I seldom get the chance to fly a STAR online

[Oddvar Tveito 1389576]

Concerning STARS and the habit of crosschecking FMC and Charts. I have only been flying online for a few months, mainly on British and German airports, but my experience after some 15-20 landings online is that I always get vectors anyway – maybe only once flying the STAR. ATC says “forget about the STAR, we guide you”. To practice STARS, I have to go offline.

I have started including arrival STAR in my published flightplan, and that is accepted by Delivery at departing airport. But always overruled upon arrival. Vectors are OK, but it would be nice to practice STARS too.

Is this everyones experience, or maybe they (for good reasons) don’t trust me flying a STAR ?

And, it would be nice to have the arriving STAR before takeoff. Reprogramming the FMC some minutes before arrival is quite stressful.

[Bradley Grafelman]

Procedures like SIDs and STARs are often used to alleviate the burden of communication on what could be a congested frequency in a congested airspace. If there were many planes in the sky, ATC would quickly run out of frequency time if they had to issue complete sets of instructions to each pilot.

 

Unfortunately, outside of events, the VATSIM skies get a lot roomier at times. In FAA-land (and, I suspect, in many other regions), the ATC system's primary purpose is, among other things, to provide an "expeditious flow of traffic". So, when a controller who doesn't need you to fly that entire STAR for the purposes of sequencing decides to issue you a shortcut vector early on, it's not that they're just trying to keep you on your toes... they're actually just doing their job. Not issuing that shortcut vector would be the out-of-the-norm thing to do (as your experiences seem to confirm).

 

When you're issued those shortcut vectors, have you tried requesting to remain on the STAR for practice? I imagine it's a request not many controllers would have a problem with if they knew your intentions.

[Oddvar Tveito 1389576]

When you're issued those shortcut vectors, have you tried requesting to remain on the STAR for practice? I imagine it's a request not many controllers would have a problem with if they knew your intentions.

 

Thanks for a very informative answer!

Yes I have asked maybe two times - with negative answer. But without clearifying why I’m asking: To get practice. I will do that next time.

I think maybe also I have been given vectors a few times because I have failed to follow the STAR. That’s why I asked if others have a different experience.

[Randy Tyndall 1087023]

Oddvar,

 

Excellent help from Bradley.

 

I have always enjoyed following, or trying to follow, the directions of the controllers when they give me vectors to fly, basically taking me off the procedure I am flying. It adds immensely, as you can understand, to the interaction and immersion of the simulation. I always look forward to that interaction. Imagine how boring, for both you and the controller, this simulated world would be if pilots let the aircraft follow the FMC down to 1,000 feet and then took over, or worse yet, used autoland if possible. Same thing taking off. Same thing for the controller watching, not controlling, your aircraft on his radar screen follow a predicted path.

 

The only thing I would add to it is to remember, the "airspace" that is VATSIM is flown by and controlled by volunteers. Unless you "chase" Air Traffic Control and only fly when an ATC controller is on line where you want to fly, there will be many, many times you fly on VATSIM with no controllers online in your area.

 

Use those times to fly the complete SID or STAR and get practice for those times (as Bradley said, usually an event when the skies of VATSIM are more densely populated) when you will be able to use it for real.

 

For the day when you decide to attend one of the many VATSIM Events, I would also practice flying the "holds" that are built in to many of the Procedural charts you will be using. I rarely have been directed to fly a hold, but it does and has happened before. Always during an event except for one time at Oklahoma City waiting for a tornado to "vacate" the runway.

 

Randy

[Magnus Meese]

Really just echoing the great replies already given, but yeah, STARs (and SIDs) are there for two main things: Separating traffic in and out using predictable corridors, and maximise traffic capacity. A dual runway major airport can typically deal with 60-90 movements per hour at its peak (IRL). To make this happen, you need several controllers working seamlessly together, and procedures that is able to offload the controllers. It's solved differently, for example you'll find holding stacks at Heathrow, puting one plane holding on top of the next one at several spots. You fill it at the top and pick arrivals from the bottom. At Oslo Airport, we've got STARs based on a Point Merge System with a fan based structure, which at peak times gives pilots 20nm extra trackmiles to fly maintaining a given altitude, just waiting to be directed into the airport when it's their turn. In less than peak hours, this fan structure is skipped with direct routings, and 20 trackmiles just disappear, and a continous descend can be used instead of leveling off and throwing jetfuel out the window. In even slower times, direct routings to the initial approach fix can be given a few hundred nautical miles out, saving everyone tons of work. (Neat animation and explanation here:

)

 

I commend you for wanting to practice procedures, most vatsimmers do this way to seldom or not at all. If it's slow, ask your controller. Sometimes a new/less experienced controller can be rigid and apparently difficult, but this is usually just because low experience means stick to the procedures. Normally though, we won't mind giving you the ability to do the whole thing. Our default state (most places) is to expedite traffic, but at the same time a controller should be ready to allow for any non-hazardous requests, should time, workload and regulations allow it.

[Oddvar Tveito 1389576]

Thanks also to Randy and Magnus for excellent informative replies!

It guess Randy has a good point that STARs are boring compared to vectors due to lack of interaction with ATC. Thats probably what I will find out too when I have done it a few times. I've of course done STAR offline a lot, but I expect online STAR would be more intense and challenging.

I have done 2 or 3 events allready. Great fun when everything is staffed.

The rest of the time I am "chasing ATC" as you put it. Problem is that airspace between airports are often not staffed, and destination tends to close before I arrive. New Event coming up now in Poland! Have fun! I will!

[Dace Nicmane]

I have started including arrival STAR in my published flightplan, and that is accepted by Delivery at departing airport.

This will not help. You file the STAR only in the USA and in Germany, but it concerns only correct filing, it doesn't affect whether you'll be able to fly it from start to end, in any country. The DEL may just have seen it as a minor mistake and not corrected it, or he might not be too concerned about your arrival airport, or it was actually correct for the country you flew to. If you want it in the flight plan, you can try putting your request in the remarks section, but controllers don't always read the remarks. You can just request it on the frequency, but do it early, so the ATC can plan ahead, don't wait until the moment he's trying to vector you. If you insist on staying on the STAR without any explanation, they may think you don't know how to fly a heading or that you're just lazy or rude, because normally pilots are supposed to comply with ATC instructions, unless you have a reason not to. The ATC can't read your mind what that reason is and whether it's a good reason.

 

In my experience, they usually do let you fly at least some of the STAR, then take you off it at some point. How much you get to fly it, depends on airspace and how long it is (in the USA, a 200 nm STAR is completely normal ). In some places, they will not only let you fly the whole STAR, but ask you to fly the transition to runway as well.

 

And, it would be nice to have the arriving STAR before takeoff. Reprogramming the FMC some minutes before arrival is quite stressful.

If your flight is short and the weather doesn't change significantly during the flight, you can often guess it. If ATC is on, check the ATIS for the landing runway(s). In airports with several runways, they have standard configurations which runways are used for departures and landings. You can often find them on the local facility's website or you may notice the flows if you fly to this airport often enough.

[Ernesto Alvarez 818262]

on VATSIM, unlike the real world where controllers are constantly working with different traffic units, the local controllers at your departing field dont normally check whether your arrival information makes any sense, unless ofcourse the destination is within the same ARTCC/FIR or there are neighboring LOA's. beyond that, a controller at MIA isnt going to know if your arrival at LAX, Honolulu, Anchorage, Heathrow, etc... makes any sense. so just because you got your clearance at departure, doesnt mean that portion of your flight is "correct". all they are clearing you for is for the portion in their airspace (or again whatever LOA's are available). there is no way for those controllers to communicate since often those areas are offline, and by the time you get there things would have changed from the time you departed.

[Wygene Chong 1089621]

Also note that sometimes there are STARs that connect with a published RNAV approach or transition ILS approach. In those situations, you'll likely get a shortcut to the initial approach fix from the initial STAR fix, but it's still different to flying under vectors because you follow the published transition to ILS.

 

Examples I know of are BIKF (international) and BIRK (regional) in Iceland, and most airports in Norway, not least ENGM (Oslo).

[Mark Wolpert]

I am guessing the are flying the STAR but maybe not all the way to the connection to the approach path of the runway. Most times that is where you get the vectors but you have probably already flown 80 to 90% of the STAR. I think this is very similar to RW and actually where I control in Toronto almost all aircraft fly the full STAR to the end with vectors only to join the ILS or final approch course. Same with the SID, vectors as published to the first waypoing of the SID.

[Simon Kelsey]

Just to add to all the above - this is actually simply VATSIM emulating real life.

 

In the UK at least it is extremely rare for an aircraft (on a commercial service) to fly the full SID in real life - interactions between the various routes mean that it is almost always more efficient to put the aircraft on a heading in order to give an earlier climb (which is what the crews really want). Likewise if traffic permits then even at Heathrow it is usual for aircraft to be taken off the STAR early in order to provide a more direct route to final.

 

Of course, you can request to fly any procedure in full for training purposes but certainly in real life this would usually be confined to smaller training aircraft at smaller airfields where training is the main activity (you're not going to get to fly a full ILS including procedure turn at a major international airport - even if you wanted to, which when efficiency is the name of the game most crews will not!)

 

Personally I would view it as part of the rich tapestry of VATSIM - one of the things that makes flying online unique. Real humans making real decisions and replicating what happens in real life at different locations - unlike a 'canned' ATC programme which will always do the same thing over and over again, everywhere you fly in the world...