av8rbama
no shirt no shoes no dice
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2006
- Posts
- 173
I'm miffed about this...
I was returning from a mapping site about 150nm away from home, had flight following with the local approach control and I get a call "NXXXXX, we have a message for you... you've been requested to land at boondocks airport at your 6 o'clock, 10 miles, and call your office on the landline." I figured we had some sort of emergency back at the office or with a family member or such. Turns out he had another job come through in the same area where we were flying. We couldn't even fly the dang thing b/c we only had a color magazine, no b/w as this job required.
This didn't just happen once today, it happened twice. After departing for home, I got another call from approach. "NXXXXX, east-buddha tower just called on the landline and you need to call the office when you get back to east-buddha." Our local 'east-buddha' class D tower guys are very nice and have always told us they'd pass on occasional messages when we were operating locally, but in this case my boss asked the local tower guy to get on the landline and call approach and pass on this message (separate from the first one).
Is this a complete misuse of the FAA's communications system? I say yes, imagine if every company did this exact thing. What do you say? What the heck do I tell my boss? The controllers who passed on the info seemed kinda po'd that they were requested to do this sort of thing. These controllers are always watching our backs, and when we call up they don't even need our a/c ident or anything, they usually automatically give us a squawk and ask where our mapping areas are. I don't want to lose our repoire with these guys and gals. I do my best to be professional and polite on the radio, it's gotten us into some busy airspace where others would simply be told "unable." And I refuse to work for someone who micromanages us from the ground using ATC as a telephone operator.
I was returning from a mapping site about 150nm away from home, had flight following with the local approach control and I get a call "NXXXXX, we have a message for you... you've been requested to land at boondocks airport at your 6 o'clock, 10 miles, and call your office on the landline." I figured we had some sort of emergency back at the office or with a family member or such. Turns out he had another job come through in the same area where we were flying. We couldn't even fly the dang thing b/c we only had a color magazine, no b/w as this job required.
This didn't just happen once today, it happened twice. After departing for home, I got another call from approach. "NXXXXX, east-buddha tower just called on the landline and you need to call the office when you get back to east-buddha." Our local 'east-buddha' class D tower guys are very nice and have always told us they'd pass on occasional messages when we were operating locally, but in this case my boss asked the local tower guy to get on the landline and call approach and pass on this message (separate from the first one).
Is this a complete misuse of the FAA's communications system? I say yes, imagine if every company did this exact thing. What do you say? What the heck do I tell my boss? The controllers who passed on the info seemed kinda po'd that they were requested to do this sort of thing. These controllers are always watching our backs, and when we call up they don't even need our a/c ident or anything, they usually automatically give us a squawk and ask where our mapping areas are. I don't want to lose our repoire with these guys and gals. I do my best to be professional and polite on the radio, it's gotten us into some busy airspace where others would simply be told "unable." And I refuse to work for someone who micromanages us from the ground using ATC as a telephone operator.
