Hi All,
Thanks for the notes on my post.
I hate to keep harping on about UK this & UK that because each country needs to decide what is best for its traffic, and not just copy what someone else does because it looks good.
As for airlittleservice they need a major kick up the bum to sort out staffing so that sectors arent constantly running short of staff so that sectors have to be combined. Or trying to plaintitively bleat that only need one controller on duty from 10pm to 6am (although regularly there is only one rated controller on site from 7pm until 6am). there should always be two rated controllers on site at all times
, regardless of traffic (it only takes 2). It wasnt that long ago I did a 9 hour shift with only 2 10min breaks. No time for dinner. And that was working very busy a,c,e & g airspace from surface to FL600 (major capital route). But not replacing the staff numbers is part of "affordable safety" apparently
The UK mainly has only 3 class of airspace in regular use A, D & G. There are patches of C & E but not too near any major routes. Heathrow's control zone is A airspace (one of the few A control zones) but before I left to come down here they were talking about degrading it to C to allow better access to the area for VFR flights (the control zone was a fair size about 15-20nm around ish), places like gatwick, Stansted, London City were all D Control Zones (All airways airspace being A. (around London anything above 2500-3500 was A.)
There are no airfields that take RPT & bizjets etc that are completely within G airspace. On a regular flight the lowest Class an airline pilot can expect to fly in is D, within the approach area. If going to Heathrow wont leave A for its entire flight in the UK FIR.
Having worked down here for 2.5 years now and now using A, C, E & G regularly I can see definate advantages in some C airspace around airports/airfields with RPT flights. However E is a complete crock. You still get VFRs randomly flying through and we (as ATC) dont know who they are, where they are going or what level they are (we cant assume mode C is correct).
They also recently changed the airspace around an airfield that goes uncontrolled when the airforce go home, it went from G sfc to 8500 to G sfc to 4500 & E from 4500 to 8500+. This has just caused untold confusion and restriction to jets & turbos. IFRs (mainly transitting twin/light) regularly go thrashing through it without a clearance. RPTs who do well when on departure have to cap their climb to 4000 until clearance (previously they could climb to 8000)(lowest safe alt outside of 25nm is 6600), inbound have to stay 'on' frequency until they leave at 4500', which for an A320 or B737 is not that far from the CTAF area and can lead to rushed calls and incidents.