Norwich Class D Airspace Approved

[LXGB]

After a long consultation process Norwich International Airport is getting a Class D CTR and CTA next year.

The airspace will become active on 08 March 2012.

Full details and a map are in a letter (pdf) on the CAA website here (http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/7/20110831NIANATMACBrief.pdf).

[Danscowpie]

Now all you need is some aeroplanes to fly in it....:E

[magpienja]

I wonder, will the airport concerned have to pay for the privilege of having it and if so...is there an on-going charge.

Nick.

[Spitoon]

What's the big deal?

The airspace should protect fare-paying passengers - which only seems reasonable - and, if there is no commercial traffic, other activity should be allowed to carry on as before.

And those people who have now approved the establishment of airspace around SH will no doubt make sure that this happens........

Or have I just spotted a flaw in the plan?

[2 sheds]

Nick

That is a strange comment which perhaps reflects the outlook of some of the more vociferous but illogical objectors. Why would the airport need to pay for now being obliged to provide a service in specified airspace? Not that I am advocating it, but it would be more logical to say that the users of that airspace should pay for the available service.

2 s

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

2 sheds.... Well said.

[bad bear]

Im confused by the 3,000' transition altitude bit, it has been CAA policy got almost 10 years for any new airspace to have a 6,000' TA. With all the other airspace changing to 6,000' over the next few months wont this introduce confusion?
bb

[Avoiding_Action]

Well there is the talk of the UK changing to a TA of 18,000ft soon.

[2 sheds]

You would be even more confused if there were a different TA in this isolated piece of CAS from that of the surrounding mass of Class G, for no good reason.

2 s

[bad bear]

You would be even more confused if there were a different TA in this isolated piece of CAS from that of the surrounding mass of Class G, for no good reason.

oh no I wouldn't ! Many or even most pilots do not use 1013 in that area in the 3,000' to 6,000' levels. I would not dream of setting it hence the issue is the introduction of a bizarre and irrelevant 3,000' TA is not helpful. Certainly introducing airspace with a 3,000' TA when the rest of the UK is moving to 6,000' and eventually 18,000' is a step in the wrong direction. Make it a 6,000' TA today and save changing it again later!

bb

[2 sheds]

There is nothing bizarre and irrelevant if it is the notified requirement for the existing airspace and will not change with the introduction of CAS. I am sure that you will manage;)!

2 s

[bad bear]

Could someone check these figures for me?

In the original ACP presentation in 2006 (http://www.broadland.gov.uk/bdc_shared_content/bdc/committee_papers/Appendix_1_-_Norwich_Airspace_Change_Proposal.pdf) there seems to be a prediction of 1,400,000 passengers by 2010 but the CAA stats appear to show only 425,000. Have I got something wrong?
Also the predicted number of Air transport movements seems to be 29,000 movements for 2010 and over 30,000 for 2011 while the CAA say only 19,500 for 2010 and even less for 2011.
Can anyone explain why there is Controlled Airspace over Norwich City at all when there does not appear to be a procedure that requires it and the noise procedures claim the need to go straight ahead to x feet to avoid overflying Norwich.
A confused Bear
bb

[2 sheds]

why there is Controlled Airspace over Norwich City at all when there does not appear to be a procedure that requires it
Presumably for exactly the same reasons as at every other aerodrome with a CTR/CTA - to allow for vectored inbounds and outbounds and not just to protect the procedural instrument procedures.

2 s

[bad bear]

2 sheds you missed a bit of the quote,
and the noise procedures claim the need to go straight ahead to x feet to avoid overflying Norwich.

bb

[LXGB]

From the Norwich ACP Final Report of Consultation page 19:

The CAA does not utilise “threshold” traffic or passenger figures as being necessary for the establishment of controlled airspace. Each location is unique and must be judged on the specific threats to commercial air transport traffic in the locality. CAA DAP has confirmed that there has been no challenge to this established policy in the NATMAC forum and no changes are planned.

It is acknowledged that NIA traffic has declined, in common with other regional airports, since the programme to establish controlled airspace was initiated in 2005. The decline in traffic at NIA has been no greater than at similar UK Airports.

The dimensions of any controlled airspace (CAS) are not based on numbers of air transport movements (ATMs) but on the CAA’s regulatory requirements for containment of Instrument Flight Procedures. The CAA requires both the radar-based operation and the non-radar procedures to be contained (including the Primary Areas of Instrument Approach Procedures [IAP] in the latter case). The basis of the Regulatory Requirements was explained in some detail in the Sponsor Consultation Document.

Source: Norwich ACP Final Report of Consultation (http://www.norwichairport.co.uk/downloads/Consultation_Final_Report_Revised_2_Dec_10_Updated.pdf)

Hope this helps.

[Danscowpie]

Can anyone explain why there is Controlled Airspace over Norwich City at all

Because Norwich Airport Ltd paid a huge amount of money to some very good aviation consultants (who have done similar work throughout the world), who saw the process through from beginning to end.
Believe me, despite the majority supporting the airspace change proposals, there were some major players in the industry who were against it.
When I say major players, I don't mean the G/A community, who, aside from a few, put up weak, ill informed and and vacuous arguments, I mean major airline operators, but the consultants knew how to handle them all and were worth the expense.

As for the passenger and movement figures, even Bears who have overdosed on this year's particularly fine crop of honey, know that there's been a recession and fewer people are using regional airports across the UK.
It's going to be long old slog, but the implementation of CAS was always about safety, not willy waving over the power of ATC or a Regional Airport over local aviation interests.
That said, I do believe that Omniport, the airport's owners, need to bite the bullet, write off all the debt, take a serious review of the skill and efficiency of the current senior management (who can only cut costs by chopping staff) and start with a clean sheet and a major investment just to get the place back on an even keel. Doubling the ADF is simply going to alienate the very customers they so badly need.

[bad bear]

Did I hear someone suggest that the CAA are under pressure to balance their budget and are considering charging for new airspace from 1st Jan by volume? I guess its only fair considering the amount of time they put in to the Airspace Change Programs. Apparently it was in an appendix of the Future Airspace Review document?
bb

[Gingerbread Man]

Am I right in thinking that there isn't any Class A above Norwich to which their new CTA will join? Is this unique for a UK airport?

I don't really have a point, it just seems unusual to depart inside controlled airspace, and then have to leave and re-enter somewhere else.

[landedoutagain]

There's no class A there because... there is no need for it !!!

It's not unique though, Brize and Durham don't link to anything IIRC.

[Piltdown Man]

We are being sold a crock!

...but the implementation of CAS was always about safety,

So therefore we'll see a measurable improvement in safety. But just of interest, what are the starting numbers and what is the target improvement? Does anyone have real numbers? I doubt it. And let's have these numbers before the airspace is implemented.

...to allow for vectored inbounds and outbounds and not just to protect the procedural instrument procedures.

The incredible volume of air traffic in the proximity of the approaches to the airport means that this airport absolutely must have it's own little aerial empire to control.

But the bit I really like in this whole joke process were the participants in the consultation process. Just exactly when did any member of the responding Parish, County, Borough or District council have training on the benefits or otherwise of controlled airspace? Just exactly what does an environmentalist know about efficient fuel utilisation and how that can be improved by the implementation of controlled airspace? Do the MP's who surveyed understand the implication of controlled airspace and how it may detrimentally affect the airport. Probably not, which is why none responded. But from what I can see of the consultation process, 276 surveys went out and only 53 worthwhile replies were received. What a total waste of money!

I smell Town Hall clowns at work!

PM

PS. You may wonder why I bothered posting at all. None of this will really affect me. Well I tell you. I can't stand idiotic organisations like NIA banging safety drums and other such rubbish to the detriment of the airport's users. Some of these people pay my wages and I think it's wrong that they are being lied to and given such poor (and probably very expensive) information. I'll bet a pound to a pinch of pooh that at least one of the executives will get a bonus for getting controlled airspace up and running. I'm just waiting for them to swap the moniker "International" for "Inter-galactic" in order to encourage extremely long haul traffic.

[bad bear]

So therefore we'll see a measurable improvement in safety. But just of interest, what are the starting numbers and what is the target improvement?

Interesting question ! Flights during the "day" ie when other people are flying
planes depart at 1000,1300 1500 1700
arrivals at 0900 1230 1330 1630
also a few helicopters
but those are weekend figures so a bit busier than mid week

If the flight crew fly defensively the risk would be as close to zero as one could get, a bit hard to improve on I would say. If the passenger planes are vectored all over the countryside at low level then they could increase the risk a bit. I guess all arrivals will be from FL50 in the overhead from March onward and that move itself would increase safety with or without any Controlled Airspace. Smart pilots would depart by climbing as quickly as possible to the top of the cumulus cloud tops where few planes fly, but how many do that?
Given the number of VFR flights in that general area on a nice day I hope Norwich International is recruiting more controllers to give the appropriate service in this otherwise empty airspace. If the airspace was smaller there would be fewer transits! If the outbounds spend 3 min inside CAS and arrivals 7 that means fixed wind traffic will be in the airspace for 40 min out of 6 hours, that's pretty empty ! I guess a second frequency will be needed other wise the commercials wont be able to get a word in. A light a/c flying at 80 kts will need 20 min to transit from one corner of the airspace to the other, and they need to be on frequency for quite a while before actually entering the airspace.Just one gaggle of 20 gliders calling for transits will totally block the frieq for 1 min each so 20 or more minutes.... solid and they will probably be transiting the western edge where there will not be any possibility of CAT when 27 is in use. Many pilots will have to call even if they are only near the airspace otherwise Norwich International will be bleating about people being near "their" airspace without calling. Still it will generate 5-6 extra controller jobs.I guess the reason for the March start is to give enough time to recruit and train the controllers?

bb

[Piltdown Man]

BB - Thanks for some of the numbers. But the real numbers are the safety numbers. How many Airprox's,? How many collisions? How many discontinued approaches due to traffic impinging on the ILS? How many additional track miles were flown on departures due to proximate traffic? These are the real numbers. Does anybody have these? And how will they be influenced by the implementation of Controlled Airspace?

As for departures, whenever I've always climbed as per the standard company profile. It means that you have a reduced climb rate at 3,000' or so but after that you are briskly up to FL200 or so. I also hope that we don't have to join overhead at FL50 if we are IFR. That would be nothing more than a fuel wasting scheme - but having said that, it would be something truly worthy of NWI which has some of the most expensive fuel in the UK.

Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against having more controller positions. What don't like is some prat with an MBA on the board of NIA trying to tell me that Controlled Airspace = Safety.

PM

[Spitoon]

What don't like is some prat with an MBA on the board of NIA trying to tell me that Controlled Airspace = Safety.It's an interesting question - how do you measure safety?

In the ATC world we've had a Target Level of Safety in Europe for 10 years of so now. No-one has been able to relate safety of existing operations to this number in any useful despite some supposedly really clever people working on it and some consultants sending in very big bills for their contribution. And now we've got the European Commission setting targets for us and they don't know how to do it for safety either. However, I have shedloads of confidence that EASA will save the day for us all! :rolleyes:

But putting CAS somewhere there are, even occasionally, big aeroplanes with fare-paying passengers where there wasn't any before must, empirically, make things safer for those pax, simply because it has become a known-traffic and controlled environment. Quantifying it in a useful way is probably impossible so why bother trying - it's going to be a bit safer.

The CAA has never been particularly impartial or dispassionate in the way that it has established airspace - never mind moving the goalposts, they've moved to a different pitch on occasions - and nothing that anyone here is going to do to change that.

But airspace (certainly class D) should not be an unnecessary impediment to flying. What puzzles me is why so many people argue against the establishment of a bit or airspace when what really matters is the way in which it is managed. Sadly, after establishing a piece of airspace the CAA rarely, if ever, looks at whether all airspace users are being given equal opportunities to access said airspace.

Class D, speaking as a controller who worked it for many years, is the perfect solution for low density environments. It permits the necessary control and protection to be applied to IFR flights and for VFR flights to get on with whatever they want for the rest of the times (and, of course, around any IFR flights). Where it goes wrong is where controllers see airspace as 'theirs' and make it difficult for VFR pilots to fly in it or start inventing rules that limit VFR traffic unnecessarily. The only time it really can be a problem is in poor weather when a CTZ has to 'operate' SVFR which can be limiting if there are no easily used geographic separations available.

Thinking specifically about Norwich, I've not been there for a long time but the movement numbers don't sound very high - but it's what happens in the area (often from other airports in the vicinity) that can make the establishment of airspace a good idea. But with relatively few revenue-generating flights the costs of staffing and operating ATC (to say nothing of the one-off costs of setting it up) it may be difficult for that MBA on the board to recover the outlay!

[Piltdown Man]

Spitoon - As a controller I respect your opinion. If you say that there will be a measurable improvement in safety, I'll buy it. The reason I'll go along with you is that I trust the real professionals in the system. But I trust those who run airport's as far as I can spit. So if I was a shareholder in NIA I'd make sure that the 'consultants' who were engaged to force this scheme through were paid by independently measured achievements in safety. No improvement, no pay! And the same for the director's of the airport. But I'm going to guess that there's someone (or people) trousering a nice little earner/s here and they'll bugger off once they've got the cash (just before they get fired). The other NIA (EGNT) set the precedent when the knobs running it got a contractual kickback for arranging for the airport going into an addition £340M into debt. So Spitoon, your last paragraph sums up what I think precisely.

PM

[landedoutagain]

What puzzles me is why so many people argue against the establishment of a bit or airspace when what really matters is the way in which it is managed. Sadly, after establishing a piece of airspace the CAA rarely, if ever, looks at whether all airspace users are being given equal opportunities to access said airspace.


I think the people who often argue against airspace do it for precisely the reason you give - it is they who do not get the equal access when there is no reason that they shouldn't.

[Spitoon]

If you say that there will be a measurable improvement in safety, I'll buy it.Sorry Pilt, that's exactly what I wasn't trying to say. Perhaps it was the wine affecting the clarity of my post - and I'm another glass an a bit into the evening now so I hope this is intelligible!

I don't think you can measure safety in in this way. AIRPROXs and the like are a very coarse measure and, anyway, you would not be comparing like with like (i.e. CAS with FIS with different expectations of whether or not you'll meet another aircraft). But the very fact that aircraft will be flying in a known traffic-traffic environment, where all other aircraft will be under surveillance (or, at least, known about) and where traffic information based on stated intentions can be given means that the risk of collision is reduced - hence, it is safer.

How much safer - who knows? The big sky theory works pretty well already - the probability of collision is very small (marginal in statistical terms). The delta because you're in CAS can be calculated but it's a fairly meaningless figure because it is going to be based on all manner of assumptions. But if the assumptions are anything close to valid I can't believe that the delta would be negative.

landed, I agree. And the point I was trying to make was that you can't do much about the airspace - so perhaps one's effort would be more usefully expended on putting pressure on the CAA to put proper supervision mechanisms in place to ensure that equal access is assured. I seem to recall some time ago there was some sort of reporting system whereby pilots could submit a report if they believed they were unreasonably denied access to CAS. I don't know if it was a permanent scheme or a survey or whatever but maybe it would be worth investigating further to see if the possibility still exists.

[bitsink]

Surely all they have to do is change the name of the airport to" London Norwich" and passenger numbers go through the roof.

Another point. The more accurate surveillance and navigation gets the more likely it is that two aircraft will try to be in exactly the same place.

[Cusco]

I fly from a strip not far from Norwich and have no beef about their airspace proposal.

No-one has mentioned theMilitary: With the cousins from Lakenheath and Mildenhall blatting in and out of their North sea playgrounds and the Marham boys joining in the fun I think the airspace will make them check their routings a bit more carefully: This must surely be an improvement in safety.

Not so long ago I had a close encounter (so close I didn't bother to look for his wingman) with a Tornado at 3000ft to the west of Norwich right in that area that is to be class D.

If class D had already been there there'd have been less chance of finding a rogue Tornado (or F15 for that matter) riding alongside.........

[soaringhigh650]

Guys, this sounds a bit silly. I've never heard of anyone moaning about Class D airspace over here.

There have been efforts to reshape some Class B or C to make room for low level local-operations but that's about it.

[9VSIO]

Cusco, if the Class D had been there, you very well may not have been there!

On a side note, are CTA2 and CTA3 really needed? They're such small strips that it hardly seems worth it. I'm also not convinced that their CTA needs to be that big.

One of the big pluses about flying in East Anglia is that there is so much open airspace - I'm just rather sad to lose a chunk. I hope that transits won't be denied for convenience's sake now.