EASA GPS approach survey
UK GPS App
Not worth it while UK CAA insist on full ATC and 'instrument approach' runway lighting for a UK GPS approch to be approved.
Can't we send the tossers to the USA to see how it should be done!!
Can't we send the tossers to the USA to see how it should be done!!
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I have indeed sent an email to the email address shown at the end, explaining that this is almost totally pointless because nothing can change so long as UK requires ATC (which most GA airfields cannot afford to employ) or has privatised ATC (which for the same reason prevents the use of the US-style remotely located approach controller (which in the USA is funded by the FAA, i.e. the US taxpayer, as a part of an integrated transport network 
).
The US system can never happen in the UK because nobody will fund the approach controllers, so while I agree with the principle, sending them to the USA to show how it is done will not achieve anything
To bring GPS (or any other) approaches to the bulk of UK's present non-IAP airfields will require a massive sea change in attitudes and despite encouraging noises made by various people attending various meetings with the CAA etc etc (over more years than I can remember) I just cannot see this happening.
One obvious way forward would be to allow an A/G or a FISO to do the approach control, and reportedly some encouraging noises have been heard there, but this will raise hell with ATC pay scales, not to mention ICAO ATCO classifications. Even the move done a few years ago which gave London Information FISOs physical visibility of radar screens (something they are not permitted to mention or in any way indicate on the radio, because they are not radar qualified ATCOs) took years to push through, and it finally happened only because there were (and are) so many serious CAS busts. Providing IAPs (or for that matter any other facilities) to GA is of no interest to the establishment.
).The US system can never happen in the UK because nobody will fund the approach controllers, so while I agree with the principle, sending them to the USA to show how it is done will not achieve anything
To bring GPS (or any other) approaches to the bulk of UK's present non-IAP airfields will require a massive sea change in attitudes and despite encouraging noises made by various people attending various meetings with the CAA etc etc (over more years than I can remember) I just cannot see this happening.
One obvious way forward would be to allow an A/G or a FISO to do the approach control, and reportedly some encouraging noises have been heard there, but this will raise hell with ATC pay scales, not to mention ICAO ATCO classifications. Even the move done a few years ago which gave London Information FISOs physical visibility of radar screens (something they are not permitted to mention or in any way indicate on the radio, because they are not radar qualified ATCOs) took years to push through, and it finally happened only because there were (and are) so many serious CAS busts. Providing IAPs (or for that matter any other facilities) to GA is of no interest to the establishment.
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I have indeed sent an email to the email address shown at the end, explaining that this is almost totally pointless because nothing can change so long as UK requires ATC (which most GA airfields cannot afford to employ) or has privatised ATC (which for the same reason prevents the use of the US-style remotely located approach controller (which in the USA is funded by the FAA, i.e. the US taxpayer, as a part of an integrated transport network ).
).It is the enormously opaque process which one appears to have to go through to design and approve the approach - which in my mind should, for most cases, be a very objective piece of physical analysis with some standard risk assessments regarding specific local risks and interactions with other airspace uses.
I'm not sure about the Galileo bit.
I certainly agree that unmanned GNSS approaches would massively enhance the ability to get from A to B in Britain (particularly if we continue to hang onto the IMC!). That is as has already been said however, a big political nut to crack.
But, what the heck, let's encourage it, I can see no harm in that.
G
I certainly agree that unmanned GNSS approaches would massively enhance the ability to get from A to B in Britain (particularly if we continue to hang onto the IMC!). That is as has already been said however, a big political nut to crack.
But, what the heck, let's encourage it, I can see no harm in that.
G
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That is as has already been said however, a big political nut to crack.
There is no requirement for there to be a Tower controller. You just change to unicom, etc.
The "uncontrolled" field is mostly Class E as well, so all traffic in IMC is known. There shouldn't be anything from around 500-2000ft where radar coverage may be patchy.
Lots of "political nuts" to crack, it appears. The question is whether it is just rumor due to pilots sitting around on their asses doing nothing, or whether pilots have actually gone to someone and talked about it, and then been rebuked.
I would say that the average resident will not appreciate a mid-air collision and debris spraying all over his house on a cloudy day caused by ATC underfunding...........
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There is no requirement for a tower ATCO here in the UK either.
Walney Island EGNL has a remote approach controller and only AFIS (Walney Info 123.20 - the Jepp plate lists no other comms frequency) in the tower.
This could be done anywhere. NATS (or whichever agency is applicable) would be delighted to provide an approach controller, for the £££.
The problem is the cost.
These things are always confidential so any open discussion is vulnerable to somebody saying "how the hell do you know" but the annual cost of an H24 ATC desk must be well into 6 figures by the time the establishment fixed costs are factored in. Even taking a normal commercial employment scenario you cannot employ a person with anything vaguely resembling a "qualification" (say an on the road salesman or a field service engineer) for much under £100k in total fixed costs. You only have to pop your nose into Swanwick to see that no expense has been spared. Even the potted plants are pretty nice and of course somebody will be employed to look after those, too The place resembles a bank head office, pre-Lehman. And then you have the massive security, fences, guards, the whole works. And since ATC services would be the only billable product of all that huge amount of stuff, I bet that an H24 ATC desk must cost at least £500k.
A bit less at say Farnborough but not that much less.
The next Q is how much of that £300k (say) will be billed to an airfield doing some private IFR, some AOC stuff, and perhaps a fair bit of instrument training. I have no idea but let's say it is 1/4, which would correspond to an airfield with some busy periods due to training going on (look at Cranfield where ATC tell you to sod off on more days than not if you just turn up and ask for an ILS). That's £75k, and say £40k if you want just 8am-7pm.
Without training activity it could be much less but the airfield will probably try to encourage training to get value for the block payment. I don't suppose the ATC unit will do it on a per-IAP basis because that is a very open-ended arrangement which traditional accountants don't like. It might also make approaches very expensive; e.g. Cranfield charges £30 for an ILS and at that rate many people will not use it.
Sure, any ATC activity comes free all the time the system is below capacity (in the same way as the cost to BT of carrying a phone call is only the ink used to print the line on the itemised phone bill) but the accountants you will find in these establishments are not the sort who want to get into marginal costing The supporting evidence for that is in the 4 or 5 figure annual fee that NATS charge for a radar data feed, which costs them virtually nothing.
One would think that imaginative solutions could be found but the fact that nothing has emerged for such a long time suggests it is a tough nut to crack.
GPS approaches are not the only option, historically. It doesn't cost much to run an NDB and a DME (a few k a year on the maintenance contract) and if an airfield could offer a published NDB/DME IAP it would attract some valuable training and AOC business. Obviously the actual procedure will be flown using a GPS
but that's not the point.
That is the other bit of the US system which quite cleverly makes it all fit together. Any traffic which is in IMC but not under an IFR clearance is automatically illegal, and the FAA has busted some people for it. Even in Class G (where a "clearance" is impossible) there have been some busts, for flying IFR without an IFR flight plan or something like that.
Walney Island EGNL has a remote approach controller and only AFIS (Walney Info 123.20 - the Jepp plate lists no other comms frequency) in the tower.
At quite a lot of airports I would have thought a deal can be done with a nearby ATC unit to provide the approach control service (after all it should be able to be a procedural approach in most cases).
The problem is the cost.
These things are always confidential so any open discussion is vulnerable to somebody saying "how the hell do you know" but the annual cost of an H24 ATC desk must be well into 6 figures by the time the establishment fixed costs are factored in. Even taking a normal commercial employment scenario you cannot employ a person with anything vaguely resembling a "qualification" (say an on the road salesman or a field service engineer) for much under £100k in total fixed costs. You only have to pop your nose into Swanwick to see that no expense has been spared. Even the potted plants are pretty nice and of course somebody will be employed to look after those, too
The place resembles a bank head office, pre-Lehman. And then you have the massive security, fences, guards, the whole works. And since ATC services would be the only billable product of all that huge amount of stuff, I bet that an H24 ATC desk must cost at least £500k. A bit less at say Farnborough but not that much less.
The next Q is how much of that £300k (say) will be billed to an airfield doing some private IFR, some AOC stuff, and perhaps a fair bit of instrument training. I have no idea but let's say it is 1/4, which would correspond to an airfield with some busy periods due to training going on (look at Cranfield where ATC tell you to sod off on more days than not if you just turn up and ask for an ILS). That's £75k, and say £40k if you want just 8am-7pm.
Without training activity it could be much less but the airfield will probably try to encourage training to get value for the block payment. I don't suppose the ATC unit will do it on a per-IAP basis because that is a very open-ended arrangement which traditional accountants don't like. It might also make approaches very expensive; e.g. Cranfield charges £30 for an ILS and at that rate many people will not use it.
Any revenue is money for old rope as the controller was already there and the volume is going to be low (otherwise a local ATC would be feasible/probable).
The supporting evidence for that is in the 4 or 5 figure annual fee that NATS charge for a radar data feed, which costs them virtually nothing.One would think that imaginative solutions could be found but the fact that nothing has emerged for such a long time suggests it is a tough nut to crack.
GPS approaches are not the only option, historically. It doesn't cost much to run an NDB and a DME (a few k a year on the maintenance contract) and if an airfield could offer a published NDB/DME IAP it would attract some valuable training and AOC business. Obviously the actual procedure will be flown using a GPS
but that's not the point.
The "uncontrolled" field is mostly Class E as well, so all traffic in IMC is known. There shouldn't be anything from around 500-2000ft where radar coverage may be patchy.
Last edited by peterh337; 9th May 2012 at 14:12.
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There is no requirement for a tower ATCO here in the UK either.
I have also encountered airfields without instrument procedures here that are hooked up to the ATC network and can issue IFR clearances for Z flight plans. They usually have it when they're close to a big airport.
Examples of this are EDTY Schwäbisch Hall (ILS+RNAV) and EDMS Straubing (RNAV). Both are uncontrolled airfields with AFIS.
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The place resembles a bank head office, pre-Lehman
Every other country that has some notable GA activity will have sorted out the issue one way or another.
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So where's the issue then? Obviously the airfield needs AFIS and some coordination with ATC
Every other country that has some notable GA activity will have sorted out the issue one way or another.
It's true that when the CAA drew up the obligations for ATC to deliver, prior to privatisation, they could have put in stuff like approach controller provision for GA.
But they didn't.
Perhaps somebody thought of it but the merchant bankers advising would have resisted such an obligation as it would reduce the proceeds from the IPO. So the only obligations were what ICAO demands i.e. a FIS and some other bits.
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NavCanada is privatized and the UK is only part-private.
Because GA pilot groups sat around and said nothing, so nothing was done....?
Show me some evidence where something was put forward in a previous consulation which was ignored by your CAA, or the Department for Transport.
The last consultation for fully privatizing ATC wasn't even responded to by AOPA or PPL/IR, which suggests most pilots just don't care.
It's true that when the CAA drew up the obligations for ATC to deliver, prior to privatisation, they could have put in stuff like approach controller provision for GA. But they didn't.
Show me some evidence where something was put forward in a previous consulation which was ignored by your CAA, or the Department for Transport.
The last consultation for fully privatizing ATC wasn't even responded to by AOPA or PPL/IR, which suggests most pilots just don't care.
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I recall this discussion coming up before, and some ATCOs said UK GA has only itself to blame.
A fair comment might be that nobody (who had the time + inclination to get involved) foresaw this consequence.
Look at the EASA FCL stuff. You are facing massive documents which only the most obscessive person will have time to read, let alone understand.
UK AOPA and PPL/IR are massively under-resourced, and AOPA would have been concerned mostly with VFR issues anyway.
A fair comment might be that nobody (who had the time + inclination to get involved) foresaw this consequence.
Look at the EASA FCL stuff. You are facing massive documents which only the most obscessive person will have time to read, let alone understand.
UK AOPA and PPL/IR are massively under-resourced, and AOPA would have been concerned mostly with VFR issues anyway.
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You have picked the wrong bone there...
I am not even sure if I was flying (IFR) when this was done. I certainly don't recall any consultation. I am also not involved in any UK pilot group.
I am not even sure if I was flying (IFR) when this was done. I certainly don't recall any consultation. I am also not involved in any UK pilot group.
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Looking at a recent CAA info note, VFR at night has been introduced ahead of the start of SERA (standardised european rules of the air).
Will SERA affect European States wrt GPS approaches? The design of approaches is contained in an ICAO PANS (Doc 8168) so where ever you are in Europe, you can expect the same level of safety whilst flying the procedure.
So the challenge is the environment around the runway. Can separation in IMC be assured? Can a pilot on approach receive a clearance to land from someone who is not a validated ATCO?
Even if it's a difficult ask doesn't mean a solution shouldn't be looked for. The UKs situation does impose an extra challenge due to privatisation though the introduction of a lowered floor for BRNAV because of radar coverage down to circuit height shows that a service could be provided.
So an equitable way to fund such a service has to be found. If the current provision of radar coverage is fully funded the on cost will be marginal. Surely this is a starter for 10?
SGC
Will SERA affect European States wrt GPS approaches? The design of approaches is contained in an ICAO PANS (Doc 8168) so where ever you are in Europe, you can expect the same level of safety whilst flying the procedure.
So the challenge is the environment around the runway. Can separation in IMC be assured? Can a pilot on approach receive a clearance to land from someone who is not a validated ATCO?
Even if it's a difficult ask doesn't mean a solution shouldn't be looked for. The UKs situation does impose an extra challenge due to privatisation though the introduction of a lowered floor for BRNAV because of radar coverage down to circuit height shows that a service could be provided.
So an equitable way to fund such a service has to be found. If the current provision of radar coverage is fully funded the on cost will be marginal. Surely this is a starter for 10?
SGC