As a professional pilot I do not want UK Pilots transiting UK class D airspace while I am in there in IMC. I am happy in other places but not the UK. Why? - check the UK difference in how close a VFR flight can be to the cloud base in the UK compared to the ICAO standard! The requirment to keep away from could was put there for a reason and it was not to help the bimbling ppl/cpl out of IMC.
When flying fur fun of course I want to fly as efficiently as possible (reduce carbon footprint etc) and want to safely cross class D when possible however, one must apply a bit of common sense to such requests
The filing of an airprox or even an MOR does not say that safety was not ensured. Each are simply personal opinions regarding the situation. It is the subsequent investigation and discussion that determines if safety was not ensured and then makes proposals to ensure that in future the same should not happen again.
I have yet to see an airprox or incident final report that recomended controllers should refuse access to certain airspace.
Before going down the TCAS route, everyone should refresh the parameters for an RA and the levels at which RAs are inhibited. If I remember correctly, TCAS only tries to ensure 300ft vertical separation below 20000ft. The worst one should get against an intruder in level flight 500ft above one's level is "monitor vertical speed" - no big problem when one is descending or about to.
I can see both sides of the argument here.
How many pilots want their request for transit (no flight plan in the system) to be told hold at (VRP) expect onward clearance at (1 hour from now). Or how about being brought into the zone and held and held and held and held and standby and standby and held and held.
Or even be taken into the zone and vectored all the way round just 2nm inside the edge with a 20 minute hold before crossing the final approach track.
Lets have a complaint from the B757 drivers that on departing Stansted for say Gatwick have to fly north of the field before going north of Luton, overhad Benson, 15 miles west of White Waltham, overhead Odiham and almost all the way to Shoreham before beign vectored some 50 track miles into Gatwick. Do they complain, No. Why? because their exprience and airmanship tells them that with the London area, that is actually not a bad routing even if they would prefer to depart 23 at Stansted and join straight onto right base for 26L at Gatwick. Meanwhile the PPL doing the same in a C182 VFR could probably land before them if City give a VFR crossing with little delay!
How much extra time for having to go round the Stansted CTR 5? 10 minutes?. Even if it is 20 mnutes then it is probably quicker than having to hold for a gap in the flghts that have alrady filed a flight plan in the normal way.
The problem with Stansted unlike Solent is that in terms of VFR transits, they are very limited vertically and have much more traffic.
Regards,
DFC