it was quite odd to me to be flying in UK with radar coverage and be offered a "choice" of different services. As I said earlier, I would want the a service that prevents me crashing into other planes - why would I want anything less?
Quite right! But the CAA clearly isn't bright enough to figure this one out.
Every pilot who's flown there asks me what they should get.
I say to them in layman's terms:
Basic Service = Useless service. Only used by newbie pilots and controllers to tie up the radio waves and collect everyone's flight details on a strip which eventually gets trashed. Typically you get nothing useful out of this service, but if you are lucky you may receive some limited traffic info. You might as well just listen in to the frequency and cut the babble.
Traffic Service = Tells you about some traffic around you, half of these are too far away and you may never see it. There are also others you may see but you ain't alerted because it is outside radar range or the controller is too busy to tell you about it. You get downgraded to a pseudo Useless Service when there's too much traffic around you.
Deconfliction Service = Tries to prevent you from crashing into other planes. The service everyone really wants but nobody gets. Why? Because the traffic around you is almost always too dense to achieve their huge 5nm/3000ft deconfiction minima. The end result? You get a Useless Service.
Procedural Service = Like a Deconfliction Service with a heads up that ATC has no radar. Clearly someone hasn't grasped what it means when the term "radar contact" is not used, so they invented this whole new service just for this.
There is only one service recognized internationally that combines the best elements of all the above and cuts out all the trash.
Believe it or not, it is called .... Flight Information Service!