Bristol ATC

My local flying club issued an email invitation on a first come first served basis for anyone wanting to visit the Air Traffic Control tower at Bristol Airport. As I have my personal email plumbed through to my BlackBerry, of course I got the email immediately and accepted at once.

The downside, was that it was 19:30 on a Friday at Bristol Airport, so I may have to fight my way through M4 Friday night rush hour traffic in Bristol. They wanted to keep the people attending to eight maximum and the number of cars going to two, as we would be parking in the NATS secure airside parking. Well, I offered my services as a cost-share taxi and quickly had two passengers that I would pick up from the aero club at Gloucester, then trek the 60-odd miles down the M5 to Bristol Airport, carefully sited the far side of Bristol well away from any main roads.

I picked up my guys at 17:15 as I wanted to allow plenty of time to get through the traffic. Well of course having made such generous contingency allowances, there was no traffic and we sailed through, so we stopped for a prolonged coffee break at some services before hitting the airport at around 19:10.

Lesson #1: If you allow contingency you won’t need it (but of course if you don’t allow contingency, there will be serious delays!)

I followed the map instructions and reported at a security barrier near the tower. I walked in and announced myself, who we were here to see and that I was 20 minutes early. The security staff were very uninterested and regarded me with some disdain. They made a cursory glance at two sheets of paper and announced: ‘Nope, you’re not on the list’ and seemed to want to go back to their sports pages of the newspaper. I produced a printout of the email with our contacts name and suggested they get in touch with him.

Lesson #2: No matter how well it has been organised, there will be problems

They asked me to call him instead. When I pointed out that the email did not include his number and perhaps they would know it, they simply said ‘He’s NATS’ as if that explained everything. Well I won’t drag it out, but you get the idea. I managed to get them to call this guy and we were asked to park temporarily outside the security gates until our contact came to the gate in 10 minutes or so.

Lesson #3: Keep your cool and remain polite but assertive (not at all easy for me as anyone that knows me can tell you!)

By this time, the second car had turned up and to save him going through the same rigmarole, I suggested he parked up near me and waited for our contact. Our contact arrived and he ushered the other car into the security barrier so the passengers could be checked for the required ID and the car checked. I waited for some time, then was asked to join them. The problem seemed to be that despite the email from Cotswolds clearly stating what ID was required (photo driving licence with counterpart or valid passport), only one of the three people in the other car had this, and only two in my car did! After some discussion, I agreed to give the only guy in the other car with valid ID a lift back to Bristol to let the two in the other car go home, while the passenger in my car without ID would have to make his way to the terminal and have coffee while three of us had the tour. Sorry, no photos as I didn’t think they would allow any, I will check next time as I have a visit to Swanwick arranged for May.

Lesson #4: RTFE – Read The Flippin Email!

We parked up and signed into the tower with our guide, who was the head of that particular ATC shift of NATS at Bristol Airport Tower. He was an excellent guide and apologised for not being able to allow our colleagues in. We had a very informative slide presentation where he talked us through various things ATC. I was particularly interested that Bristol had a Cat 3 ILS facility on one of the runways. This is the true ‘blind landing’ facility whereby IF both the pilots and the aircraft were also suitably equipped, they could make a fully automated approach and landing in zero cloudbase and zero visibility (i.e. fog). Many airports have Cat 2 capability, which needs something like (figures probably wrong, but illustrates the point) 150’ cloudbase and 400m forward visibility etc. He also explained how the airways system worked vis-à-vis Bristol and how and where their approach control took over from London Information in Swanwick. It was helpful when he explained how they catered for a slot in people like us, asking for VFR transits. He also answered a question I had which was why when flying in the USA, they were very happy for VFR traffic to transit through the overhead at right angles to the active runway at 1500’ when in the UK, we never seemed to do that? He said that wasn’t true and that they would quite happily allow such transits at Bristol at 2000’ if it made sense for the route we wanted. He also explained about aircraft slot times and said that it wasn’t just a slot to take off from the airport, but that they would plan ‘all the way back’ for the riute you needed to make sure that when you took off, that you could fit in with all sectors of your trip without hold (i.e. making sure all of the traffic lights for the route were ready to go to green as you got there), it was not necessarily about congestion at the airport.

After this, we had a trip to the tower itself. Well, they were not at all busy, but there were one or two flights so we could see what was going on. I was surprised to see that they still used paper flight strips that are printed when a plane is within 30 minutes of their airspace. These are placed into a plastic holder, the colour of which denotes whether it is an arrival, departure or in the circuit. They use a very clear screen which displays both primary and secondary radar displays. They can use filters on the primary radar to filter out clutter of radar returns from surrounding hills and radar returns from rain and weather fronts. The aircraft were very easy to see as they had their secondary radar data blocks clearly displayed, showing altitude (FL), Callsign and an indicator to show whether climbing or descending.

In the tower, the radar display was oriented ‘track up’ so that it matched what they saw out of the window (the tower is on the northside, looking south across the main East / West runway, so the display was pretty much ‘south up’ – which threw me for a while as I always use ‘north-up’). We could see the progress of an inbound flight as it came in left downwind for 09 and could make sense of the radio calls etc. Our guide explained how they always updated the master arrivals board and allocated stands etc. as this ‘drove’ pretty much everything at the airport, the arrivals boards, the baggage handlers knowing which flight was getting in next and where to be to unload it, the aircraft marshallers etc.

After the tower, we were taken down one floor to approach / departures. This was a windowless room (as they really didn’t need to look out to see anything as it would all be too far away). They had the same type of display as the tower, but set to a larger scale and oriented north up. There was only one guy in the room, but two stations. They weren’t busy. But our guide talked us through showing us the aircraft inbound from the east that he was talking to and another arriving from the north who would be transferred to Bristol shortly. Sure enough, the strip started to print for the northerly arrival and this was taken, mounted and put in the arrivals rack. They still note everything they say to the arcraft on the flight strip by hand, in case anyone has to take over, there is a complete record of comms with the aircraft (well, that and the recordings that is!).

He explained that aircraft do not ‘have’ to make instrument approaches, they can call visual with the airfield and if traffic allows, make a normal visual approach. Our guide recounted an incident a couple of years ago then a KLM arrival from the east called ‘visual’ and said he could clearly see the airfield off to his right. ATC challenged as said ‘surely you mean to your left’, no he was adamant that he really meant to the right. It dawned on them that despite the pilot’s own map, GPS, radio beacons and a plethora of other navaids, that he had mistaken Bristol Filton to the north for Bristol Lulsgate to the south! I have done something similar where I was convinced that I was lined up for 09 and became so convinced that I disregarded everything that told me otherwise, until ATC calmly suggested that I extended my ‘ahem’ base leg to line up for final on 09 as I was on 04 at the moment! There have been many incidents of commercial jets landing at the wrong airport (Northholt mistaken for Heathrow was a good one, but my personal favourite was a B52 doing a low level beat-up of Blackbushe airfield, skittling planes out of the circuit having mistaken it for Farnborough Air Show) – human factors eh? Gotta love em!

Well it was an excellent trip and we very much enjoyed it. I picked up our non-ID carrying passenger and drove back through the rain via Bristol back to Cheltenham, getting home at 23:10, tired, but well worth it. Next trip is to the UK ATC centre at Swanwick, near Southampton.