My Thames Perspective
An interesting read of a topic. I have wondered for a fewmonths now when the GA community would start kicking up a fuss about this.
The closure of SVFR has always been a pain in the rear whenit comes to Thames. As seen recently we have "thin" staff due to variousreasons and it’s commonly hated when you arrive at work and see the levels oftraffic expected and the lack of staff to cope with it. At the end of the daythe company’s line is commercial IFR come 1st so when the traffic ramps up andyou need more sectors open on the Thames side unfortunately you know you areabout to see someone rushing down to immediately close SVFR. It’s commonlyagreed that this is just a pain for all. Thames is basically forced to take-oversome of the responsibilities of SVFR such as priority helicopter and stillmonitoring for infringements. However we are also aware that this means some ridiculousrestrictions have to be put in place, like having to route round to the southto get into Battersea (not too useful when you have just departed Ellstree!)but are hands are tied, we are already annoyed that this seems to be the manning’sget out of jail free card at the expense of GA and our personal workload. Yetwe are the ones getting an earful of questions as to why they have been told toremain outside, as after all “we have the airspace now right?” so where satthere having just been basically thrown an entire sector with the company linebeing it shouldn’t be a problem you just say remain outside to everyone and tofreecall Farnborough! Or if they are inbound to land in the zone then they willget indefinitely delayed and get to them when you can. So then when someonecalls up to cut the city zone with next to nothing in the way we are leftlooking like the bad guys for saying no. If it was up to me SVFR closureprocedure wouldn’t exist. So now the inevitable questions seem to have startedto be asked by the GA community maybe this will change.
Just for a little perspective, and I invite any pilot tocontact NATS about a visit to Swanwick, a request for a helicopter to transitvia City airport overhead on easterlies can take up to 3 different phone callsbefore a clearance is even given. City Radar, City Tower and Bellmarsh Prison sothey don’t go to panic mode because a A109 was 5 miles away! (it happens) notto mention the attempt to balance giving enough terrain clearance yet ensuringyou don’t give someone on a 5 mile final a TCAS RA (apparently the don’t likethat).