Although I understand you are only trying to be helpful and explaining the constraints put on you by others, the problem you face is that plenty of people have flown in the USA and seen how they do it. Over there, planty of very busy airports are Class C which generally has a 5 mile radius surface area, and which by demonstration is totally workable. So telling us it isn't workable is only likely to make people think you are part of the problem, which may not be the case. I agree that Mode C is very prevalent and this makes life a lot easier, but then as I said before, when Mode S comes along that excuse will not stand. I think I read somewhere that a massive restructuring of European airspace is on the cards, and they appear to be copying the FAA model, did I imagine this?

Is there a formalised list which priotieies certain type of traffic over others?

If so, what is the order of the list?

I've guessing this is what Flower is refering to when she says:

Is MATS available online somewhere?

dp

http://www.caa.co.uk/application.asp...=detail&id=222

There you go, if you go to the section i stated you will find the list of priorities, hope that helps a little towards understanding why we have to put CAT ahead of most VFR flights.

Who is more at risk - the 62 ton Boeing on departure at 250kts, 3500ft climbing OR the C172 at 90kts S&L 3,500ft maintaining a sharp lookout..?

A near miss might spill my tea but the wake will send you uncontrollable. Your arguments about restricting controlled airsace are akin to cyclists wanting to restrict cycle lanes.

There are big heavy fast trucks out there and you'd rather they not be seperated and closed off from you? If Coventry does not get its CAS then there will be a serious flight safety hazard and if the worst did happen one day then GA would be FUBAR'd by the time the next Daily Mail hit the breakfast table of middle England.

Rich playboys in their polluting pleasure craft (as GA would be portrayed) would face the full force of public ignorance and politicians craven desire to be seen to do something. That something being Mode S and compulsory flight plans for every flight like elsewhere in Europe at the very least. Not to mention the insurance companies reassessing their willingness to offer GA cover following a 180 person air disaster wiping out several housing estates...

So which if going to be more harmful to GA?

Cheers

WWW

Taking Farnborough and Luton as a couple of examples they have very active glider sites very close to their ILS approaches

As far as I am aware the gliders do not have transponders and are able to operate without any major restrictions. In the case of Luton they operate in very close proximity to the main runway approach (Dunstable downs)

Come on ATCO's when are you going to start giving GA pilots a break !

Most gliding site operate within certain rules which are laid down in memorandums of understanding between the gliding clubs and ATC

We ATCOs give GA breaks all the time and are extremely accommodating, for goodness sakes stop seeing it as a battle ground it is rather pathetic :rolleyes:

"If Coventry does not get its CAS then there will be a serious flight safety hazard...."

Best they stop flying right now then. Or move to Birmingham/East Midlands/Cardiff/Bristol.....

How ever do Exeter, Kirmington and Newquay manage?

Sorry - I'm with Beags on this. When this all blew up I had a look at Coventry's live flight data available on their website. Tuesday had 13 Commercial air transport movements between 0600 & 2000 local. That is a miniscule operation, and doesn't warrant the amount of airspace that's being asked for. In addition to which there are, with 1 hour's drive of Coventry, the following Class 'D' airports:

Birmingham
East Midlands
Luton

With Bristol just outside the hour.

Change the airspace - or move the operation. I think we all know what would be a more sensible idea. If Thomsonfly want CAS move somewhere where it already exists. Changing the airspace with the impact not just on GA, but adjoining airspace and operations makes no sense whatsoever.

You can justify anything by citing 'safety and security' and that seems to be the way our society is going at the moment. There are ever greater infringements of civil liberties, justified by 'security' considerations.

Yes, stick huge swathes of class D airspace around every poxy little airport (13 commercial flights in 16 hours?!) and the world will be a safer place.

Good, but will it be a better place? Get your heads out of your a*ses chaps.

QDM

Exeter have an application in for CAS and their operation has grown massively.

I don't know the politics of the Coventry issue, are Birmingham supporting this bid for CAS ? they to date have had all sorts of issues with Coventry so I must admit would be surprised if they were unless it has a direct benefit to Brum, Brum however is well served by CAS so IMHO would see no need for any further expansion.

Chilli are you just touting for more business up there ;)

WWW, you are trying to change your spots, aren't you? It wasn't all that long ago that you might well have been seen as a rich playboy yourself.... surely those UAS aircraft were just playthings for the privileged few, at the tax-payers expense no less! :E

Seriously though, objections from GA regarding the proposed controlled airspace stem from the fact that this is one of the more busy GA transit lanes in UK, between Birmingham and East Midlands airspace, effectively being the connection between north and south of the country. Thompson certainly knew the busy status of the airspace when they began commercial operations at Coventry.

Traditionally, aircraft using Coventry have required a much shorter final approach leg and it is only the arrival of bigger airliners which require a much longer final that has recently caused this to become a problem.

Inbound 737s do, in fact, already have in place a separation service, via Coventry's ATC Radar, albeit with some occasional inconvenience due to "unknown" traffic crossing the centreline to runway 23 at around 7 or 8 miles. Unfortunately, this also relates to MSA for that area and many GA aircraft cannot go higher, especially in winter. It is mainly this traffic that Coventry want to control, understandable to some extent.

The very large amount of Class G that Coventry now want to "grab" (it's as big as Birmingham's, but for far fewer movements) will effectively plug the gap in the existing Class G in that area, mainly to avoid Thompson aircraft having to be vectored, or, God forbid - GO AROUND! (will there ever be a case of an airliner in controlled airspace being held off or orbited for transit traffic?).

There is undoubtedly a commercial issue here and not just one of safety.

If they do get all the airspace they are asking for, they will cause at least two bottlenecks for GA, with some potential for some pilots attempting a poor weather VFR transit below the airspace, in one area below MSA, rather than face an ATC delay. Unfortunately, since the Thompson operation began, Coventry have earned rather a "reputation" for already attempting to control passing aircraft merely requesting a FIS in Class G airspace.

Presumably, no small proportion of the possible "conflicts" for their Class G inbound traffic could already have been prevented by installing a secondary radar - but this, of course would have cost Thompson money that they obviously didn't want to spend.

ShyTorque - I was making the point that the general public and the media will not portray the general aviation scene in anything other than negative light following an accident. I am a keen GA'er myself.

Beagle old chap I have to disagree. Yes at the moment COV is only home to 3 ThomsonFly 737s and the movement rate is not exactly stellar. But Go Fly at BRS started with 3 737s not even 5 years ago and now is up to 9 aircraft.

You need CAS ahead of Operations else safety is compromised for all. Fine, if COV needs a 20 mile radius zone then lets delete the zones around a couple of disused military airfields and balance it all out. Or close a few ranges. Ohh, silly me that has all happened in recent years anyway. In fact I might be tempted to wager that the amount of Controlled AirSpace in the UK is less now that 15 years ago.

Someone want to take that bet?

Cheers

WWW

slim,

You'll find the traffic statistics for the busiest airports in terms of movements here.

You'll see Heathrow comes well down the list which doesn't bother me, means I don't have to work as hard as those at the airports higher up the list, but it may add amunition for those that like to use these sorts of figures to spice up their arguments. The figures at Heathrow aren't going to increase much over the next few years either unless a third runway is built, it's pretty much at capacity as is.

The simple facts are that the two systems, UK and FAA, are different. Some aspects of one are better than the other but there are pros and cons on both sides. Simply saying that everything in FAA land is better is an over simplification and for me it doesn't wash. I base that on the experience of having flown IFR and VFR over there and also having visited a number of their busiest ATC units.

If there's any reason why we don't have quite such a joined up ATC service as there is in the States then point the fingers at our political lords and masters. The day NATS was privatised and essentially sold into the control of the airlines and main airport operator did anyone ever really think that the lower end of the GA spectrum would be very high up the list of priorities?

The airlines, our owners (the government may hold the golden share but their seat is right at the back), demand that we provide the best possible service to them at the lowest cost, that doesn't leave much in the way of manpower or funds to look after the non revenue customers, unpalatable as that is to myself and many of my colleagues.

Flower,

Thanks for the link.

Looking at the list of priorities, I'm a little confused.

Categories A-E seem to be for Emergency, S&R, Politically important people, and CAA flights.

Then we have normal flights, which include "Flights which have filed a flight plan in the normal way and conforming with normal routing procedures", and also Instrument flight tests.

Lastly is category Z which includes training and all other flights.

I see nothing in the list which prioritises Scheduled, Chartered, Commercial, Fast, Large, Heavy or IFR traffic.

Presumably it is the "Flights which have filed a flight plan in the normal way and conforming with normal routing procedures" but that includes CAT. Is this to say that a light aircraft, which files a VFR flight plan, and complies with normal routing procedures gets the same priority as the commercials? This isn't what happens in practise, at least in my experience.

That section does make a comment (which I don't understand) that the table is not for flow control. Perhaps this is not the section you had intended to reference to?

dp

WWW:

Please don't degenerate this into some kind of cockfight about who's got the bigger/higher performing aircraft, that's really not the issue here, and plenty of people here could easily push you right back into the little box you've emerged from. And, for that matter, you can stop showing how much of a brilliant bus driver you are by knowing the trendy three letter identifiers for your stops too.

Rant Off.

That is true, but they are not putting out their proposals for general discussion.

Worse their 'stepped airspace' is based on an aircraft with a poor rate of climb, which will probably not be in operation at the time the new airspace is instituted.

This means that in places there is a very narrow margin between the base of the CAS and the ground.

Again, this shows that GA is being sidelined in favour of commercial operators and the margins of safety for GA are reduced so that the relatively small numbers of commercial flights have a greater margin.

"You need CAS ahead of Operations else safety is compromised for all."

So how did ThomsonFly set up their operation in the first place then? Or are you saying that they operate in a hazardous manner?

Sorry, but a few little 737s whose sole raison d'etre is to haul shell-suited oiks to alcohol-fuelled oblivion in various sunny watering holes is insufficient reason for hundreds of GA pilots to be very seriously restricted.

Chav-Air rules, I'm afraid

Porco,

I'm not actually saying one side is better (though one most clearly is), it's just that when this comes around we always hear the "it's just too busy, just too congested". One way to counter that argument is to analyse all sorts of numbers and come up with a superb presentation as to why that is nonsense. As I cannot be bothered to do that (and wouldn't know how to even if I could) I just say "It's busier and more congested over there, and they quite easily manage to do what you say you cannot". In my mind it has the same effect.

So coventry has less than 20 jet movements a day. Wow. better not tell Porco how that would be handled in the US, let's say it's a good chance there wouldn't even be a tower. I've flown at airports with part 121 ops and no controller. They have ILS's though, very good for keeping in practice when no controllers slowing things up :) Just make sure you get out of the way when the 757 announces on the common frequency he is turning base to final.

So porco, you didn't answer my question. If everything within 30 miles of LHR is squawking mode S, will you need such a large surface area??

There might be no controller in a tower but the approach itself is still controlled by ATC. If you're IFR that may well lead to delays in or out if there's more than one aircraft in the system... I assume you're also talking to ATC if you're flying practice instrument approaches under VFR?

Probably didn't answer because I've got no idea. I'll hand that one over to any airspace planners or DAP reps that might be here. I am just a humble and much maligned UK atco :)

There are airspace classification changes afoot though, so who knows what the future may hold.