airtraffic

Author Topic: Toronto Ground Stop  (Read 9465 times)

Offline Jonathan_tcu

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Toronto Ground Stop
« on: September 26, 2005, 08:25:56 PM »
I m a shocked person here.  It's just close to 8 :30 local or 0030 z here, our evening Jazz 7820 is supposed to be airborn from CYTS (Timmins) at 7:30 local 2330z, he's still on the ground and proposing a flo departure time of get this... 0153z due to Toronto's Ground Stop program.  I've never seen this before.  I checked Toronto's wind and close to 30 knots and 33 is the only runway in use.  What a mess!  I can just imagine the Simco sector controller stacking up these flights overhead the Simco VOR  and the longest hold time I've heard is close to on hour.



Offline binky

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Toronto Ground Stop
« Reply #1 on: September 27, 2005, 10:55:46 AM »
This type of thing happens quite often.  If the weather is anticipated well in advance flow will implement a ground delay program on the 33's but if the winds swing quickly and force ATC into an unforseen or early 33 operation they are caught with their pants down and must use a ground stop in order to just be able to catch up with the already airborne inbound flights.  You can look up present and past ATC/airport issues here: www.fly.faa.gov/adv/advAdvisoryForm.jsp including Canadian ones.

Normally when a ground stop has ended a ground delay program will be in effect so that all the aircraft that have been delayed do not all leave at once and create another huge mess for ATC.  The departure or 'flow times' are requested by carriers and then issued by the flow department.  Since a Dash 8 from Timmins carrying 30-50 people takes one of ACA's landing slots at YYZ as does a B767 from YUL with over 200+ people you can see why a Jazz flight would be pushed further back from YTS.

Offline C172SP

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Toronto Ground Stop
« Reply #2 on: September 28, 2005, 12:12:05 PM »
I believe ATC flow control is designed to keep airports and airways running at maximum capacity (in terms of a/c, not pax). Long-haul flights are slapped with fewer delays because speed restrictions and/or rerouting can be issued enroute as needed. Short flights may be delayed longer because a greater portion of their flight is conducted in the terminal area... no place to go with them besides a holding pattern, which nobody likes. As an aside, ATC is not supposed to give preference to air carriers over general aviation. Sometimes it seems like they do, but this is probably because the carriers have the benefit of dispatchers filing preferred routes and dotting all the i's, etc.

As far as the departure delays go (everyone wanting to leave the same airport at the same time), they are directly related to managing the airborne departure traffic. Sure, the runway might be able to take X departures per minute, but if the terminal area above the airport can't handle X more airplanes, they're going to sit on the ground. And the delay duration would depend on which airspace you needed.

I may not have the whole picture here, so please feel free to shed some more light on this.

Offline binky

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Toronto Ground Stop
« Reply #3 on: September 29, 2005, 10:13:08 AM »
The departure backlog I referred to when a ground stop is lifted is all of the departures that were sitting on the ground scattered around the country ground stopped TO the destination, not the ones at the ground stopped airport that want to depart.  A flood of departure traffic at an airport usually only causes departure delays as aircraft sit in the long line-ups to the runways.