GROWAHEAD - re your post #21 - at last the truth starts to come out.
First of all, your statement
Procedural control, Class D can often be more efficient and flexible than radar separation
Growahead, that is simply ridiculous! Can you give me one example of where it is more efficient?
It sounds as if the radar standards that are used by Airservices are probably as out-of-date as just about everything else in Airservices other than, perhaps, the ADS-B mandates.
I love your view that it’s a better solution to train tower controllers (who are not even there 24 hours per day) to do radar approach work rather than use people in the centre who
are there 24-hours a day. This is classic resistance-to-change.
Surely you understand that over twenty years ago we decided to follow other leading aviation countries and have controllers who operate the low level enroute airspace to also do approach work. That is, we could start dropping the E airspace down to low levels at non-tower airports and give a superb separation service when IMC exists.
Of course, this has never happened. One of the reasons, I would imagine, is it means if you provide the service also to Class D towers it requires a certain amount of de-skilling – that is, the Class D tower controllers become VFR controllers as they are just about everywhere else in the world and the IFR separation duties are done from the centre.
And before you jump in and say we don’t have the radar coverage – that has nothing to do with it. In the USA, every single IFR approach is in a minimum of Class E airspace and 50% of the approaches have no radar coverage at the initial approach fix.
To train the tower controllers on radar would simply be ridiculous because they are not there 24-hours a day.
Growahead, I know your intentions are good but can you tell me if you have ever looked at how other modern aviation countries maximise the use of their radar and separation services for aircraft that are in IMC?
And
OZBUSDRIVER – no, I’m not suggesting that you change Hobart and Launceston to Class C airspace. You would only need to do that if you stuck with the old Australian 1950s way of doing things. No-one can tell me that Aussie enroute controllers cannot be trained to do approach work - both procedural and radar - as happens in every other leading aviation country I know of.