GaryGnu, you don’t seem to understand. The only reason we have an airspace system is because of VFR traffic. Otherwise everything would be Class A like Heathrow.
The key to maximum safety is allocating the resources effectively. If all you do is to move up the ICAO scale and do not do any “balancing” you will simply increase costs and drive GA out of business – which is happening.
If you had read
Unsafe Skies (see
here) you would understand that we originally had two types of airspace. One was controlled, where we controlled everything, and one uncontrolled where we didn’t give any control service at all. Modern countries such as the USA have seven classifications of airspace – so the resources are allocated more effectively and higher safety is the result.
Imagine if in our road system we simply had dirt roads and toll ways. Surely it is obvious to you that more lives would be lost. The fact is that we spend money on roads as the risk increases in a stepped way. That is the best way to save the most lives in airspace management.
The link airspace above Class D towers has a measurably lower collision risk than that of the airspace close to the aerodrome at locations like Ayers Rock or Avalon. Surely it is sensible to move the resources to where the increased risk is.
The Class C service over Albury (which used to be the equivalent of Class B) is a definite over-allocation of the airspace categories. Surely it is better to have the controllers concentrating on the airspace close to the tower where the collision risk is higher, and have more of these controllers and more towers.
In the past we would go from uncontrolled airspace with absolutely nothing, to basically Class B airspace with everything. It meant that you had ridiculous situations such as a tower being built at Gove, and never being used. Even then the powers in the old Flight Standards Department knew this was a complete misallocation of resources.
Gary, if you always insist that the only changes that can ever be made result in moving up the ICAO scale and increasing restrictions and costs, we will never be able to have an airspace system which allocates resources correctly.
Direct.no.speed, you seem to be doing everything you can to justify our 1950s system. You could put more controllers in the system to adequately man the Class C above Albury, but I’d far prefer to have more Class D towers. That is because I’m told that the risk of collision goes up something like 100 times between the link airspace above 5,000 feet and the terminal airspace below. In that case, I would rather have a lot more Class D towers with a single controller in them, rather than half as many operating Class D with Class C above.
The reason I would prefer this is that I have been told by experts all around the world that it is the way to get the maximum safety. Not only do I believe them but it fits the commonsense test – it seems logical.
We don’t even have a Class D tower at Avalon, Ayers Rock or Broome, when other countries (such as the United States or Canada) would have one. Yes, the towers in the United States and Canada only “control” a small amount of airspace, and they do have Class E airspace above. However they have more towers than we do per head of population, so that seems sensible.