Stranded at altitude

[GravityHater]

I imagine there is no way around this but its happened a couple of times now and its frustrating.
One of our stops is a remote non-towered field. Several times now we will come in and pass the 75, 50, 25mi markers and center will not let us down from the 30's. Once they had an emergency and kept telling everyone to shut up for the entire time so we motored on, slowing as we approached our clearance limit and entered a hold there as we had no further instructions.
Another time, the previous controller said ask the next guy for lower and when we got on, we could not even check in because he was telling everyone to hush up, too many people talking at once and a non-stop barrage to flight following and others having various comm problems.
All the while our destination floats past, in severe clear, 5 miles below us!
There was zero traffic, btw.
Short of declaring a fuel emergency and getting out of there by ourselves, any great ideas on how to deal with this? No pax this time, so we enjoyed the zero-thrust, all-dirty, spiral down!

 

[Groucho]

You did exactly what you are supposed to do. The fact that ATC cannot handle the traffic is not your problem. I does however point to the deficiencies in the system.

I would file a NASA report listing the fact that you were allowed to reach a clearance limit with no further instructions from ATC and no holding clearance.

A NASA report will trickle down to the facility management, but then again they are government and it's summer time and everyone is on vacation.

 

[coloneldan]

I agree with Groucho. I have a similar situation. I'm based in Austin. We go to an airport that is just north of the DFW class B. We usually end up 15 or 20 miles south of the airport in the neighborhood of FL210. The only way for us to avoid that situation, is to file a circuitious route away from DFW. We tried that a couple of time, just to check the fuel and time enroute. We were always cleared pretty much direct. Even when we told them what we were doing. We were told they could let us do that, but we would either have to stay very low, (6000) or go over San Angelo then Amarillo, or some other rediculous thing.

It boils down to this. When you are going in or out of a metropolitan area, if you are using the primary airport, you're good. If you're going somewhere else, they don't have the foggiest idea what to do with you.

God help you if you're trying to operate in the NE Corridor.

 

[bubbers44]

Landing at Aruba is always an adventure. Start asking for descent about 150 miles out and they may get you out of FL370 around 50 out if you are lucky. Places like POP, Dominican Republic are hopeless too arriving from the west. I finally got clearance from Port au Prince prior to departing their airspace every time to have any chance of getting down.

 

[FL420]

I imagine there is no way around this but its happened a couple of times now and its frustrating. ......
......Short of declaring a fuel emergency and getting out of there by ourselves, any great ideas on how to deal with this? No pax this time, so we enjoyed the zero-thrust, all-dirty, spiral down!

I suggest being proactive by looking up the phone number of the ARTCC or TRACON in the A/FD and calling them up. Describe the problem to the Facility Manager. They may have unidentified(officially anyway) staffing or training problems. Perhaps they need some complaints to get more staff or frequencies allocated.

If you get blown off or sense a lack of concern or cooperation from them, drop a NASA ASRS report on them and let the flying community know through an AvHazard report at Professional Pilot magazine.

 

[DrewBlows]

Part of your problem seems to be the congested frequency. If you can't get a word in you can always IDENT. I'm sure it's annoying as hell to controllers, but if they descend you that's one less plane to deal with.