Is it me... or the UK ATC system?

[Airbus38]

This post struck a bit of a chord with me, and a couple of the earlier replies unfortunately I am sad to say weren't very helpful.

Flying single-pilot, IFR, unpressurised (and therefore limited to a maximum of 10,000 feet) is, like many other areas of aviation, a demanding job, and therefore lurking underneath the original poster's questions is a far more subtle point that you'd only really appreciate if it's the game you are in.

Let's face facts. If you're in a light twin, you are not in an easy working environment. Sure, the type of people who fly them tend to have a reasonable experience level, certainly sufficient to allow flying the aeroplane to be second nature. But I'm afraid that the workload can go sky-high in the blink of an eye just through one seemingly innocuous aircraft related problem, or seemingly innocent instruction from a controller.

One such comment might be "route direct Lambourne". Fine, you might think...but it's dark, and your cockpit lighting is poor, and you're having to hand-fly because the company Ops manual prevents use of the autopilot in any icing conditions (that's if the autopilot even works at all). So...just what is the Ident for Lambourne? Ok...so which chart do you pull out first whilst hand-flying at night? Well, it might be on the approach plate for your destination. But then again, it might not be. It's the old problem - how can you look for something when you don't know where it is? Well, it'll certainly be on your airways chart. Anybody ever seen an airways chart as viewed in a light twin at night? And who's there to keep the aircraft level while you look for it? Frankly, this little situation is what happens on a lot of flights at 'this end' of aviation. You wouldn't have to sit in the right hand seat on a sector like this for very long before you witnessed it.

Here's another classic example which the original poster experienced - happens all the time. "You're now leaving controlled airspace. Squawk 7000 and freecall London/Scottish Information". Hang on a minute...where did that come from?! I'll try to give you the background on this one, as I get it week in, week out, and it really screws everything up:

So, you've sat down and planned an airways routing, even though you were pushed for time, you managed to find the one and only route which an aircraft limited to FL100 can file for. Well, that's if you're lucky! Go on...how many people out there could pull out an airways chart and find a convincing IFR route below FL100 in the UK? It's a nightmare. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't. Sometimes you do find one, but it gets rejected as soon as you send it. OK, so your plan goes in without a hitch. You take off, start to fly the departure, and straight away get put on a radar heading. Fine, to start with everything seems great - the controller is doing your navigating for you.

Now, you punched the route into the GPS before you went, purely so it's there as a reference for you. But the longer you stay on the radar heading, the quicker you realise that you're actually a long way off the planned track. However, you realise that you're being given a far more direct routing and so you tend not to panic. And then all hell breaks loose in the cockpit. You're leaving controlled airspace... So you call up the FIR frequency. Now, I've been doing this a while, I've done a lot of VFR flying all round the British Isles too, and I know my way around. But there's a difference between IFR and VFR. You see, the FIR quite often don't know you're coming when you get 'booted out', and they ask you to 'pass your details'. What do you tell them? Just where are you? All you know is that you're on a radar heading, tracking nothing in particular, well to the East of your planned route, and with no idea how far away the next controlled airspace is ahead of you. And what's more, the FIR controller is operating non-radar, and so he can't tell you that either. This happens frequently in the UK.

The next thing that happens is (and full credit to London Info and Scottish Info, they work really hard for us guys) that the FIR controller does some ringing around, and gets back to you a few minutes later with a message from London Control. Generally something along the lines of "Remain outside controlled airspace, Squawk XXXX and for onward clearance contact......" Now this is tricky. Remain outside controlled airspace? So on what chart is class A airspace accurately depicted for those of us who don't know quite where we are, having left class A airspace on a Radar heading?

In summary, I have every sympathy with the original poster. What he has posted is a true reflection of what happens week-in, week-out for aircraft of that category trying to fly IFR routes in the UK. I suppose I am fortunate that I've found most of the 'gotchas' that lurk around in this country, I've heard of all the VORs, I know the difference between a basic service and a traffic service, I know that the FIR controllers don't have radar (unlike, say, Amsterdam), I know that you can't get from POL to DCS at FL100 in the day, but you can at night...the list goes on. I've learned most of these through bitter experience...and god know what I'd be like if every other country was the same as this - it's impossible to know all the subtleties.

I can pretty well guess from the way the poster has described the flight that he had probably taken all reasonable planning precautions prior to the flight. I know this because he is not asking unreasonable questions. I would love to see how some of the people who shot him down in the early replies cope in flight, I really would!