I arrived today at LSZH and prepared for the outbound leg — deboarding/boarding and aircraft setup — while there was no ATC online. There were already quite a few aircraft on the ground, though.
Suddenly the airport became fully staffed and DEL started issuing clearances; traffic quickly became very dense. I waited patiently for a pause to request my clearance, but was told: “number four, with indefinite waiting time as non-event traffic.”
I then checked the VATSIM Events page as well as vacc.ch, but found no event advertised. A quick Google search suggested there may have been some kind of LSZH–LIRF “shuttle” announced days earlier, but there was no active or official event page. In short: nothing clearly advertised.
After burning fuel on the APU for another ~50 minutes, I eventually disconnected.
Leaving aside the fact that the event was not advertised on the official VATSIM events page, my main question is this: is there any provision in the VATSIM regulations that allows traffic registered for a (private) event to have priority over non-event traffic? I searched the Code of Conduct but couldn’t find anything relevant.
I guess that there were slots assigned to event aircraft and if all runway slots are already taken for the next 60+ minutes, this can happen. I understand you, it is extremely frustrating when you want to just get out of that airport, especially if you are not going to put more strain on the event-route. ATC should have done better in finding a gap for you to slip in and slip out of the airport.
It’s unfortunate that there is indeed no official announcement for this event, I just checked on the official VATSIM website, not even on the website of the Swiss VACC.
Thank you for the input, Andreas! Indeed, my filled departure was for LEPA, not LIRF. I guess there were no pre-assigned slots, certainly no event-TOBT page (not even DCL), the clearances were given on the fly, by request, but only to the event-traffic, the other traffic was just kept there with no foreseeable slot. At least for how long I was connected.
Suggest sending your feedback to the subdivision involved, so they can see how it impacted your enjoyment of the network, and allow them to clarify expectations with their controllers or alter how they manage events.