What is flow control? - ATC

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What is flow control?

Flow control is a technique employed in traffic management to adjust the influx of aircraft into congested areas, such as airport airspace, ensuring that the rate of entry does not exceed the capacity of the available resources. This information can be incorporated into the ATIS remarks at any given time. You should expect this to be used at airports close to an IFATC featured hub, such as Geneva today.

How does flow control work?

Departures from origin airports may be delayed. Delays primarily occur at the gate, influencing the arrival schedule of affected flights. When &#;Flow Control&#; is active in the ATIS, you can expect to be given a &#;Hold Position&#; command at the gate.

What should I do?

Simply request pushback as usual but expect a delay. Controllers will use a timer to slow your departure.

What should I not do?

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Do not re-request pushback. Controllers will have given you a timer and sending a duplicate request will remove this reminder to the controller. As this reminder is then reset, it can often put you further back in the queue for pushback. In addition, duplicate requests frequently result in reports at these airports, so please be patient and trust you are already in the queue.

How is this different from a gate hold?

It is important to distinguish flow control from a gate hold; the latter does not serve as a traffic flow management technique. A gate hold involves the complete restriction of traffic at the gate, preventing any aircraft from pushing back and is typically used when the origin airport cannot accommodate any further traffic on its taxiways. This is why you may see some aircraft receiving a pushback immediately: their destination airport will not be the airport for which flow control is active.

So, when you see flow control in effect at Geneva today, please be patient, expect delays, but remember you are still in a queue for departure!

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No, gates are not used for throttling flows in other than aquarium situations. Faucets in your house are more like globe valves in older faucets and cartridge type valves similar to ball valves in newer faucets. You may have a gate valve on the incoming water line from your water meter but it is intended to be fully open or fully closed only for maintenance.
When you are under house or boosted pressure and throttle with a gate you are causing cavitation across the gate and seat areas due to the velocity and pressure drop. Say you have 60 psi on one side and an open pipe or hose on the other, the velocity across the small cross surface area that is open is sonic velocity and causes tremendous wear plus vibration between the gate and the threaded shaft which leads to more wear. In an aquarium we may have 4 feet of head (1.7 psi) to dissipate across one side to the other so wear is negligible. Its rare to find an aquarium pump that pumps more than say 15-16 feet of head or less than 7 psi and most are in the 11-12 feet of head range or about 5 psi, you can put your finger over the end of the pipe and stop the flow.

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