One interesting thing I saw on a recent flight was that in N France we were handled by Paris Control, despite being at only FL100.
This appears to be a change from past practice where Paris Control would seemingly not handle traffic below FL120, and is important to pilots flying IFR from France to the UK at sub-oxygen levels (FL100-110) who in the past used to get dumped onto London Information (the French used to hand you over to "London 124.6"
) with their IFR clearance being stealthily terminated in the process.
It appears that of the N French ATC units only Paris Control have a handover arrangement with London Control, so the only ways to preserve one's IFR clearance were to fly at FL120+, or to leave France on specific routes which led directly into lower level Class D in the UK (e.g. the ORTAC-SAM one). On the cross-channel routes e.g. via SITET one would be dumped onto London Info.
I used to solve this by always flying at FL120-140, even if the weather was nice.
I have not tested the lower limits on this but have seen Paris Control operate FL100 on two recent occassions, and every GA piston aircraft is capable of FL100. And below FL080 one will enter UK airspace in Class
G anyway, which in the UK terminates the IFR clearance.
It appears that the French are making an extra effort to make this work, because on the last flight we were handled by Caen Radar briefly (due to some military activity) and then handed back to Paris Control in time for the handover to London Control.
