absolutely agree I should have used may, not will, my mistake
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I understood it the way you meant it, I only wanted to emphasize it to other potential readers.
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Dear Patrick,
Let me introduce myself. I am Mateusz Ć»ymĆa, holding a position of ACCPL3 - Operations Officer in Polish VACC, a subdivision responsible of the event. First of all, I would like to apologise for any inconvenience that you may have experienced during the night.
At the beginning, let me explain what the event is about. Polish Independence is a cyclic event that is held yearly to celebrate such an important date in our history. We gather in real life on-site to provide the best what we can in terms of ATC service. This year we had 35 VATSIM ATC sitting in a single room, while accompanied with another 40-ish non-ATC observers, either pilots, or real life aviation professionals (ATC, Pilots, Handling agents, cabin crew etc.) that enjoys the event with us.
EPWA (Warszawa-Chopin) airport is currently the biggest airport in Poland. The real life capacity of the airport is around 600-650 flights between 05:30 - 23:30 LT (Local Time), while the peak movement for ATC, given the crossing runways, is around 45 operations/hr. During eventsâ evening, we reached 550 operations during the event period which was 10:00 - 23:00 LT, and during peak hours we had operations rate on a level of 110 operations/hr with departures and arrivals combined. This shows how massive the event was, and why delays were such high both for departures and arrivals.
Now, coming to a slot system. As a real-life First Officer with a modest experience of 3 years in the industry as a pilot, I can tell you that slots do change . And it both improves and worsens sometimes. Our system, like many other on the VATSIM are very early stage and mostly they calculate the outbound flow - that means the ACDM prevents only the taxiways congestion. The âCTOTâ shall be calculated more centrally, i.e. including arrival and enroute flows (so the sectors you will overfly). This is not done yet.
We did an investigation around your flight, and it seems your initial EOBT was around 1920z. This was the time where a massive income from mostly EGLL-EPWA city bridge was arriving. As you noticed probably, crossing runways make departures on RWY 29 dependant from arrivals on RWY 33. Unfortunately, there has been several mishaps by the arriving pilots not maintaining correct approach speeds, so the âusualâ flow: Departure/arrival/departue/arrival etc. was questioned. ACDM calculations are based on the âusualâ flow above. Sometimes, some departures had to be held, and i.e. 2-3-4 arrivals had to be cleared to land first - due to minimal separation on final. I once again remind you about the fact, people landing there were waiting in holding around 1 hr in the air. At this time, a âDELAYâ command was instructed by the Flow Management Team that was on site coordinating the flights. This delays all the slot times, due to congestion of E3/E4 taxiway, the main one leading to RWY 29. This is why your slot was postponed twice. If you were asked to come back to Delivery frequency, itâs most likely that Ground controller, which - by the way - on this time was a real ATC from Warsaw Tower, seen that you are calling on incorrect time. You were not displayed on the acdm.plvacc.pl, because you decided to log in on incorrect stand - the wingspan allocated to your stand is smaller than a wingspan of your aircraft (A346, max span there is code C: 36m). This is why system did not recognized your correct positioning and didnât show up you on the website, but the times are still there - showing on ATC screen.
Summing up, we had 3 real life ATCO onsite from Warsaw that day and they all agreed it looked like âtheir worst case scenarios on the simsâ where they train. Remember, we are all volunteers that are simply enthusiasts, we are not trained in a real life scenarios, and we exceeded the real flow 200%. If you still feel, that âthis isnât muchâ, I am afraid you can blame it on us, and thereâs nothing much more we can do about it, except than once again passing an apologies for the inconveniences.
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Dear Mateusz
thanks a lot for detailed and professional answer
I did not notice on Vatsim Radar that there so many departures and arrivals, at the time of my waiting clearance I noticed only 25 departures but sure you have all correct datas.
For connecting on an incorrect with my A346 I apologize, even if I learn everyday I am not able to detect on airport charts what is the allocated parking for an A346, if somebody could help on this subject ? So I understand why I was not appearing on the departure list.
For your sentence :If you were asked to come back to Delivery frequency, itâs most likely that Ground controller, which - by the way - on this time was a real ATC from Warsaw Tower, seen that you are calling on incorrect time.
I did not contact ground from my own initiative, I was instructed by delivery controller to do so. There fore I was extremely disapointed when the ground controller instructed me to contact back delivery , this after 45 minutes waiting. Here there was perhaps a strange coordination between delivery and ground.
Nevertheless thanks again for the time you spent answering very deeply to me. It is much more useful than some âfreeâ and short judments expressed by some (not all of course) participants in this thread.
Happy controlling and flying and sorry for some mistakes in my english
Hi,
You can use A-CDM site (https://acdm.plvacc.pl) to check maximum wingspan at the stands.
yes it is.
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especially when you consider that the published maximum capacity for departures per hour at EPWA is 30 (and 26 for arrivals).
We aim for realism. Some places go to the nth degree, but when it comes to ATCO numbers we rarely match the real world. This isnât a complaint, just an observation.
I looked at this acdm polish site but do not understand how I can find allowed parking stans for my A346, thanks for help
Where can I find on the Navigraph airport charts where parking an A340 600 is allowed ? Thanks for help
Just clik at stand. There is info about max wingspan, i.e. at st. 18 is 51 m.
You know what the wingspan of an A346 is, right?
Ah ok.on some places clicking does not work ?
Yes 64 m
If I want to see other airports than EPWA , is there an internet site where I can find which airport use that system ?
Thanks
You can click every active stand, well⊠better word - not closed by NOTAM due construction works (st. 34 - st. 45).
A-CDM works only at EPWA in Poland.
For max wingspan, you can find information on the AIP Polska website: https://www.ais.pansa.pl/publikacje/aip-ifr/
AD > AD 2 > ICAO > charts starting with the number 1
Thanks
I think this is taking realism a little bit too far. Yes, if you are aware of your wingspan and if you know that some stands are NOT compatible with it, then choose another parking position. But I will not do it myself or expect any virtual pilot to research if a specific stand is okay or not. There is only so much time that we have available for our flights.
I see people actively researching stand for this specific thing as a bonus, but I would never expect anyone to do it.
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You are right this is getting too complicate and makes us loosing time.
Total nonsense. You should use proper stand for Your aircraft.
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So you want to me land my A380 in Warsaw and in Krakow? Here I come! 
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Only Warsaw (EPWA) is able to service aircraft cat F like A388.
In MSFS/XP You can land even at Lukla airport 
At VATSIM You shouldnât.
