Automatic Disconnects

[Lenny Colton]

I would like to put forward the case for removing xPilot's automatic disconnect feature:

I'm an S3-rated controller in VATSIM UK. For anybody who hasn't flown into the UK before, all of our approaches (save for London City) are vectored from the terminal holds, which are generally somewhere roughly North/South of the field.

In times gone by, if an aircraft was having frame problems, it would of course be slowed down to 1/2 or 1/4 speed. This was obviously an inconvenience to a sequence, and usually meant that the next plane (or two) would need to be revectored. However, the problem was manageable, at least.

Since the introduction of automatic FPS disconnections, it has become downright impossible to vector these aircraft at all. The only thing worse than an aircraft moving at a fraction of its normal speed, is said aircraft continually logging on and off as well. The idea behind the automatic disconnect is certainly a good one - it removes problematic aircraft from the sequence - however the implementation has only made things worse.

When the aircraft reconnects, not only did I lose all of the information from its TAG, I was unable to issue instructions during the 10-20 seconds when it was offline. If the aircraft has a persistent frame problem, it may be disconnected once every 20-30 seconds, making vectoring impossible. On the other hand, the pilot may not immediately notice that they have been disconnected, and only reconnect after several minutes, causing unexpected conflicts or airspace infringements down the line.

With newer pilots, the problem is even worse. How am I supposed to provide help/guidance to a new pilot and manage all of the other traffic, when the pilot disconnects part-way through a long transmission and I have to restart? I would much rather a new pilot moved at the speed of a Cessna than moved at the speed of a Cessna and kept disappearing/reappearing.

The only solution (as far as I can see) is a cooldown time, during which the pilot cannot reconnect. However, this may just lead to pilots reconnecting 50 miles away in somebody else's airspace. Is there any possibility that the autodisconnect's merits can be re-evaluated, please?

Edited August 12, 2021 at 04:38 PM by Lenny Colton