Thank you. I'm now totally baffled. Amendment 59 reads:
8.5 When the reported meteorological visibility at the aerodrome falls below 5000 m, and/or the cloud ceiling is less than 1500 feet, pilots of aircraft, other than helicopters, operating under VFR inbound to, or outbound from airfields situated in Class D control zones must be advised and their intentions sought. No further VFR clearances are to be issued to any inbound or outbound traffic, in these circumstances, until such time as the reported meteorological visibility at the aerodrome reaches or exceeds 5000m and the cloud ceiling is 1500 feet or above.
(change bars indicate that the parts about cloud ceiling are insertions in Amendment 59)
The corrigiendum reads:
There is an error in Amendment 59 to CAP 493 Manual of Air Traffic Services (MATS) Part 1, Section 3, Chapter 1, page 5, paragraph 8.5. The last sentence should be corrected to finish with a full stop after “exceeds 5000 m” and the remaining words deleted.
“No further VFR clearances are to be issued to any inbound or outbound traffic, in these circumstances, until such time as the reported meteorological visibility at the aerodrome reaches or exceeds 5000m. [and the cloud ceiling is 1500 feet or above].”
So this raises two questions:
1) Why would they insert the 1500 ft bit? [Don't tell me -- it was that bl
dy ICAO safety audit, wasn't it...]
2) Why would they delete it in the second part but not the first?
It's really quite awful drafting. Reading the two bits together, does this mean, as Vintage ATCO suggests, that there
is a 1500 ft ceiling limit on VFR in the CTR or not?
