Flying over a built up area
 

I live in the NW, not far from Barton Airfield. Low level corridors I understand haven't flown for a while and not completely au fait with height restrictions for the area etc....

A Pitts flew over where I live, about half a mile away but over a built up area and a known housing area, not above 1000ft agl, and did a lazy barrel roll!

Thoughts and comments welcome......

Height is difficult to judge from the ground. However, the legalities are not to fly under a thousand foot over a gathering of (I think) a thousand people or more or a built up area. What the defintion of a built up area is I'm not sure. You certainly need to be able to glide clear of any built up area in case of a donk failure, so say if I'm flying over Manchester I would want to be at substantially more than a thousand feet.

If he/she was at a thousand feet and performed a barrel roll which didn't go under a thousand feet and they could glide clear and he had done a HASSL check before hand then really he/she had done nothing illegal.

Having said that I probably wouldn't do a barrel roll at a thousand feet over the outskirts of Manchester.

Poor show.

I would have expected to see a few flick rolls in the opposite direction as well. :p

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the low level route is controlled airspace and aerobatics in controlled airspace are illegal.

Low level route is not CAS, and AFAIK aeros inside CAS is not illegal, though clearance to do them may be required!

According to the AIP, the Manchester low level route is Class D airspace but the airspace around Barton and the Barton ATZ are Class G below 2,000ft.

Also according to this:

https://www.caa.co.uk/docs/299/Manch...008NOV_CAA.pdf

you may fly below 1000 feet.

Might be interesting to have Nick J's "thoughts and comments" as a first time poster.


Edit: this is not everything I wrote here.

Around Barton you are not in the "Low Level Route" and the airspace there has a base of 2000ft. Exactly how far and in what direction do you live from Barton ?

I've tracked down the registration for the OP. It's G-TROL.

Chevron you are correct, it is not very clear on the charts but checking it out I see it is class D, but in this case MAN ATC are not providing the correct service!

I cannot find anything though that says aeros is actually illegal in CAS.

What's the problem? Barton pilots have been doing that for decades. Not in the LLR, but this doesn't seem to have been in the LLR.

LLR is Class D, but is a special case
 

The low level route is a special version of Class D airspace that does not get a service from Manchester by default and requires no clearance to enter or transit. No need to speak to anyone, just listen out on 118.575 and squawk 7366 to let them know you are listening.

http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/299/Manche...008NOV_CAA.pdf

This link is slightly out of date as the height restriction is now 1300 feet, but the rest of this still applies. 1000ft rule is not applicable, but you must be able to glide clear.

D

You do not have to listen out or squawk, you can use it without either a radio or transponder, though of course it is not sensible to do so if you have them! I really cannot see what they achieve by having this class D rather than G, maybe it just allows the exemption from the 1,000' rule?

What's the deal with these guys who post a single question, then disappear? Seems to happen a lot...

Exactly.

If you fly down the LL Corridor VFR, then you have to be 1,000' clear of the congested area. If you go SVFR, then you are absolved of the 1,000' rule, but not the 500' rule or the glide-clear rule. When the corridor limit was 1250', it was impossible to fly the route VFR and not be in breach of the 1,000' rule.

And that was the whole point of the corridor.

That's not so. There is no need to overfly congested areas when negotiating the route. In fact, it can be done legally at 501 feet.

Slightly higher I would say - doubt much terrain is below 1'AMSL and avoiding going over obstacles would not be too easy, but I get your point!

Yes, we do get a number of these and we usually do some routine checks to see if there's a history of related posting.

SD

As "Flyingmac" said earlier.