Airservices Class E changes

[Geoff Fairless]

Thanks to everyone that took an interest in my post, I will try and answer the questions posed:

Triadic - Yes I believe that Airservices is reacting to a possible finding by the ATSB, but not from the Minister.

• Australia has a State Aviation Safety Plan with seven agencies accountable for safety, five of which are in the Minister's portfolio.
• Safety is, however, run by the Aviation Policy Group(APG), consisting of the head honchos of DIRD, CASA, Airservices, and the ADF. (Note specifically excludes ATSB) These honchos are currently a public servant, and ex-LAME, and ex-ATC, and a Pilot. I doubt that they tell the Minister anything unless:

1. It involves a politician; or
2. It will get in the media
3. It may affect the Government's re-election (see both above)

• The APG will have discussed this proposal and CASA will have agreed that Airservices should take the lead. This is due to CASA OAR being a very junior office within CASA, managed by a fourth-level manager, which acts, in my opinion, as a rubber stamp for what the ADF and Airservices decree. (See another thread about following the law, where I have posted about the legality of R Areas outside of Territorial Waters - 12NM)

Drops - I saw sectors in California, Alaska, and Hawaii, they are all organised around work levels and safety requirements. For instance, a high-level sector cannot have more than two crossing/merge points. Surveillance is, of course, much more widespread, however, apart from Class C, this does not dictate the airspace classification. (For Class C there must be surveillance). An example was Colorado (which I did not witness but we were told about), where Class E was "procedural", as we call it, due to limitations on radar coverage. Later the Colorado State Government bought and installed a multi-lateration system, similar to ours in Tasmania, and the FAA then began to use it to move traffic more quickly. Finally yes, lower-level Class E would require more sectors, more staff, a different rating or endorsement system for the ATCs, and probably another building. I doubt the current two centres could contain the expansion unless they move the Approach Control units (BNE, CNS, MEL, and ADL) out.

10JQKA - Class G, in the US is confined to the airspace below Class E. Variously below 1500, 1200, or 700 feet. It is therefore very limited and because US Class E does not require transponder equipment for VFR flights, indistinguishable from Class E.

Checkboard - I do not believe that Australia had the option not to use the ICAO classifications that was why we went to the US. The world-wide problem was, what you have highlighted, the proliferation of "special-use" airspace that pilots had to study as they passed from place to place and country to country. The adoption of the classes was designed to allow a pilot to know what service was being provided just by looking at the letter. That did not work completely, of course, because many countries, including Australia, have different levels of service within particular airspaces. As was mentioned in another response, our Class G is really Class F, the police in SYD Class C operate as if it was Class D, and so on. Europe had to go as far as banning individual countries from relaxing separation requirements. The best example is London where the Control Zone was Class A with VFR helicopters! It is now Class D because that was the realistic usage.

Enough for now, I hope those comments helped.