What muscle would that be exactly? The muscle that comes from securing the jobs of the ATC, baggage handlers, check in staff, refuelers, despatchers, cleaners, caterers, car park attendents, bar staff and shop keepers?

Not to mention the customers who are paying to be able to use the airport and its new routes.

Should no expansion of air travel be allowed? If not then how do you justify any expansion of GA? Not that there is any. :(

We have always lead the field in aviation in this country. We do so at the moment with low cost aviation. That is a fact to be applauded by anyone with an interest in aviation.

It really is not difficult to totally avoid CAS or to obtain a service from the controlling agent. If you want great open expanses of uncotrolled airspace with cheap fuel and free flight following services then move to Arizona.

Cheers

WWW

Response to Coventry proposals for controlled airspace from the PFA:

www.bluerobin.flyer.co.uk/PFAResponse.pdf

Factor of airspace efficiency might add something to this thread.

"I want to avoid an accident between a commercial airliner and a GA aircraft. What do you want?"

I want to avoid a collision between two GA aircraft. The more CAS you create the more choke points you create.

Are the commercial service providers going to pay for better services outside CAS - I dont think so. In fact their latest drive has been to increase the administrative costs passed on to GA.

Lets not forget GA on the whole doesnt want or need CAS, LARS, RIF, RAS, FI, LI, or any other service for that matter. On the whole it also doesnt want large airports. It should be up to the commercial operators to accomodate GA.

I hate to mention the States but therein is a model that works well. I have yet to hear a rational arguement against their model.

Encourage GA to contact the ATC controlling the approach by offering a useful service (RIS) otherwise why bother to call them if we're out and about in Class G in fine weather.

You try it - when you do call up they ask us to call London Information and not bother them

WWW, your arguments are much the same as the likes of Walmart use when they move in and attempt to dominate what was previously an equable status quo.

The PFA's rebuttal of the attempted airspace grab at Coventry is highly commendable and deserves every success.

There was me thinking the attitude we keep being told about is commercial wanting to get rid of GA, it would appear it is the other way around :hmm:

BEagle, the attitude that LoCos should only have operated from airports fully contained within CAS is a tad naive for an obviously intelligent person, you will be fully aware that there are only so many landing slots and places to park. Also why do those of us who live in areas not served by such Airports have to travel massive distances when we already have airports on our doorsteps.

Having seen exactly how the airspace process works I can only assure everybody just how difficult it is to obtain new CAS and the depths that are gone into to minimise inconvenience to other users. Lets be honest comparing UK airspace to US airspace is like comparing apples with oranges, they have so much more space in the first instance to play with, a very quick cursory glance at a UK chart shows just how close we all are here in the UK.

Whilst being a huge advocate of GA, and the "right to roam" outside CAS with no ATC contact Commercial aviation is a huge industry generating Billions of pounds for the UK economy. It is wrong to try to limit such an industry simply for our own pleasure. I think we probably have it close to being right as every new application process for CAS has to be looked at in minutiae with every concerned group fully involved with the right to respond to every application. However in the same way that we shouldn't just think we can have CAS everywhere we want it , those in GA also have a responsibility to accept that there are places which do require the additional protection

Hmmm.

Cake and eating it too. ;)

Take one of your cursory glances at a chart of any class B area in the States and you will see there are plenty of airports very close together indeed, they make the UK look quite inconsequential. You find small and large airplanes mixing it quite happily, each respecting the rights of the others to use a common airspace. I bet only LHR would definitely make class B if it was in the US, and yet wouldn't come close to the top 10 busiest in the States.

There was a very interesting discussion on here recently comparing the size of the LHR surface area with the size of the surface area of several busier airports in the US. What it appeared to boil down to is that at LHR, you have A340s which simply cannot climb very well and so gazillions of square miles of very usable airspace is closed off to small aircraft. Yet you put that same A340 at O'Hare and the thing is quite capable of getting smartly off the ground and out of the way of the many small aircraft safely buzzing around a few miles off the departure end of the runway. Seems like they just cannot be bothered in teh UK, and the controllers let them get away with it. In the States I suspect the Chicago controller would be on the radio telling the A340 jock exactly what was expected of him. As it should be.

I suppose it's only to be expected in the UK where ATC is simply underresourced and can hardly handle the commercial traffic, and airline pilots can get in the right seat of a jet with no idea of how GA really works.

Take Bristol and Cardiff ( ok my local area again I know) as the crow flies 23 miles, time en route in a car at least 80 minutes between the airports.

Again as for the States they often have multiple runways we get stuck with one.

I have already told you I'm pro GA I'm not fighting the CAS corner or GA corner just a tad tired f it automatically being seen as a bad thing with GA and it would seem some working the commercial side always seeing GA as a bad thing. When sides polarise so much we reach impasse, we are all airspace users lets gets real.

I've heard this many times but never heard who these airlines are. What if no RAS is available? There are plenty circumstances when the best you can get is a Limited RAS, or a RIS, due to, for example, high traffic density.

Without knowing which airport A and C is talking about it's difficult to address the specifics. There are plenty growing airports in Class G which don't offer a LARS but have a LARS provider nearby. In those cases A and C's light aircraft would be doing the correct thing in speaking to the LARS provider and not A&C's airport. If this was a regular problem then A&C's airport ought to have an LoA with the LARS provider to ensure that any aircraft working LARS which are getting close to the commercial airport are told to change frequency.

There's another side to this. I regularly instruct in Class G airspace where the occasional CAT flight passes through. The LARS provider will invariably ask me to cap my altitude, or worse, ask me to maintain a particular heading, to co-ordinate against the IFR, so he doesn't have to vector him. I always say yes even though I am under no obligation to do so and it can add several minutes to a sortie at the student's expense.

A&C, if you were in good VMC then you also had the option of still having a RAS but telling the controller you were happy to not take those particular vectors - or you could take a RIS. It sounds like the real problem was the fact that although squawking Mode C your traffic was unidentified therefore 3000ft vertical sep required if vectors not possible. What does your ops manual say about required separations from VFR traffic in Class G? I'll take a guess that it says nothing. Maybe it should.

NS

Slim slag - very well said.

We come to accept the way things are done here and take them in that context.

For example, this weekend I transited CAS twice. On both occasions I got the transit, but on both occasions I had to wait 5 to 10 minutes I guess. I also had to give the ATCO a little gentle encouragement. What was interesting is I could watch the inbounds he was working from my orbit on the edge of CAS. The inbounds were well spaced, visibility unlimited and no one else was transiting the zone. After encouragement on both occasions I routed above and behind the inbounds. In fact there was absolutely no reason for the delay in the first place. However, I was grateful because I got the transit (my comment about taking things in context). In both cases there was no obvious reason for the delay - it certainly would not have occurred in the States.

Moreover, how often do we get after requesting a zone transit - “remain outside of CAS, I will come back to you”. “Remain outside of CAS, you can expect a clearance within xx” would be far more helpful either in response or very shortly after the first call.

I appreciate these issues are slightly of thread but they typify some of the sentiments on this thread. Unfortunately the system appears to be polarised towards commercial traffic having absolute priority as opposed to there being a real effort to integrate all users within the system, and maybe whilst idealistic the bottom line is we all own the airspace and a bit like with real estate the right to roam is worth protecting.

Seems to me the problem with VFR CAS transits is the inconsistency. Last week a PPL I was flying with made an ambiguous call to ATC in an adjacent zone which we intended to route around. The controller took it as a request for a CAS transit and immediately gave us a transit clearance direct to our next turning point, at our current altitude! OK, probably no traffic to conflict, but it was a refreshing attitude. Others will be the opposite - "Flight Information Service, remain outside controlled airspace, report leaving the frequency" - yeah and cheers to you too mate.

I would imagine the best source of consistent standards on this and other ATC issues ought to be the CAA regional ATS inspectors. Over to you Mr Regulator?

NS

Do I detect a suspicion that those low hours commercial pilots are also those pilots defending CAS (and ever more of it) and those commercial pilots with some proper time under their seat take a different view as to how commercial and GA can (and do) integrate :) .

The real problem is that the new commercial breed need rather more training and need some time outside of Europe.

I reckon six months in the States would do the trick. We could seconde a few of the ATCOs at the same time.

Here's a few around LAX (within 40 miles anyway). Some make Cardiff and Bristol look like farm strips. Funnily enough, you can fly right across the LA basin without talking to a sausage if you want.....
http://www.digital-reality.co.uk/acf/images/vfrlax.jpg

Point of order: I could fly just about anywhere and not have to speak to a sausage, so this proves nothing. ;)

Nah, but it proves CAT and GA can mix freely in a very busy traffic environment, with large amounts of CAS....though sensibly thought out. (I did my CPL ME upper air work portion of the flight test over the Class C of March Airforce base at 7000')

Maybe, but how you get from the ability to fly VFR straight through the climb-outs of the main runways at LAX by getting the departing IFR traffic to say they're visual with you (as I've done) to doing the same at the nearest UK airspace equivalent - Gatwick - I just do not know. "Kittens", "having" and "CAA" spring to mind.
NS

WWW:
Not sure I follow your argument about military use of airspace. While I appreciate the large overwater areas tied up in naval ranges to consume a lot of airspace, I don't think it's really the place most light aircraft want to go flying over, so releasing this airspace is unlikely to improve GA congestion.
As I'm sure you're aware, most of the airspace in a MATZ (all but the ATZ) is not technically controlled airspace for civil aircraft. Only a buffoon wouldn't call the military controller, who will almost always give a zone transit (knowing as they do you have every right to blast through anyway). They will appreciate knowing who you are, and the opportunity to verify your Mode C. In addition, at the peak periods for GA traffic - weekends, most MATZs aren't active.
As one last point, it's also worth mentioning that most military operators are punctilious about making courtesy calls to small commercial fields they transit near, and probably have a much better lookout scan, thanks to relatively good fields of view (compared with an airliner at least), and a traning system that places a huge value on lookout, the skill that will keep those operators alive in wartime as well as peacetime.

QDM:
While a controller can indeed see your 7000C squawk, as previously mentioned the Mode C cannot be trusted unless verified. Mainly though, if you're not talking to them they have absoloutely no way of knowing if you are likely to suddenly change heading or level, so much larger separation minima must be applied than for known traffic.

Overall, I think many of us are missing the point here - the original post was trying to point out how good airmanship from the GA community can help reduce the restrictions, in the form of increased CAS, imposed on us. Surely everyone can appreciate the value in making such courtesy calls?

Sometimes when we offer a shortcut to airlines transiting between airports to beat a slot this means going outside CAS, whilst our unit will provide a RAS the accepting unit will not, this is explained to the pilot. Invariably they have to decline as their SOPs do not allow them to accept a RIS.

We do operate differently from our US brethren in so many ways, I know there are many in GA in the UK who seem to think they offer a better service, perhaps they do but we have to work to the rules the regulator sets us.