Controlled airspace handover

[mm_flynn]

Originally Posted by 421C

mm

The distinction in the Scottish example is that Nortbound your sequence is
Class A Airways > OCAS > Class D TMA, so the CAS "re-entry" is into Class D. In the Southbound, it is a Class A airways join, which is a different co-ordination issue.

Looking at the AIP I am pretty sure at FL100 the northbound N601 POL to TLA exits class A and then reenters Class A airways (a bit south of ESKDO - also a hassle that the variable base varies at lat/lons rather than at waypoints!) and the Southbound N615 NGY DCS N57 SETEL exits Class A 20 miles South of NGY and enters Class A about 6 North of SETEL - So I am struggling to see the intrinsic difference. I put the difference in approach (i.e staying with the controller and squawk vs. Info and an OCAS squawk then back to Control) down to 'luck' or controller workload rather than differences based on the specific class of CAS.

Also on my charts (Jepp IFR/VFR and Garmin 530 GPS) it is not at all clear exactly where the variable base transitions happen - I wound up looking it up in the AIP.

[Fuji Abound]

It's not easy to forget. It's obvious

This was a little tongue in cheek, as I suspect you realise. However are you sure it was so obvious to the designers of the air space. How is it that there is an airway from CP to ORTAC with a base of 3,500 whereas there is no airway across the channel with an operational base below FL80? I suspect there are more light aircraft crossing the channel between FL45 and FL55 than CAT using an airway designed for three or four daily trilanders. If trilanders "need" an airway why is it that light aircraft dont equally need a practical airway that they can use? In reality they have no choice but to cross without radar cover and below FL55 whatever the weather is doing.

I agree that IFR planning should of course be conducted on the basis of the aircrafts capability - I doubt anyone would dispute that. However as I said at the outset no one wants by choice to be bumping around in the tops of wet clouds for any longer than necessary, even if it might be safe, it can be bl**dy unpleasant. So what is some 2,500 feet of airspace actually being used for between FL55 and FL80 so as to practically exclude all north bound traffic?

There is no distinction between the rights of a 172 vs TB20 vs King Air vs Transport Jet to use CAS or OCAS

How so? There is every distinction if operationally the airspace is not useable? What is wrong with the airspace between FL55 and FL80 which would be more useable to most light aircraft.

It is interesting watching the stream of traffic north and south bound over SFD - have a look at the volume and the heights and even include the scheduled out of Gatwick. There is a great deal of not used and effectively unuseable airspace.

[421C]

Fuji, Fuzzy

There is a distinction between

(i) rights to use the airspace as it is currently configured
and
(ii) the "right" to have the airspace confgured to your needs

I think you are missing this distinction in your replies. I was replying to Fuji's point

at least each should have the right to use the air space that belongs to us

with the point that Jets and C172s have the same rights to airspace as it is currently configured, except the C172s don't pay fees.

I have endlessly already agreed with both of you that lower airspace could be better configured to serve light aircraft traffic. Our only disagreement is that I think you are utterly unrealistic that anyone is going to pay for this - either the Treasury or the users who do pay eurocontrol fees.

funding needs to come from the Treasury, through funds raised from AVGAS tax+VAT, to develop aviation infrastructure

The UK GA community has achieved precisely zero in persuading the Treasury to hypothecate fuel and VAT towards aviation infrastructure in even the most deserving causes that impact the greatest part of the GA fleet. This is a relatively specialised cause, and, despite your best efforts to present it as a big problem, I simply don't think it is a systematic problem. Just look at how convoluted the examples have to be to "prove" what a problem there is. You want to redesign airspace and have more CAS served by ATC so the bottom bit of the Worthing CTA can be transited in some special case where there is icing below it? As I said, if this ever actually arose, I suspect London Control could be persuaded to give you a transit. You want more ATC capacity in the London TMA so you don't get 'rebuffed' when you ask for an ad-hoc route? You want more ATC capacity so you don't have to bother asking London Info to negotiate clearances? You want more lower level airways across the Channel? And you expect the Treasury to pay for this? Given that GA has never had any priotity for government funding, and given that this is an obscure and specialised need, and given public finances are in an appalling mess? As I said, good luck.....
brgds
421C

[IO540]

which is why it is legitimate to discuss flight planning / enroute strategies, and it is not helpful to interpret such discussions as allegations of conspiracies, or a desire to get something for nothing, when the issues (specifically French/UK handovers) are more to do with airspace/airway design and ATC organisation/practices which might have been set up many years ago (and which London Control tends to ignore anyway most of the time, so long as you are high enough to be serviced by them in the first place, which brings me back to how to ensure a service by London Control in the first place, etc etc etc). The strategies are not exactly complicated, once you know what they are.

Also nobody likes to have their working practices dissected. UK ATC are about as happy to have people dissecting their system as I would be to have somebody dissecting how I run my business, etc. The only ATCOs willing to discuss some of the nooks and crannies of the UK ATC system (even in private email) are foreign ones... This is quite normal - no conspiracy allegations implied. I am sure Eurocontrol are not particularly happy to have people dissecting their "routing algorithms" (that's a rather charitable expression) and developing tools to generate efficient routes by various means, but they should not be suprised given the non-transparency of the system. And so it goes on.

[421C]

which is why it is legitimate to discuss flight planning / enroute strategies

Agreed.

...and it is not helpful to interpret such discussions as allegations of conspiracies

I wasn't. I was interpreting only the elements of your posts such as "controllers have nailed their flag to Class A airspace", "considerable institutional ATC resistance to changing the system. The reasons are opaque ..", "any change would require a French-style unified radar service which has implications on ATCO pay scales " as a conspiracy theory, using that as idiom, I guess, for "it sounds a bit silly to me".

Otherwise, I hope I too have tried to bring clarity to flight planning and enroute strategies....

Time to drop this entertaining thread under wifely pressure....have a good weekend all.

brgds
421C

[mm_flynn]

Fuzzy,

The US has a long history of hypothecation in many areas. It would be very typical to impose a tax/fee to fund some activity and then ring fence the money to only that activity. The Americans have a view governments will spend their user fees/taxes on all sorts of other rubbish - unlike European governments !

The UK government has a long history of flowing most income straight into the general fund. So a move to uniquely hypothecate Avgas tax is a very fundamental challenge to the Exchequer.

The number of instrument rated (not IMCr) pilots flying relatively low level is pretty limited (probably similar in scale to the number of moat owners) so the issue of providing low level airways is as C421 says pretty specialist.

In addition, I am not sure how many PPLs and IMCr holders are going to thank you for pulling CAS much lower thus eliminating their ability to fly at all for PPLs and without full control for IMCr holders in sub VFR (ie. with less than 1500m from cloud 1000ft above 500ft below and 5km vis when above 3000 ft) in all of this new class D or E.

Finally, to what the lower level airspace in the channel is used for, I don't know -- But the ATCOs do say it is busy. I have never seen any commercial traffic on any of the virtual radars at this level, nor have I seen it visiting Swanwick, and haven't seen anything on traffic systems while flying in the areas - but I only look at 0.1% or less of the total time it could be used.

To understand that the issue exists is worthwhile. For the non-flying ATCOs to understand the UK maybe ICAO compliant - but is different from what our near neighbours do - and therefore is more likely to be a 'surprise' for foreign pilots - is worthwhile.

However, in the list of priorities worth fighting for changing this part of the system doesn't even make the list to consider.

[mm_flynn]

Look carefully at what constitutes VMC in Class E or above. In the UK many many PPLs routinely fly in less than legal VMC with no material risk.

On the rest of it - good luck, there is a lot of money to be spent if you want full ATC over the whole of the UK FIR (say above 3000 ft) and ad hoc popup clearances.

On hypothecation - while the avgas revenue trivial - success for Avgas would mean success for petrol - and the potential ring fencing of x 10's of billions of pounds to roads (or even transport) would be a 'die in the ditch' line for the Treasury.

There are many other issues in GA that we can potential win and should be a focus of effort. Other than being aware of this particular issue there is nothing that actually needs to 'be done' (IMHO of course)

[IO540]

I doubt anybody seriously suggests the powers to be should spend a single penny supporting GA - because they very obviously won't.

The only reason why LARS still exists is because of the hundreds of serious CAS busts each year.

The only reason we have the excellent AFPEx flight plan filing tool, and the helpdesk backup behind it, is because of substantial cost savings which were made by closing the FBUs and making a lot of people (there are no "low paid" people in the ATC business) redundant. In the end the FBU staff was processing c. 3k flight plans per month, nearly all of them VFR GA, most of them faxed or phoned-in. Notwithstanding ICAO obligations this medieval system was ripe for cost cutting in this day and age, but they had to provide a flight plan filing facility of some kind afterwards.

London Information, with its ("officially") lack of radar, is there only because of ICAO obligations. If the UK did not have to provide a basic FIS service, they would shut this down as well and set up a website for picking up your IFR clearances Actually, I think LI is getting a bit more support now, with its listening squawk etc, but again this is only because of the concern over a possible CAT-GA mid-air. It has been structured so that GA does not receive any kind of improved service OCAS. That would need radar qualified ATCOs who are on a higher pay scale, and nobody will fund that. Even if all IFR GA was paying fees, still nobody would fund it because the enroute fees from 2T+ GA in UK airspace are most likely miniscule and would never support the ATCO salaries and overheads involved in a pan-UK radar service in all Class G, above say 2000ft. This works in France only because the system is nationalised - like everywhere else.

I just wish there was a joined-up system for IFR clearances. IFR GA represents a very small traffic density anyway (which is overwhelmingly obvious to anybody flying in the FL100-200 airspace) so there cannot be controller workload issues. It is some obscure quirk in the way the system here has been set up. On various occassions I have tried to find out how it really works but an explanation appears elusive.