synchronized Holding List

[Jakob Arne Bronstad (1000634)]

During Fly And See Santa we used the Holding stack window. It is important that we have the possibility that the holding list is synchronized between controllers.
This is very important so that the information contained in the holding window is retained when there is an ATC controller change. This is so that we do not lose who came into the holding first and so on.

 

[Christian Kovanen (1379372)]

6 hours ago, Jakob Arne Bronstad said:

During Fly And See Santa we used the Holding stack window. It is important that we have the possibility that the holding list is synchronized between controllers.
This is very important so that the information contained in the holding window is retained when there is an ATC controller change. This is so that we do not lose who came into the holding first and so on.

 

Afaik if you transfer the label/tag to the next controller everything will be transfered including holding data. If you just free the label/tag some info is lost.

[Juha Holopainen]

The holding clearance is stored in the flight strip, so it will be communicated to the next controller when the track is transferred. As Christian wrote, if the tag is dropped, the controller who dropped the tag will still see the holding data as it remains in his version of the flight strip, but any controller picking up the track again will not get the info.

The ETO value is not stored in any transferrable place, it's individually calculated by each EuroScope instance.

In this case, the issue is limited to occasions when there is traffic holding (not often) in a situation where the sequence isn't obvious by looking at the altitudes of the tracks (so enroute holds mostly), and a controller change is necessary. In FSS, the holes in the cheese unfortunately line up, but generally speaking this comes up very rarely, and therefore isn't very high on the priority list. As there's no dedicated way to communicate between plugins across the network, ugly workarounds must be used with varying success rates. It's possible that this issue will be addressed at some point, but until then it's back to using pen and paper, with the first controller listing the correct sequence for aircraft already in the hold for the next controller. Aircraft still inbound to the holding fix and any subsequent aircraft cleared to hold will show the correct ETO for the second controller as well.

[Krister Larsen (1340812)]

On 13/12/2020 at 20:25, Christian Kovanen said:

Afaik if you transfer the label/tag to the next controller everything will be transfered including holding data. If you just free the label/tag some info is lost.

I had a controller change two times during FSS with manual transfer of the tags, without getting the ETOs, so don't know what's wrong then?

[Felix Musselmann (1025793)]

Hi Juha,

would it be possible to sync the holding data between the controllers? For example this would be possible by storing the the holding information like H/POINT2345 in the remarks of the flightplan.

This would have several benefits:
- If the controller gets disconnected from the server and reconnect, the list would not get lost
- If a handover takes place (without sending the tags, one controller disconnects and another connects) the aircrafts would be in the list
- If you have a Holding over a point and the lower levels are in the arrival airspace and the higher aircrafts are in the CTR airspace and you give pilots for example from the CTR to Arrival at FL140 in the Hold, you would see when FL140 is clear and you can descend the next aircraft to FL140.
The biggest benefit:
You could see the holdings of other controllers. For example if you have split the arrival sector into two sectors, and each sectors has a holding, and the CTR sectors above have holdings at the same point as well (just above the APP airspace), this would improve the situational awareness of all controllers and you would see also how long the pilots in the other holdings are already holding and you can better plan the sequence.

Also if two different CTR sectors have a holding before the same arrival airspace, i would see how many aircrafts are in the other hold and give the pilots a better EAT.

In the Holding list you could add a filer on the view tab like "Show only tracked aircrafts", then everybody would have the same list as the current state and if you have disabled this filter, you would see all holdings in your visibility range.

Felix