there are a significant number of regional airports in the UK that have very limited or non-existent access to the airways, and that we have to go off-airways to get to and from those airports.
My own personal opinion, which has been well documented on other threads about this programme, is that Newcastle and Teesside are no longer part of this "significant number". For a small increase in track miles, airliners can be safely surrounded by class A/D the whole way from take-off to touchdown.
I realise that as a commercial pilot, you may be directed to follow a certain route in and out of certain airfields. This is fine, if you're happy with trundling through the VoY at military playtime. I wonder if the passengers would be happy, knowing their lives may be at risk. The airline bosses will continue to direct you to fly outside CAS until the day that an airprox becomes a mid-air collision. That will be the day when profitability will no longer be an issue. And the route will either disappear from the schedule, or the airline will charge more to cover the mileage. Which is what they could be doing now.
With respect, I don't think you were the first person to have a scare in the VoY / North Sea airspace, and I don't think you'll be the last. The military are really struggling with the volume of traffic into and out of NT/NV that wants to take a shortcut to and from the North Sea.
There's a theory about air safety, and indeed a book, called "The Tombstone Imperative". The basis of it is that the airlines will not make a radical change to procedures in order to make things safer, unless people die because of the unsafe procedures. The airspace south of Newcastle might just become a classic.
LTP