Narrative:

There seems to be an increased emphasis on the part of controllers in general to release approaching aircraft to a visual approach thus relieving of the responsibility for separation and guidance. I see this almost everywhere in the us but most recently here in anc. As is normal for a VMC day; many freighters and passenger carriers all arrive at the same time. It never fails. Needless to say; it causes a lot of congestion on a single arrival corridor. It is situations like this that more than ever require controller intervention to create spacing. Unfortunately it creates just the opposite. Controllers seem more eager than ever to get pilots to accept a visual and/or separation when it would be far safer to assign vectors or airspeed's as required adjusting spacing as necessary. On this particular day at this particular airport we were assigned a heading (070) and altitude (3;000) that put us too high and parallel north of the inbound course to 07R. This of course would not be a problem normally; however at the same time he cleared another aircraft; who accepted the visual; to land on the parallel runway 07L. I felt very uncomfortable because I knew the other aircraft was lining up for 07L somewhere behind me and I had to be directly between him and their runway while waiting for the controller to give us an intercept vector and a lower altitude. Meanwhile; the controller must have been waiting for us to call our interval in sight which we never did because we never saw him. When the preceding aircraft landed on 07R we were handed off to tower high and far left of final for 07R. I assumed I was now VFR and took responsibility for my own intercept and altitude and thus maneuvered as required to land on 07R.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Air Carrier inbound to ANC expressed concern regarding the ATC's apparent increased use of Visual Approach procedures; suggesting conventional separation techniques would be preferable.

Narrative: There seems to be an increased emphasis on the part of Controllers in general to release approaching aircraft to a visual approach thus relieving of the responsibility for separation and guidance. I see this almost everywhere in the US but most recently here in ANC. As is normal for a VMC day; many freighters and passenger carriers all arrive at the same time. It never fails. Needless to say; it causes a lot of congestion on a single arrival corridor. It is situations like this that more than ever require Controller intervention to create spacing. Unfortunately it creates just the opposite. Controllers seem more eager than ever to get pilots to accept a visual and/or separation when it would be far safer to assign vectors or airspeed's as required adjusting spacing as necessary. On this particular day at this particular airport we were assigned a heading (070) and altitude (3;000) that put us too high and parallel north of the inbound course to 07R. This of course would not be a problem normally; however at the same time he cleared another aircraft; who accepted the visual; to land on the parallel Runway 07L. I felt very uncomfortable because I knew the other aircraft was lining up for 07L somewhere behind me and I had to be directly between him and their runway while waiting for the Controller to give us an intercept vector and a lower altitude. Meanwhile; the Controller must have been waiting for us to call our interval in sight which we never did because we never saw him. When the preceding aircraft landed on 07R we were handed off to Tower high and far left of final for 07R. I assumed I was now VFR and took responsibility for my own intercept and altitude and thus maneuvered as required to land on 07R.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.