Olympics Airspace Closure
 

Olympics Airspace Prohibitions & Restrictions - e-petitions

On July 14th the Government has ordered the London airspace to be closed to all General Aviation traffic for a month. At the same time a Restriction is put in place for 2 months across a wider area.

This "Olympics Airspace" will severely affect and even stop pleasure flying, flight training, aircraft charter, aerial filming and many other GA operations. It is estimated that 20 businesses may close forever and that upto 1000 peoplein the business of GA will be badly affected by loss of earnings. The GA business uses a lot of freelance specialist employees, such as pilots and engineers, flight training instructors and others.

The Govt position is to create a "known aviation environment" for the Olympic period. Yet most of the affected people are highly experienced and known to the authorities.

We want the Government to allow the GA industry it's basic Right To Work. We want Exemptions.

What area will this effect?

What's wrong with the restricted and prohibited zones we have now? Is this a petition against those zones?

As long as we file a flight plan and we're given our slot I can't see too many problems.

This has been discussed a lot on here already. My understanding is that as long as you file a flight plan and stick to it, most operations will be largely unaffected in all but the small fully restricted area in the centre of London.

There has already been huge accommodation by the CAA for GA compared to the initial proposals, including a simplified free system to file the flight plans (Sky Demon Light). The CAA have spent a lot of time and energy raising awareness of the changes, for which they should be applauded.

What more are you looking for from them? I think this boat has already sailed.

pudoc and rivverrock83 is correct.

False. If you file a flight plan and have a transponder equipped aircraft you may fly into the Restricted Area. What exactly is it here that you are complaining about? Do you just want to continue flying as and when you please without squawking or talking to anybody?

More the contrary. Most of the affected people are not known to the authorities.

Exemptions are already available. There will be lots of GA activity filming the Olympics events for example. Air ambulances will still continue flying.

If you want to file a petition, I suggest doing so with accuracy, else it will be rejected.

Considering the amount of negotiation that has been done between the CAA, AOPA and such, the amount of effort that has gone into controller training for Atlas control, all the publications that the CAA has published by now, all the training the military has done, the "file a flight plan" days that have been done twice now (or even more, I lost track), and so forth, my estimate is that at this stage of the game, ANY petition to change things will be rejected. Unless it concerns a fringe detail like the font size to be used on these huge signs carried by the Pumas.

You're simply about a year late.

I agree with everything that has been written thus far, except that from the OP.

OK, so its going to be a bit of a hassle to file a flight plan, and hope the time slot is acceptable. Sure, if you want to do some aerial photography and circle round a ground object numerous time, its going to a little more difficult in this period, or one needs to be extremely inventive on the routing section of their flight plan. Yes, PPL flight training will be more restrictive. I fly from an airfiled in the restricted zone, but I see it as a challenge to rise to, to fit in with the restrictions and stick to a route and times.

I cant comment on why 20 businesses may close forever, or speculate who the '1000 people in the business' will be affected but people might have contingency plans or alternates. A lot of notice and dialogue opportunities were given.

Still it is a nasty shock if you've just realised the effects of the Ban.

And it's a wide spread ban.

My field south of Gatwick is closed for a month with draconian threats if we dare try to slip out and southwards out of the zone. The only way to fly for a Summer month which embraces the whole of 5 week-ends is to buy a transponder.
The cost & not even installed is a whopping £1590 for the minimal version by TRG.

HMG may have spent a lot of taxpayers money setting up the whole affair, but have not really responded to those of us trapped by cost or marginal position into losses. And, yes we do use VHF, SafetyCom, Farnborough and the rest as best we can - when they aren't too busy to do more than parrot 'Basic Service'.

The latter has little value, except by listening out when once in a while another pilot may give his position.
Last Sunday they weren't too busy but I still had a head to head with a.n. other at different altitude without a whisper from Farnb.

mike hallam

So what's it all about, just a massive imposed Potlatch.

Man, this is the 21st century!

You should consider yourself lucky you've been able to fly so close to Gatwick without even a transponder.

Over here we have a Mode C requirement at 30nm around the major airports as standard.

piperarcher;

I think you may find the majority of the businesses affected are helicopter operators who need to operate in and out of Central London. There are at least that number of people involved and despite an enormous amount of negotiation the routes in and out of Battersea are still not known and available to us, commercial operators have been ignored and a lot of jobs are at risk.
I was one of the aerial camera pilots for the Athens Olympics and have worked on major events worldwide and have never seen such a badly organised set up as London. I am Senior Pilot for one of the affected operators and we are going to be very severely hurt financially. A huge area we operate into around London has been taken away for this event and I know of at least 2 operators who may go under due to the loss of almost an entire months' turnover during a recession. I recently had occasion to speak with the head of the olympic side of DAP and she didn't even realise that the area we were talking about was affected.

My company will still be here in August, but I'm worried for people I know in a very small industry, many I have known for years who may be jobless as a result of an overpriced sports day.

SND

How long before 0012 becomes mandatory operating close to the periphery of Gatwick?

IN-2012/082: Frequency Monitoring SSR Codes | Publications | About the CAA

I'm presuming there's no prospect of compensation for lost revenue?

Whilst on the subject, maybe one of you can help me.

In the flightplan, how would one indicate GH in the route? I'll be hour building and want to practice and keep fresh with stalls, steep turns etc etc. Obviously enter the position in the route and then do I add something into the route or remarks or simply request permission from Atlas to perform GH?

The answer to that is in the guidance notes somewhere. you are not expected to do anything other than fly straight out of the zone, weather avoidance must be communicated to the atc unit. However you might be able to tell them you need to orbit ? I guess it'll depend on how busy they are. If you deviate from the f.plan you must tell them first.
The flying mags pilot/flyer have articles on it, all recently. Check out the latest flyer mag. ( other mags available :E)

This is probably the same person (Wg Cdr) I wrote to last year, and twice since, expressing my concerns about the published Olympic rules effectively barring helicopters from operating into and out of Central London. This may have been done deliberately, I don't know. The thing that cannot be addressed is how to effectively clear security before departure, as required by these new rules. There is no provision for this to be done. In any event, the rules as published are ineffective in that they would not prevent a helicopter (or many types of light aircraft for that matter) landing en route to London after doing so, while still appearing to comply with the accepted flight plan and security procedures. It's a total mess.

A good friend of mine mentioned that he'd seen on the local news that there were going to be introductions of GA being "banned" over Newcastle whilst the Olympics were on. I can't find anything on this, can anyone help?

2604 - Are you campaigning for a specific exception for FlyingTV, the GA community, or just in general? Either way (and as someone said), you're about a year too late and in any event, under the ePetition T&Cs, even if all of the 'people affected' signed up, there would still be insufficient numbers to even solicit a response from the government, never mind trigger a review/re-think!

I and several others have already suggested alternative methods to make the ATCs' and pilots' life easier during the Olympics, but this is as much about political arse covering as it is about security. Rest assured - nothing will change it now :(

Reference for airspace closure over Newcastle ...

Olympic no-fly zone 'will bankrupt firms' - Home News - UK - The Independent

Wow. If that is true my flying school are going to take some serious damage. Located in the heart of the restricted zone and everything they do in training takes/took place within that zone. Looks like students are going to have to travel half an hour before leaving the zone for GH.

I hope there's something around it.

Go to the AIS website. There's a not below 2500ft restriction around St James Park from 26 July - 4 August, and thats it.

I wouldn't rely on uninformed journalists if I were you!

The long winded URL is

http://www.ead.eurocontrol.int/eadba...2012-05-17.pdf

And who the hell would fly over Newcastle at less than 2500ft anyway in a SEP anyway?