Tue Oct 26, 2021 10:38 pm
#1878745
I’m sure I’ve said this before on the whole PPR thing but, there seems to be an impression that the only reasons why an aerodrome requires it are to provide some soft of briefing (verbal or online) or to just be a pain.
In our example, we have 2 people in our tower. At any time. One is duty FISO talking to all the aircraft, the other is the assistant, answering the phone, emails, SMS, dealing with the requests to transit Farnborough zone, speaking to ground crew to sort runway inspections etc.
We have to maintain a record of all flights and Flight Strips are the standard way of doing this. We ask for PPR by phone, webform, or SMS to keep this off the freq. A lot of our based pilots do this while waking out to the aircraft. I will never understand the visiting pilot who set off for the day knowing he was going flying and didn’t think to check the place he was thinking of going was able to accept him. Probably the type of pilot who gives you their life story when they haven’t requested PPR “GABCD I’m a PA28 on my way in from <Insert airfield you’ve never heard of> I’m flying at 2,500 ft and about 5 miles from you requesting to land, get some fuel and one of your breakfasts with my friend bob who’s birthday it is, do you know if he’s in the cafe yet?” All the while we’ve got a student on their first solo on final who can’t get a word in.
Sorry that turned into a bit of a rant. If you are a pilot who doesn’t like to PPR for whatever reason, and chooses your aerodrome based on this, then you’re perfectly entitled to your opinion and I understand if we’re not top of your list. But if you’re headed our way, just check in with us first (phone, SMS, webform) - it helps the guys in the tower, and it helps your fellow aviators too.