I am a pilot and I have been flying mostly in Europe for the last 14 years. I always plan flights by firstly checking ATC availability under Vatsim Events, then the Vatsim ATC Booking system. As many pilots will agree, that way you can be sure to have coverage.
I have always wondered why some countries never appeared on the Vatsim Bookings, for example the UK and Portugal, there are others too.
I recently raised this issue on their local forums/discords and discovered that some countries (like the UK and Portugal) have a separate ATC booking system.
It would clearly be advantageous to everyone on the network, if all bookings could be in one place, in the Vatsim Booking System.
Clearly there is no obligation for ATC to register a booking, that is not the point of this post. My suggestion is that, if a booking is made, that it gets on the Vatsim Booking system.
How it gets o the Vatsim Booking system is another question - either by ATC booking there directly or, probably better, a country interfacing their booking system with the Vatsim Booking System.
It just isn’t conducive to an effective network/community if there is not a central system.
Pilots will always want to use the most efficient means of planning a flight, it is unlikely that they will want to have to access various, separate country booking systems, that defeats the rationale of having a Network.
But as this is incomplete, I then have to go into each Vacc’s website bookings for UK, Portugal, Italy, others - it is this last step which doesn’t seem sensible for an advanced network like vatsim, it is time-consuming and goes against the whole advantage of a network
Good, I’m a user of Qutescoop as well! I did not notice that there was no ATC booking data e.g. for UK available in VATSIM’s booking file! Have you asked staff at VATUK why they’re not feeding their data into the central system?
Have you asked staff at VATUK why they’re not feeding their data into the central system?
Yes, please see the following link on the Vatsim UK forum, pls add your input, and anyone else too, as it doesn’t seem to be getting much traction.
I don’t quite understand, if there is an API on the Vatsim Booking system, which you can see there, why can’t the UK and others interface their booking systems so we have one central place to go.
As mentioned, at the moment I go into Qutescoop, then each of the sites of UK, Portugal, Italy, etc to get bookings, it is counter-productive
While I can understand your point about planning flights with maximum ATC coverage based on bookings, I think you overestimate the amount of planning that goes into most VATSIM flights. My impression (also at least in part backed up by data we have for EDGG) is that the vast majority of pilots either just flies or looks at current staffing on a map like VATSIM Radar and if they go a bit more in depth, they usually look at events instead of some kind of booking.
For most controllers, at least in Central Europe, bookings are mostly a way to secure a position, usually for an event, and/or to organize staffing with other controllers when it’s unlikely that traffic loads will be manageable without multiple stations online - they are normally not seen as a way to attract pilots. I would say the people who replied to you in the thread in the VATUK forum have already said everything necessary to explain why it is not desirable for the vACC to take steps that would attract even more traffic (and this is not a problem unique to the UK but also affects various other vACCs, especially in Central Europe) and this is probably also why your post is not gaining any additional traction anymore.
So the conclusion is that the UK is not on the Vatsim booking system, because it doesn’t want to attract any more traffic, like a sort or Vbrexit, but worse, as it is thereby aiming for contraction rather than growth.
That may be ok for big airports like EGLL, EGKK but there are many others.
Whether that is a good or bad reason, the fact remains that a mature network should have centralised information.
We have the Vatsim map which shows ATC/Pilots currently online, I can’t see why bookings can’t be the same, the API is available.
If the answer is we don’t want to be because we want less traffic, I don’t think that is the way to go forward
I generally agree, but growth doesn’t work if it’s not sustainable which - at the moment - it is not (just to give you an idea: the maximum amount of simultaneous traffic per controller IRL is usually about 10-15, slightly higher in high level enroute sectors with very little vertical movements - here on VATSIM, in EDGG, the base traffic level on a normal evening is usually 20-25 simultaneous aircraft per controller (and that is if they don’t have to provide topdown service for any significant airport or TMA) and I imagine it’s similar for VATUK, at least in the London area; there are also many more aspects that contribute to it, but suffice it to say that controlling on VATSIM is becoming more stressful by the day, to the point were many controllers actually don’t find it enjoyable anymore). And while I certainly can’t speak for every vACC, it seems to me that especially the busy ones have largely exhausted what measures they themselves can take to accommodate further growth, so until network leadership takes meaningful steps to resolve this issue long-term, affected vACCs will have to increasingly focus on damage control, i.e. taking measures to stop or even revert growth in their airspace, which can certainly include a removal of any kind of staffing advertisement, including publishing bookings beyond the scope of absolute necessity.
Understood! Yes, the last thing wanted is to lose controllers, I can only always feel awe for the effort provided by all controllers, given this is all voluntary and for enjoyment/learning.
Maybe the way to go to reduce crazy workload is in fixed slots for the very busy airports at peak periods, I know it may be unpopular to those just wanting to connect and fly, but if that is causing stress/etc for controllers, something would be better than nothing
Having very regular staffing at a variety of smaller airports is actually a very effective way of decluttering traffic and thus reducing complexity (much easier to have 10 people going to 5 different airports than 10 people going to 2 different airports at the same time) and as you probably know, exactly this was the case with VATGER’s S1 minor program pre-GCAP. However, since GCAP changed what the S1 means, S1s also have access to significantly busier and thus more interesting airports such as EDDS, EDDK, and EDDV resulting in most of them not being interested in staffing all the similarly interesting 20 or so small airports they were allowed to staff up to TWR before GCAP and rather staffing DEL or GND at one of the aforementioned airports (with an interesting side effect being that when none of these fewer, more interesting positions is available, many controllers actually seem to prefer to not control at all than to control a position that in their view now is uninteresting - though that shouldn’t come as a surprise as it was common for a long time with controllers getting their S3 losing interest in staffing TWR positions, e.g.), which of course also results in an increased in added topdown workload for radar controllers.
Just as an example, the graph below shows monthly uptime and traffic levels (and coincidentally also how much actual staffing affects traffic levels in quite a proportional manner) at one of the most popular airports from the pre-GCAP S1 minor program. You can see really well when the program originally started (September 2022) and when GCAP came into effect (March 2024). With around 800-900 monthly movements on average, it may not have been a super busy airport, but you could usually be sure that you don’t get bored to death during an average evening - but if you can then staff airports with 3000 monthly movements, those smaller airports will suddenly seem incredibly boring and you won’t want to staff them anymore. So instead of staffing the 10-15 smaller airports with 500-1000 monthly movements, they now staff 3-4 airports that were seeing pretty good staffing levels before already.
To be fair, the best remedy would be to simply have overall more active controllers, especially at ACC level and/or to have a slot system based on expected sector capacity similar to what Eurocontrol Network Management does IRL, but since either of those are not very good options or at least not something we can expect to see anytime soon.
There are also various possible ways of addressing this issue in the short term, but unfortunately it seems that network leadership is not really interested in moving away from the status quo (especially since GCAP, pretty much all ideas/suggestions I’ve heard from others or proposed myself sooner or later end up being rejected due to not being 100% in line with how people in divisional or regional leadership positions interpret some policies, while reports of problems are usually met with a “sounds like you have to fix your system”-attitude), but that’s probably a bit too OT for this thread.
There are limits to what we want to take our hobby to. Our virtual controllers will do their best to accommodate as many pilots as possible. If an ATC organization wants to make other airports more attractive to pilots then they will need to staff them regularly and also let pilots know about it: PR and bookings.
