were outrageous last summer, several commuters really went into cost saving mode. One of them was flying CRJ1 at M0.63 at FL 330 for example to save gas - time didn't matter.

I personally fly the Sunair preferred routes and cruise at a normal rate (cost index 75 or so, depending on aircraft) and I get there when I get there

[David Vega]

Chris, congratulations on your 20 years of ATC. In 20 years, how many times did you ask a pilot to descend and maintain?

Could you elaborate on designated windows of arrival for flights. I understand that airliners are told, perhaps sometimes, of a target window for arrival at their destination. Is there such a thing for a departure window? If so, why?

I've noticed in some flights the flight attendants brag about getting one there so many minutes early, and clearly all passengers love that, but I've been on a couple of flights where the pilot tells us that he has to wait until the jet at his designated gate clears it (this isn't necessarily related to arriving early).

dv

[chriszdc]

One thing I remember, after FAA started tracking ontime performance, all the carriers added 20+ minutes to the schedule so they are 'on time'

There are several ways to regulate demand/capacity for a given airport.

The Command Center and all of the Enroute Centers have National Weather Service desks in the facility. In consultation with the airport, the Command Center sets the acceptance rate for the airport by the hour every morning, and adjusts as necessary, e.g. thunderstorms, fog, runway outage, low ceilings etc. throughout the day.

First would be in trail restrictions - miles in trail between arrivals. Simple way to put it - say Newark's arrival rate is 60 aircraft per hour. That is 1 per minute , there are 3 arrival gates (fixes), 60/3 = 20 per hour per gate, so 3 minutes per gate = 15 miles in trail. General rule of thumb is 5 miles in trail per minute. They can tweak it if one gate is heavy over the other 2, like when the Europeans come in on north gate, we may be feeding 20 miles in trail for awhile.

Second, demand is still exceeding the above controls and is now putting or predicted to put severe work load on us the controllers, lots of vectoring and speed control, so the Command Center institutes a ground delay program, also known as an EDCT (Expect Departure Clearance Time). This program takes all the proposals nationwide and figures their arrival time at EWR by their scheduled departure time and adds enroute time. Say EWR arrival rate is down to 20 due to low ceilings and this is going to last until 1400Z, then rate will go up to 60 (foggy mornings in the spring) Anyone scheduled to arrive before 1400Z will be in the delay program and maybe some for later if the delays run over. So, our poor SunAir flight is scheduled outta ATL at 1200Z arriving at 1350Z along with 100 other peeps. The departure sector and tower get an EDCT printed on the strip, in this case probly 30-60 minutes, so lets say it's 44 minutes, the strip prints at 1115Z, for a P time (proposal time) of 1200Z, there will also be an extra line EDCT 1244Z. So, we can't departe (takeoff) until 1244.

Third, say thunderstorms moving into EWR and predicted to be there at 1900Z for 30 minutes shutting down airport. Central Command can issue groundstops now. No one takes off to that destination. They can also be selective in the groundstops, say only the airports east of Mississippi for example. The center Traffic Management Unit can also issue a groundstop, but they only apply to internal center airports.

And Fourth - once capacity has been exceeded, there is airborne holding.

Also, several airports in country have slot times. You can only plan to arrive at your slot time as assigned by FAA. ORD, DCA, LGA, JFK are the ones I know of.

[David Vega]

It is posts like these that recharge my battery to stay with hobby. I hope everyone realize how lucky SAX is to have Chris in our membership/staff. Thank you Chris.

Since we can't really simulate, nor could account for even if we could, all the potential reasons for delay, why does every one think about removing the On-time arrival metric? We started using it as a motivator for our pilots to challenge themselves to fly with precision, and though it has somewhat met its purpose, it isn't that realistic. Like the airlines, we could add 20" block time to each flight, but since we don't have all the potential reasons for delay simulated, it's very likely this would result in more pilots arriving early and circling their destination cities to avoid the ding of arriving early. You should see the interested circles the SAX google map shows on some of our most creative pilots.

We could implement other metrics to provide bragging rights, such as a "greaser" club showing who has the smoothest landings per month, or others (please suggest). What does every one think?

Dave Vega
SAX702

[Al O'Brien]

Thanks Chris, I just got way more patience with airline delays.

[chriszdc]

the greaser club is nice idea. I also still like the idea of on time, but don't penalize the early ones, only late.