Originally Posted by
chevvron
How can you 'keep the VFR away from the arrival path of IFR flights' when it's not talking to you and it doesn't need to talk to you? In that scenario there's no difference between Class E and Class G.
You're right about that, and sorry for the slight mistake I made in the text.
The control zone AND the terminal area are class D, that is the lowest classification we use for control zones and terminal areas. We do have a control area above, and THAT is class E (which is above 6500') So you're right, when up there, everything between VFR and IFR befalls the pilots. But lower when the turning and separations inbound/outbound begin, we WILL be in contact and to the required extend control VFR flights as well.
Once you get above 3000' AGL VFR you'd have to have a larger margin between you and the clouds, and also speed depending, and above FL100 even higher margins.. All in all to avoid IFR/VFR bumping into each other at the egde of clouds. And we make sure it doesn't happen in the TMA/CTR of course.
Having an airspace like that is not that big of an restriction as people might think, for the most part pilots get what they want, and for VFR instruction to "remain below/above xxxxFT", "remain east/west of xxxx" usually solves it, and still give the pilot a lot of room to manouvre. And airspaces should in general be constructed so the airspace is as close to the minimum required. But you know that
