mbcxharm, please don't take this the wrong way, but as an ex-London Mil controller, hurrah, finally someone has started to fight the corner a little and stop people just deciding to cut the corner.
If the North Sea danger areas (D323A-F) are active then you can't go direct to NEW and you would end up routing to OTR then NEW. However, it should always have been the case that unless you'd flight-planned that route, you couldn't fly it!
Having been away for a little while now I don't know whether the RAD has been changed but as you say, a lot of companies are still able to file the route. The problem is that there are a lot of people flying that route who don't understand that they're going through an area of intense aerial activity with upwards of 40 aircraft flying VFR in that airspace up to (I guess now FL195?). What you don't want is a A320 (I think) Lufthansa captain refusing to accept the hard 50 degree avoiding action turn, arguing that he's en-route traffic and that the VFR traffic (which I'm not talking to) should move out of his way.
Have I started this argument again?
