With greatest respect, the reliance on quoting a plethora of rules to explain away the awful behaviour of Spanish ATC in recent weeks simply makes certain people appear like proverbial ostriches with heads firmly below terra firma. It's disingenuous in the extreme to pretend that Spanish ATC are merely enforcing rules in order to expediate traffic flow safely.
The service on the ground in places like Malaga and Palma, and in the air in Madrid and Barcelona FIRs, in recent weeks has been truly embarrassing for Spain. If you don't believe me, why don't you organise a group outing to somewhere like London and Gatwick airport and see how the professionals manage to combine common-sense, helpfulness, consideration with the rules to expedite the safe flow of traffic.
I imagine I am not alone in never having flown a full FPL route and STAR into Stansted or Gatwick or a SID outbound, yet their controllers manage to handle huge volumes of traffic without pausing for breath!
Thank goodness I'm rostered to fly around northern Europe tomorrow. I'll bet you the shirt off my back that I don't fly the full SID, get a number of unprompted shortcuts, the flight level I request despite the more conservative FPL FL, and get a 500nm direct from one side of Europe to the other before getting a direct to centre-fix...just like we used to get in Spanish airspace!
MH152