The atmosphere in the Pilot's Lounge at the virtual airport has been decidedly unpleasant over the last several weeks. About half of the pilots here rely on telephone briefings with Flight Service to get their aviation weather information and file flight plans. As any pilot in the U.S. is now aware, the Lockheed-Martin takeover of the FSS system has been a disaster so far. It is so difficult and takes so long to get through to a briefer that there are rumors of a betting line in Las Vegas on how long it takes a pilot to reach a human or give up in the attempt. My personal record for tolerating frustration is at 40 minutes. In that call I never did get to speak to a human being, but Lockheed-Martin was ingenious enough to disconnect me three times while I was on "ignore." (Some people call it "hold," but I prefer not to use euphemisms.) I finally gave up. Here in the Lounge, if a pilot gets to speak to a briefer, etiquette decrees that -- when finished -- the pilot passes the phone to another pilot who is trying valiantly to reach a FSS.The comments regarding Lockheed-Martin that I have been getting from other pilots are uniformly not printable in a family publication. I've learned some interesting new profanity as a result. I would gladly give up the learning experience for the ability to get through to a briefer. However, I would prefer a briefer who speaks English. The angriest pilot I heard from called FSS from Palwaukee Airport, outside of Chicago, and managed to get a human, but the person simply could not speak or understand English well enough to conduct a weather briefing. The pilot, Bud Post, gave up on the briefing and tried to file an IFR flight plan with the FSS briefer. Bud went through the sequence extremely slowly, spelling most of the information, and was told by the briefer that the flight plan was on file. In fact, Bud asked him three separate times (because of the language problem) and was assured it was on file. Of course, when Bud went to pick up his clearance, there was no record of any flight plan.Yes, I know that if I use a computerized briefing I will avoid this problem. However, I prefer to discuss the weather with the briefer, as the quality of my understanding goes up compared to reading the bare numbers on the computer. This is especially true when I get a briefer who knows and is interested in weather. The more significant problem is that, when the weather is low here at the virtual airport as well as at a number of airports I frequent, the only way to pick up my instrument clearance is via telephone. For many years, once I had a cell phone, it was a piece of cake: I'd fire up the engine, taxi out to the runup area, do my pre-takeoff checks and then call Flight Service. I'd get a briefer within seconds, the briefer could call up my clearance, and I'd be on my way quickly and efficiently.Now, I preflight the airplane and debate whether to have my passengers even get in. The problem is that I know it is going to be a long time between when I place the call and when I reach a briefer. Plus, for some reason, the briefer always has a heck of a time getting my clearance (if it hasn't been lost because of some screw-up). So it will usually take the briefer several minutes of hunting; however, once the clearance does come, I get a void time that is only about seven minutes away; far shorter than I've gotten in the past. Then I've got to shoehorn everyone into the airplane, start up, taxi out, do the pre-takeoff checks and get into the air within seven minutes. If the wind is out of the north, it's not physically possible unless I take off downwind, because it's too far to taxi to the other end.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/features/the-pilots-lounge-114-the-fss-mess-privatization-and-the-lack-of-personal-responsibility