Quote:
Originally Posted by DE727UPS  Personally, I think it's a waste of radio time and could care less.
What do the controllers think? |
It's required and, on top of that, it's very helpful. As soon as you report out of that FL, it becomes useable to us. Operating in a radar environment, it's not quite as important (although still required in the regs) as I can see your altitude readout and know you're descending. However, maybe you go through a sector with a radar outage and they're working non-radar. We
definitely need that report. A lot of times we'll say "descend at pilot's discretion. Maintain FL240. Report leaving FL280 (or report passing FL270)." In that case, you can sort of tell that they're trying to put someone else there, or they may be handing the availability of that altitude to another controller working planes on another freq that you don't even know about. Heck, I used to do it at a small Class D airport I worked at. We had a lot of overflights, so if I had inbound traffic I would tell the inbounds to report passing 1500 so I could take the overflights through at 2000 without having to worry. Some say it's overkill, but it works when you really need it to! Especially when your DBRITE goes out and the haze is setting in so it's tough to see all the players.
Let the Captains look at you funny. Keep on doing it.