Looking for basic/traffic service info
 

The quote below was made recently concerning a midair collision.

"neither agency could have provided anything more than a Basic Service. The accident occurred outside the area of responsibility of Farnborough North and London Info cannot give a Traffic Service at any time."

Being from out of the country and just learning about ATC service in Britain, some expanded information would be aprreciated.

How can I find out where the area of responsibility is. I do have a Listening squawks ans LARS printout from my flight school which has various frequencies.

Confirm that once outside an area of responsibility, one can still get basic service from that facility.

Why will London Info not give traffic service? Are they too busy and therefore have been told not to do so?

In order to provide a Traffic Service, RADAR is required, along with a controller qualified to provide the service. London Information don't have access to RADAR information and the Flight Information Service Officers that operate the service aren't qualified to use it if they did.
A confusion sometimes arises when London Information issue a transponder code. All this does is show units that DO have RADAR that you have established 2-way with London Information. If said unit want to communicate with the aircraft, then they could call London on the phone and ask the subject aircraft to change to the unit's frequency.

There's a map available showing Farnborough North's coverage area. From my experience in the area, the traffic would be too dense for any meaningful Traffic information to be passed, anyway. As ever, the MK1 eyeball is the essential tool, until a foolproof collision avoidance system is developed for training aircraft. Farnborough's job isn't necessarily to provide us with anti-collision information, though on occasion if they can they might well. It's to keep aircraft out of controlled airspace and try and reduce the cost to the airlines of having to divert around infringers. It's the airlines who pay for this service, I understand.
TOO

London Info are non radar and only able to give basic. If you are writing about the collision at Waddesdon then the Farnborough LARS will not give traffic in that area below 2300’, Luton would only provide basic outside controlled airspace (and at that time they would have been busy with IFR in and out bounds) Oxford would have been best, and the whole accident was on their radar.

Oxford Radar is bloody good, but too few transits use them. The Cabri at its altitude would have got basic, but the C152 was high enough to get traffic from Oxford.

I regularly hear aircraft in the WCO area asking Brize for a service when Oxford is closer, has better radar and a lot of the WCO traffic is often from Oxford and working radar on 127.75

If you’re in the area, give them a call, they are not scary, enjoy what they do and if you want a traffic service will do their best.

SND

The LARS print out is your lot for radar service. There are gaps. Outside this and controlled airspace the only service is basic. Which is as much use as a chocolate teapot or an ashtray on a motorcycle (choose your metaphor).


London info are great but they are what they say on the tin - an information service, not a live traffic service.(but they'll help all they can).

Welcome to the UK. It's a great place both for flying and other stuff, despite our odd ways.

But does the UK have any "area of responsability"? If so, where are the definitions? What are the areas and what and whose are the responsabilities?

TOO
Although London info don’t provide anything other than Basic, they seem to know exactly where I am a lot of the time.

They recognise my callsign and type now and sometimes give information that I swear can only come from a screen of some sort. I assume it’s there for SA but they can use it.

Or maybe it’s just my position reports.

Feel happy to correct me.

Farnborough have defined areas of responsibility. the others in practice have the extent of their radar coverage, which is variable and difficult to define. Sometimes it's seems to depend on whether the controller likes you or not!

The original quote was mine.

A G**gle search for "Farnborough LARS Guide" will provide you with a link to their pamphlet which includes a map of the areas covered.

Google ATSOCAS and read what it has to say in the top couple of hits from airspacesafety.com. This should explain UK ATC services and what you get. Or more to the point what you don’t get with a Basic or a Traffic Service.

I think it's location dependent, a basic service in rural areas of Scotland is a fundamental part of doing the best you can to have a safe flight and offers you the best chance of being found if you go down.

Make no mistake , unless you're on an IFR flight plan. It's YOU .

Thanks, actually I think that should read "unless you are in controlled airspace" rather than "on an IFR flight plan". But yes indeed, the term "area of responsability" is as bewildering as the UK "rules of the air" can get. Where is it defined?

NATS | AIS - Home

In particular, check out section GEN 3.3, ENR 1.1, ENR 1.6 and the various maps under ENR 6.

I never minded providing a service outside the 'defined area' provided I wasn't in someone else's LARS area and provided it didn't degrade the service I was providing to other traffic inside my defined area.
On one day on LARS North, I first picked up a Hawk routing from Biggin to Valley and no sooner had I transferred him to London Military Radar east of Daventry for a Daventry crossing than Cottesmore phoned up to hand me a pair of Tornados in the same area inbound to Northolt. I gave Luton Radar a bit of a fright with those as I delayed their descent to go under the LTMA west of BKY until the last minute.
Nowadays the controllers at Farnborough are reluctant to do this due to what I'm told is more rigid application of the rules however the fact remains, Farnborough LARS sectors have sufficient radar coverage to operate well outside their notified areas of operation, especially to the north as the new radar head at Bovingdon must be on line nowadays and being some 500ft amsl, it would give excellent low cover north of the Chiltern Hills.

Chevvron;

Im Oxford based and my experience on an almost daily basis is that the Farnborough LARS coverage peters out near Aylesbury Thame gliding site and is pretty much non existent north of there.

The BNN site helps, but it doesn't cover the lee of the ridge that well.

SND

SND, I totally agree. Problem with Farnborough seems to be understaffing. I use them regularly (as many of us in the corporate rotary industry do) but it appears that for much of the time, one Farnborough controller is presently often dealing with two, if not three areas, covering more than one frequency.

If you call up Farnborough North for a service when travelling from the Midlands they will only provide a basic service until you reach the boundary of their area of responsibility, when they will upgrade to traffic service. Similarly, if going north, they will normally downgrade you to a basic service once beyond the boundary shown on the chart in their pamphlet.

I first began flying for a living in 1977. Over the last forty years, with the closing of a number of military airfields (e.g. Cottesmore, Wittering) and now some more recent civilian ones, such as Coventry, the chances of getting a meaningful radar service in Central England have reduced. As I said before, there is a significant gap in the Southeast Midlands, where many aircraft must route and train.

If you fly by night, of late there is often no-one to talk to - even London Info have NOTAM'd closures late at night.

The Oxford Approach listening squawk facility is useful in a very busy area. We were routing Gloucester to Cranfield recently and dialled up 4517. After a few mins Oxford called to check we were listening and informed us of a bizjet manoeuvring for the ILS. Very helpful - the system works!

Not exactly. Someone else can probably give a better answer than me, but as I understand the money basically comes from a combination of:

1) Eurocontrol route charges - Anyone over 2MT flying IFR, 5.7MT flying VFR, and other criteria where charges are due
2) Navigation service charges - Anyone regardless of weight who is inbound and lands at the aerode providing the service (e.g. Farnborough)
3) Government funds - A small pot of money is allocated to incentivise units to provide a service. This money falls far short of the cost of providing the service.

Though it would be incredibly silly to keep aircraft out of airspace when there is no chance of conflict.

Far better instead to be providing traffic information or deconfliction advice between actual aircraft to help pilots avoid collisions.

Unfortunately there will always be limitations of (radar) service provision when flying outside controlled airspace.

If someone wants a “guaranteed” service they should file and fly IFR inside controlled airspace instead.

The above is from NATS' own website.

No too much in there about collision avoidance for training aircraft carrying out exercises 4-11 above the Aylesbury Plain.

TOO

Correction: the SERVICE peters out near Aylesbury, but radar coverage is excellent. I've never seen the new Bovingdon 23 cm radar but if it's any near as good as the Debden which can see aircraft just above the ground at Wyton, then barring some shielding by the Chiltern Ridge, low coverage in the WCO area must be quite good. Even when I was at Farnborough, the Heathrow 10cm radar could see traffic just below 1,500ft in this area.
Just in case you think the lower limit of 1,500 ft below which Farnborough will not provide radar service is due to radar coverage, it's not. In the planning stages, the CAA insisted we put a common lower limit on radar service provision over the entire LARS area rather than have sectors where the lower limit varied from this so we came up with 1,500ft for terrain clearance. Even this of course, doesn't apply within 3nm of the Midhurst and Sevenoaks TV masts though!