North Sea Airspace Changes

[The Fat Controller]

Hi everybody,
Hope you are all ready for the complete restructure of ALL the routes over the North Sea on March 20th, when Scottish Control take over a sector from LACC.
Scottish will now interface with Amsterdam/Maastricht and Copenhagen.
I hope all your company route planners are ready, especially for those aircraft that are eastbound over the Atlantic that night !
As I am only a coalface ATCO, please don't ask me where to find the info on the changes, I am sure that someone in your Ops department will have it ! (or not)

Regards,

[sky9]

I hope that we are not having "Scottish" controlling English Airspace. :D

[Bigears]

Have been for some time now mate! :p

[You splitter]

http://www.eurocontrol.int/ais/ahead/airac/north-sea/ris.htm

For anyone wishing to prepare themselves check the link above.
As stated at the top this should not be used for aircraft navigation but only for planning purposes. The AIP amendments for the states concerned will contain the final changes. :}


Cheers
YS

[250 kts]

I reckon the route LARGA-BOSUM will be used by ATCOs quite a lot:D :D

[mainecoon]

Also eastern airways crews may be interested to know you will have our full and undivided attention on pennine radar
as we are keeping it going solely for you

Think we should change it to eastflight radar
talk to you all soon;)

[jocko0102]

What a great use of manpower keeping it open for a handfull of crappy jetstreams in and out of that hub Humberside.

[eddyboog]

I can say that we controllers at a major(ish) scottish airport are not ready for the changes. We still don't have the correct phone lines, procedures and training to know whats going on. It looks like it will be a desperate SI and lots of phone calls through other sectors when it happens.
Do you think those passengers paying 300 quid each way on Eastflight are aware that they are messing with all the fast jets over the north sea only on a RIS?
A couple of times if the pax had looked hard enough I am sure they must have seen some hairy moments!

[Loose rivets]

I spent some time between NWI and ABX prior to 9/11, and the operation was far from satisfactory due to fast military traffic.

We have had military pilots that fly these details on our jump-seats from time to time, and there is no doubt that they think as we do…it is an unsafe merging of two disciplines.

I personally had several increase-rate TECAS warnings – two on one day – and yes, I’m sure that if the passengers knew the truth we would have lost most of them to alternative routes or even other forms of transport.

If the exercises could have been contained within the promulgated areas there would have been no problem. There were times when the, very helpful and concerned, “London and Scottish” controllers seemed overwhelmed… and this is certainly not a criticism, they should never have been put in this position.

This route has had a long history in aviation terms, and is and always has been important to the oil industry. To route via airways would not have been viable as the increase in time was huge… the pax simply would not have used Norwich.

As an aside, while on the subject of NWI, many large-ish aircraft were starting IT’s out of this field, and on a busy summers day the transit to the sanctuary of an airway was fraught with problem

[downto5]

Well, has it all worked?

[skianyn vannin]

You must remeber that Eastern aren't really bothered about any kind of radar service. The only thing that matters is direct routing to save costs, flight information service is OK for them.

I remember operating a J41 for them when it was still on my companies AOC. When radar gave us avoiding action outside controlled airspace to keep clear of military traffic there was nothing but a chorus of moans and groans from the LHS about the extra time being added to the flight.