Civil airspace infringements
 

I am a civilian Atco,and I have just witnessed 2 separate Class D CTA infringements by the military.The first required avoiding action with a A319.This is a common occurance around the Aberdeen CTA/CTR.I am curious to how military pilots regard this unprofessional flying.Is it a jolly old thing round the subsidised beer in the mess,or is the book thrown at these pilots for endangering the travelling public.

Sounds like some journo scaremongering. Infringing class D airspace, whilst avoidable and not a good thing to do, it does not necessarily mean that the crew are unprofessional nor does is mean that all civilian air passengers are going to die!!!!


ATCO or not, ever thought about a selling your 'scare' story to the sun of how reckless RAF pilots are? :D

Did they have a star on the sides? Bombs under the wings? A manic looking gentlemen of swarthy appearance chanting, sweating and wearing lots of layers?

No?

Well count yourself bloody lucky then.

Throw a Dyce,

if you have an issue, go through the proper channels. Kicking off on Pprune will not muster the response you are looking for.

Ultimately, the guys are working hard & any infringements are accidental. I can assure you that as FCs we give the crews plenty of heads up when they push close to controlled airspace & 99 times out of 100, they turn away in good time. If they don't, it's usually because the guys are newbies and are still learning how to fly the a/c, use the kit, blink and breathe at the same time or, an ex F3 mate now on Typhoons who is only now realising just how much work his back seater used to do for him! :ok:

Petty fool
 

Oh how I wish we had you in the Stan, then you would get a perspective on your small, petty life. Your 30 MPH Daewoo Matiz never does anything by mistake. I bet!!!

could you quantify "common occurance"

Subsidised beer - which Mess is that in??

2Planks, I was thinking the same thing!

The mess is on the same base as the free housing that all civvies think all Service people get :ugh:

throw a dyce

If you are what you claim to be....

I have just witnessed infringement of the Pprune website by someone who should have known better. The PROFESSIONAL thing for the controller to do would be to go through the proper channels, as Pure Pursuit suggests. Of course this would require you to stick to facts and have some balls ... oh and actually do some work instead of bleating on here!

The last CivATCO to submit an AIR(C) on my watch turned out to be talking utter bolleux - having seen a Typhoon heading towards, but well above, his aircraft, the ATCO concerned took his eye off the ball and when he next looked the Typhoon was below the ac on the other side. His conclusion was that the Typhoon must have infringed separation. A rapid review of the 'tapes' showed that the Typhoon had descended so quickly that it had been outside 5000' before it even reached 10nm from the civ ac. Yes it was a bit embarassing for the CIV ATCO, BUT at least it brought the issue out into the open and meant everyone involved learnt from it.

If you think your way works best, I would suggest you need to visit your training officer to have a chat about Functional Safety Management.

Oh and by the way, didn't you get into the RAF? Your attitiude, and the comment about the 'subsidised beer' just shows you have a chip on your shoulder - TW@T.

Sorry, to everyone else, I bit there didn't I?

STH

Not that you've come here with any prejudices, preconceptions or axes to grind or anything :rolleyes:

Edit- Was obviously typing this at the same time as Sir Toppam.

Free housing, subsidised beer, free food and no tax.....

We've never had it so good.

You forgot the free overseas travel to interesting places that tourists can't get to....;)

No AA,

I don't think he intended to include the actuality of military life in his list of Joe Public's perception of what we really get :ugh:


MadMark!!! :mad:

Thats the one for me, i'm off, Oh I am but at least I don't have to pay.

TAD, maybe a liaison trip to Lossie would allow you to discuss in a more constructive fashion.

I am certainly no jurno.Civil ATCO with 28 years experience and never even tried to get into the RAF.Not my cup of tea :p.
I did the trace action on these pilots.They were not from QS,or QL.The incident is being processed through proper channels yet again:=.If the radar controller had not taken avoiding action,then there would have been an airprox.We have had liasion with local military units in the past,but how many years of infringements does it take.
The ''reaction'' is what I expected.Having had a file of past zone infringements from the military about 3 inches thick,then it's pretty clear it doesn't seem to make any difference.Well we will keep filing if the military come into Aberdeen Controlled Airspace without clearance,R/T or listening until YOU get the message.I just hope there is no mid-air in the meantime.:}

Mr Dyce
 

Just how many of those 28 years experience were spent operating fast jets?
Oh that's right.
Stick to talking about things you DO have a clue about.
You are doing yourself and your colleagues no favours by bleating in such a manner on here!
BV:rolleyes:
I was going to write some things that were far more derogatory, but my damned inner-monologue kicked in just in the nick of time!

Throw a wobbly

Good for you

OK, so are you filing an airprox? or just writing antagonistic threads on a public forum??:mad:

Is that like an occurrence, just less often?:E:} Come on then, give us dates and tail numbers.........

I bet you are, I suspect that you aren't a journo as you can't spell, so you must be who you say you are, so why don't you pick up the phone and speak to someone about it, rather than winge on here, maybe then you will get a serious answer to your 'curiosity'.

hmmmm, words fail me:mad:

Damn it I bit too, however, if you look at the other posts from this b£ll £nd , it is pretty true to form.:ugh:

Ducked under the desk did he? :E

"I am certainly no jurno.Civil ATCO with 28 years experience and never even tried to get into the RAF.Not my cup of tea."

[amateur shrink mode]Great. Another moaning jockistani f*ckwit with chips on both shoulders - not good enough to fly, not good enough to serve in the forces (civil ATCO isn't a first choice career for anyone), and without enough character to get over it and enjoy being a supporting player in the aviation world. Thus brimming with petty resentment against both pilots and servicemen, and against service pilots most of all.[/amateur shrink mode]

And no, you're clearly not a journalist. You're patently not articulate or educated enough, and you lack any creativity or charm.

ATC are there to serve. Stop bleating and do something to make things better.

Airing your prejudices and petty problems in quite such a stupidly confrontational manner does not count.

As Sir T says:

Tw@t!

Okay Chaps,
Throw a Dyce probably should have been a little more tactful in his posts. But he has a genuine concern and there is a problem with fast jets infringing the Aberdeen zone.
When civil airliners are operating in class G they are fair game (if that is what you think) because they are operating in the open FIR and everyone is entitled to be there. When they are operating in Controlled Airspace they are entitled to expect that aircraft that are not under the control of the appropriate control agency will not be endangering their flight.

Speaking as a controller who has experience in both the military and civil worlds, Infringments of CAS are the biggest danger at the moment for NATS and civil airline operators (Yes really). A fast jet coming into conflict in the control zone becomes a very difficult aircraft to avoid and please don't say that you are able to avoid the civil aircraft. The stats show that see and avoid is not a particularly safe resolution:) TCAS and aircraft performance in these situations gives a very bare separation when trying to avoid a fast jet with high amounts of energy.:)

I am ex mil ATCO now civil so excuse the interruption to this 'club' but-

Maybe TAD is posting here to give the mil a chance to explain how/why it happens. That was certainly the way we preferred to operate in my day, discuss it informally rather than going down the telling tales route without giving a right to reply. One day, many of you will be flying a civil a/c and I can assure you that if any a/c gets too close, paperwork flies around the place.What is achieved is a 'cover your 6' exercise instead of something constructive. All that has been acheived here IMHO is alienating someone who posed a genuine question, albeit with some sarcasm but you're big boys - deal with it.

Also, when I left the RAF,I chose to become a Civvy ATCO as I enjoyed the work and doubled my salary so it was my first choice.

Oh dear, oh dear. Whilst he has probably been a bit too quick to hit the keyboard, don't be too harsh on him. The controllers at some of the east coast civilian units are a good bunch and regularly try to be helpful to military traffic.

He has a valid point, if put across in a bizarre way but this should not be the place to vent his spleen. There is a tried and trusted method for reporting and investigating these occurrences.

Now will the two winged-master race and Jackonory just calm down please!

Jacko.

I have a notorious low journo threshold, but youe post made me laugh so much. You are more military then we are.

Cheers Mate

MGD

We're not coming across very well here. The initial post may have been confrontational/naive in tone but there's a major issue at stake. Whether the infringements were understandable through other factors that we don't know about, or down to a dissapointing lapse in our normal exceptionally high professional standards they are still concerning. Taking out an airliner would be disastrous. If we continue to infringe such airspace we risk such an event and make it increasingly difficult to defend the rest of our free airspace from the ongoing encroachment of civvy airspace - Robin Hood / Humberside / Norwich / Inverness and so it goes on. My task priority changes to avoid at all costs when my fast jet is near such airspace, whatever else I'm trying to achieve at the time, after all it's in everyones best interest both short and long term. I'm not throwing spears at those who infringed, everyone mucks up once in a while, but at those who have shown such a blase attitude to the issue through their replies.

Whilst the thread starter needs a lot of work of his presentational skills he does have a point. At the end of the day CAS is what it is and you don't just fly into it willy nilly. Mistakes are made however and people should 'fess up, apologise and have a firm understanding up what their actions/mistakes could ultimately lead to.

Talk of defending the nation, hordes of filthy russians pouring over the border or how terrible it all is on det are of little or no relevance here. It is not beyond the wit of man to know the rules of the airspace and abide them. Sure, Fred Bloggs pings CAS every day in his puddle jumper but he's not claiming to be the professional aviator that we, rightly, consider ourselves to be.

The evidence in this case is pretty incontrovertible really - how about some constructive discussion (sarcastic ATCOs not withstanding) rather than some of the peurile and witless comments seen above?

Another area of concern within the FC world is the number of times RAS traffic takes avoiding action against OTA E operators.

It is understandable that the FJ mates are reluctant to accept coordination whilst in OTA E as it can be very restrictive and cause an issue with presentations. However, in order to meet the civvies half way, we often try to get the to keep their Newc - Abz RAS traffic east of P18 & in return, we try to keep the FJ mates west of the route. Unfortunately, sod's law seems to kick in far too often and will cause the merge to occur somewhere around the Boulmer area, feet wet and a little too close to Easyjet.

Avoiding actions are taken & the phones go mental. Easy if you're on the E3 as there are no phones!:ok:

I have to say that the guys at Newcastle are very, very helpful & SCATCC do try to keep their RAS traffic well out of the way. Unfortunately, the civvy operators want to travel A-B in a straight a line as possible for fuel conservation & are sometimes reluctant to comply.

Bottom line is that there is a lack of understanding amongst aircrew, or a different interpretation at least, of radar services & the restrictions that are put on us, both as aircrew & controllers.

Our worry, is that should this become a little too common, P18 will turn into Class A. Not a good solution for anyone other than the civvies.:hmm:

Err,

I feel we're all a bit hasty in attacking TAD for his complaint. I agree he's got some info wrong (Subsidized beer:rolleyes:) and this is NOT the medium to voice a complaint, BUT we're all professionals and maybe he's had enough of halfwits crashing his Class D.

For Christ's sake, I'm sure we're all able to avoid CAS aren't we? If you're not, then maybe a bit of remedial is in order.

Anyway, who's off to the mess for a cheap pint then?;)

If anybody has ever bothered to get the ruler out on their UKL2 and measure the distance saved by budget airliners transiting New-Abd direct, instead of going through the airways structure, they will probably be astonished.

I have been operating in OTA E on numerous occasions when the FC chaps give us a heads up about stranger traffic. The conversation is normally something along the lines of:-

FC - "Traffic transiting south to north, x posn, x height"

FJ - "No probs - can we sort out some deconfliction"

FC - "We've tried but the airliner point blank refuses to change heading or height"

Typically, this will occur on a clear blue day, when the airliner insists on a RAS in class G airspace - essentially expecting everyone to avoid him by the limits which RAS provides. Essentially, the civvy airline captain appears to be relying on the good airmanship of the military pilot to avoid him!!
Airmanship dictates that this should be a two way process!!Airmanship also dictates that he should be proactive in avoiding a mege with a FJ, particularly when he has 300 people on board.

The relentess pursuit of cost saving measures by airlines has been reported in the major press several times. I can only sumise that the captains of these civvy ac have pressure put on them to fly in a manner which displays poor airmanship, in an attempt to save money.

Bottom line, if i make a poor airmanship decision, their is a chain of command in place to punish me for these mistakes.

On the other hand, if a civvy pilot makes a poor airmanship decision (and i suggest that flying through Class G airspace sticking 2 fingers up to all other airspace users, then having the audacity to file a TCAS report when they have a close aboard, is a prime example of poor airmanship) - he has noone to answer to, and who cares so long as he saves money!

Pure Pursuit
That'll be ScATCC Mil providing RAS then will it? Or have the civvies now learned how to do RAS? ;)

Pure Pursuit is quite correct regarding the long-term aims of the civvies - I attended a day of discussions in London about changes to radar services (which thankfully all seems to have gone quiet); the civvies there (ATC/Aircrew/NATS Management/CAA etc etc) were quite open about their preferred option for UK airspace - they wanted it all to be Controlled whereas the military want significant parts of it to be Class G open FIR (and so do the vast majority of the GA community - also represented). Any solution is bound to be a compromise, but the civvies are continually looking to set-up new routes and P18 is a good example; first they will go for anairwar, then there will be fillets in the north and south and gradually what little space is left over Northumberland will reduce to the point that it is effectively unusable.

Getting back to the thread, it's throw a dyce's attitude that irks. I wonder what NATS management would make of his using PPRUNE instead of an ATCOR:

http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/33/SRG1602.pdf

Sorry did I bite again?

STH

Maybe the civvy captain has a duty of care to his 300 pax? A RAS is probably the best way of achieving this rather than relying on a chance sighting and then trying to manouvre a cumbersome airliner out of the way at the last minute.

If safety was the priority of an airliner capt then he would keep his pax safely in an airway. Unfortunately, by flying off route his priority is to save a few pounds - 5 mins of time, a bit of fuel and airways charges. Airliners need to stick to CAS for the safety of their pax and to avoid overloading ATC/GCI.

Yeah maybe flying RAS in busy class G airspace is the best way of providing duty of care.

Or maybe flying the extra 20 miles and using the controlled airspace structure is the best way of doing this.

As a passenger, i know where i would feel safer!!!

Although maybe you could charge extra for the class G route by filling the jets full of spotters.

Apologies STH, I did mean ScATCC Mil.

It is indeed a difficult situation however, I'm a firm believer that it comes down to how you ask aircrew to adjust their plans. For example, if I was to say, "Export, 1 stranger xxx xx tracks south indicating FL190" whilst Export are very busy in the targeting phase of a PI, then I would not expect too much back. I do not mean that in a negative manner, I just see it as my job to offer a solution to a problem without maxing out the crews.

Phrased as, "Export, 1 stranger, possible RAS, traffic xxx xx tracks south indicating FL190. If you flow no further east he will not be a factor" then I'm offering a no brainer solution & bingo, biggles stays out of the way without even having to think about it & the stranger calls stop.

ScATCC Mil are very good at convincing Civ Air to stay out of the way, the issue is when the a/c are under civvy control. They often seem reluctant to even ask the crews.

On the other side of the coin, I've had a civvy controller phone me and inform me that she could see I had a lot of traffic (tanker & rxs) & offered to turn her ( I think she wanted me:E) traffic so that I could get on with it. Never did call her back...

Iccarus,

I believe that civvy traffic, under ScATCC Mil control have to do so under a RAS for insurance purposes. I may be wrong, perhaps a Mil ATC guy or STH could confirm?

How about we do something really radical and reduce the size of the class D? Keep the jets and their fantastic nav kit (I have a map and doppler) to a smaller usable area and we can flit about at will.

Then pin heads like the poster can be really busy and not have enough time to enter this pit of sarcasm as all the commercial money grabbers will be so close s/he will be scared!!!

How silly is all that, well as silly as the original .:D

This is really sad and shows a lack of understanding from many of the posters on here. TAD was not talking about RAS in class G, he was talking about penetrations of Class D by aircraft without authority.

We have a very limited commodity in the UK and that is our airspace. There is not enough of it for the military to do what they want or the amount of civil traffic to flow without restriction. The whole system is bursting at the seams and the attitude of "well it's class G so it's fair game" does no-one any good.

A TCAS requires a MANDATORY report to be filed, they are not being audacious. A TCAS manouevre is not a gentle climb/descent but quite significant in an airliner where crew and passengers may not be secured. In this thread, there is very much an air of us and them from both sides of the community here. The civvies are not "out to get" the military, they just want to get aircraft en-route, on time without delay. There are many military personnel who use LO-COs so criticism of them is a bit perverse. On the other hand, the civvies see a few military jets (in comparison) using up vast expanses of airspace, especially when there are MDAs etc available for use, all of which have been established with their full agreement.

TAD's initial post obviously got some hackles up and I understand that, but some of the subsequent posts have shown an extreme lack of understanding of the bigger picture. Be careful, methinks sir doth complain too much!

Hello again Chaps!
A little thread creep here. It was all going really well with some very constructive points and then GND lowers the tone:)

To answer some of the points. A lot of the aircraft operating outside CAS can only do so when they are in reciept of RAS - it is the usually the airline's requirement rather than the controllers.

There seems to be a feeling that the civil airlines should not be in class G - they have the same rights as everyone else. but if you are flying around the FIR and you see an airliner it does not give you a right to fly closer to it than any other type of aircraft operating in the same piece of airspace. Remember almost any military aircraft will have greater manouverability and power available than the civil aircraft.
All airline SOPs require their pilots to comply with TCAS resolutions. If the pilot recieves a TCAS RA they are required to file a report. There is no option. The systems on the aircraft record the event.

A large number of those aircraft are crewed by exmilitary pilots, they have not had brain transplants, they just know that the limitations on their airframes do not give them the ability to act as fast jets, so they are understandably very nervous when they are told about fast jets making high energy manouveres close to them.

Anyway back to the thread on infringements in the control areas/zones, iccarus does have a point. Currently we have over 500 infrignments of CAS, the vast majority by GA. The zones have been in place at ABZ for decades, you are all professionals, we would all like to think that you would not be deliberately infringing this CAS:)

As a mate that operates a large military jet in Class G airspace not infrequently, I see no reason why one ought to be on a RAS for safety - I am quite happy to take a RIS, indeed often to operate VFR not talking to anyone! (god forbid) .... Using a combination of TCAS and looking out of the ******* window in good flying conditions is more than sufficient to 'see and avoid' and therefore cause the least embuggerance to others and enable me and my crew to operate more effectively either to/from upper air or to/from a tanker etc...

See absolutely no reason why the civvy mates can't do the same - if not happy with 'see and avoid' based on a radar picture that requires on-board interpretation in good vmc with a tcas then perhaps they ought to be sticking to CAS...

<rant over>

As for our dear ATCO chappie - he may well have a good point about a specific recurrence of incidents relating to his Class D however that was all lost in a deliberately provocative and loaded approach to his post - I am happy to reciprocate with the same tone - kn*b off!

Well this is all very grown up...A civvy SATCO askes a question and immediately gets trashed by Maverick and his mates.

Come on guys, if you can't answer the ATCO's question without resorting to the see you in the "Stan" C**p ,don't bother
(FWIW ex FJ/QFI, now definitely blunt and not wanting an Airprox with 300+ souls onboard ..and I bet in 10 years most of the Mavericks/ "I'll never be a Trucky" guys here will be thinking exactly the same way I now do :sad::sad: )