compliance with IFR
Recently I was making a trip from a small east of England airfield to an international airfield in the UK. The journey involved passing through the Class D airspace of another airfield before entering the Class D airspace of the destination airfield. Vis was about 3k and cloud broken at 2,000 ft.
The journey was completed within the capabilities of Pilot and aircraft and within the ratings held.
Contact was made with the transit airspace who co-ordinated our entry into the destination airspace where we were given a radar sevice and vectors to the ILS.
Now to my point. Not once did we request an IFR arrival (although we would have asked for one had it not been offered). It was, however, assumed that were capable of accepting IFR.
Perhaps it was because the weather was reasonably poor and below the minima for VFR. Perhaps because we were flying a high performance single. Maybe because we seemed to know what we were doing?. Whatever the reason the assumption was that we wanted an IFR arrival and approach.
Now picture a recent PPL achiever making a first journey into an international airport. Routing to an NDB then expecting to arrive via VRPs and visual circuit. Attempting to comply with the instructions of air traffic woulc have been dangerous and would have led to flying outside the capabilities of the pilot.
So a safety question?
Is this typical given that responsibility for accepting a particular approach rests with the pilot (so I am not criticising the air traffic service here)?
It did strike me to be a potentially dangerous situation. In the past I have generally been asked whether I am IFR or VFR if I have not already stated it. In this case the subject did not get raised.
I suspect it should have been by the agency for the airspace we initially transited. The destination agency then accepted a co-ordinated handover and wouldn't have known any different.