Interesting point, particularly the bit about leaving controlled airspace to make the climb (assuming a "Request level change en-route" clearance.) Not the easiest thing to achieve in the UK, certainly out of the major South East airports.
What will be going on in the cockpit is some of the above plus the following: an awful lot of frantic referring to the extremely complex chapter in the AERAD Europe and Middle East Guide, both as a refresher on the ICAO basic procedure, and any specific procedures for the aerodrome if aplicable, but also the unbelievably complicated table of scenarios under United Kingdom rules. The relevant Aerad (Sorry, Racal or Thales or whoever it is this week) charts would also be being pulled out from the morass in our chart book. All this whilst bearing in mind the first part of the Aviate, Navigate, Communicate Triumvirate..... TCAS would become our single best friend for a while as well.
Now once we had sorted out what we were going to do in accordance with all of that, and having given in to the fact that we will undoubtedly get "something" wrong that we will be bollocked over later, I can tell you that I for one would not, repeat not, nay never do a dirty dive from 35,000 to a suitable airport just because I could maintain VMC, without other overriding circumstances. We are on an IFR flight plan after all, in controlled airspace and I firmly believe that the VMC curve-ball exists for those aircraft who lose contact on climbout and can continue in the circuit to land at a suitably quiet airport or piece of airspace.
In your scenario above, I'd squawk 76, and continue as-per the ICAO basic procedure towards TFS, including the procedural approach from altitude descending in the hold... the controllers there would have had plenty of heads-up time, and would be expecting that from us.
However, what if you get a failure inbound LHR from the north, filed on a BNN 1A? ICAO says, hit BNN at altitude at c.ETA, then descend to land in 30 minutes. As an LHR based pilot, I would do the following, on a 76 squawk... descend in accordance with the published restrictions on the STAR, hit BNN at the last restricted altitude, hold for a minimum of ten minutes whilst descending to lowest stack level, then approach proceduraly... (I'm writing from memory, here, this would of course be modified by a frantic read of the book.)
I might be wrong in certain aspects of this, but it is such a grey area... one which I was running over in my head just this very evening....
Thoughts? Sorry for the disjointed nature of the post, but it is an accurate reflection of the disjointed thought process that accompanies any discussion or application of Radio failure in controlled, and busy airspace. The real world and the books seldom tie up and I suspect there would be a lot of second guessing going on.
£6
[ 04 August 2001: Message edited by: Sick Squid ]