Not much to add to a lot of what has been said before but...
The ATCO was wrong to impose a service and the pilot was wrong to accept that imposition. It is down to the pilot to determine the type of ATS that they require and for the ATCO to provide it. There may be occasions when a specific ATS cannot be provided but this must be explained by the ATCO and alternatives offered. If a pilot is in receipt of a Traffic Service and receives information on a conflicting aircraft that he cannot or does not expect to see (and hasn't been told tht Deconfliction Service is not available), then they should request Deconfliction Service and thus receive collision avoidance advice.
I also tire of hearing ATCOs who say that the volume of traffic in their airspace precludes the provision of deconfliction service, so they only offer a Traffic Service. Bolleaux. You reduce the provision of the Deconfliction Service, perhaps also warning the pilot that deconfliction minima may not be achieved and you then do your best. We must acknowledge that, in Class G airspace, the pilot is simply seeking the ATCOs assistance to miss other aircraft thereby avoiding MAC. ATCOs need to lose the mentality of 5nms or nothing because that is why pilots perceive that a Deconfliction Service is useless (because they don't make track progress) and therefore don't ask for it.
Regarding pilots barely having a grasp of the UK FIS, has anyone ever considered that that might have more to do with the underlying training and examination system than the complexity of the FIS themselves? PPL training organisations, perhaps understandably, focus on aircraft handling and passing the exams - if the exams don't feature any real requirement to understand the ATS, the pilot won't understand them. Practically, student pilot exposure to the UK FIS is by copying their instructor (monkey see, monkey do) which limits the amount of exposure of the UK FIS to 'what works best' for the instructor. Moreover, whilst this will be heresy to many ATCOs, there just isn't that much difference between the 2009 UK FIS and the pre-2009 RIS/RAS/FIS. If all our pilots had a full understanding of RIS/RAS/FIS and flew around and just called them by their new names the fact is that they'd be fine. That leaves you with the inevitable conclusion that it's the training and examination system that's at fault. A conclusion that's being reached elsewhere within the system.
As for a future edition of CAP 774 enabling the provision of collision avoidance advice under a Traffic Service, I can tell you now that that will not happen. The CAP has been clearly written to delineate exactly what you get and don't get under each ATS and what you have to do if you wish to receive collision avoidance advice. Now if you were to give me a clean piece of canvas to redesign UK ATS, I'd start with flight rules and the requirements of the operators, then to the airspace needed to satisfy those requirements and then the type of ATS within. But be careful all those who sit in the 'give me ICAO FIS' camp, because not one country in Europe does FIS the same way!
PS Hi Moli!
Last edited by whowhenwhy; 13th Nov 2014 at 18:13.