UK - French boundary conflict

[Zoyberg]

Looking for info from the horses mouth please!
Heading south today north of SITET then cleared 270 to be leve 20 before ETRAT by London. Started the descent and handed over to the French at the boundary. Then told to maintain 310. Had to climb back up. Pointed out the clearance from London and got a "310 is fine for me". This has not happened to me before. I assumed that as I had passed into French airspace their instructions overrode the London descent clearance. How common is this / what might cause it and am I correct in my assumption.

[5milesbaby]

You would have been descended to FL270 to comply with a French imposed restriction (you obviously were inbound to a French airfield). London does its job and complies with the restriction, transfer you, and then Brest can decide whether to cancel it or not. Basically, you only should work Brest from SITET to ETRAT and then you should be transferred to Paris by ETRAT FL270 as you are technically Brest airspace excluded south of ETRAT. It happens all the time, and sometimes even aircraft are allowed to level FL270 then climb back up again to as high as FL370!

It is VERY annoying. And nothing you can do about it. :ugh:


Ps There are currently 6 capped airfields via ETRAT to Brest - 4 to LFB* and 2 to LFL*. On top of this, Paris also have caps where aircraft have to be FL250 20 before ETRAT inbound to 4 of LFP*, all of LFO* (except LFOH/E/P which have to be FL130), LFJR, LFRM. That's the easy exit point, couldn't even start to list the amount of capped airfields via VEULE.......

[132.3]

Hi,

5MB is correct. This annoys us as much as it annoys RYR pilots multiple times a day every day. Basically the french ops department issue a load of level restrictions that make no sense to man nor beast however as a london S18 controller (and S01 before) we have no choice but to descend you to FL270 or we could be 'willfully non-complying with procedures' (a very big deal for us).

Occasionally if workload is low enough the S01 controller will telephone brest and coordinate an individual exemption but by the time you have reached GWC and S18 it is a fait accompli as the act message has been sent and your descent is now part of the plan. (to be fair to the s01 guys 310 65nm before etrat is the standing agreement for restricted traffic)

If it is costing you a lot in fuel then get MOL ops department to lobby Brest control. It is they who set this restriction.