An interesting thread.

What so far nobody has answered authoritatively, is why the UK has such a different approach to the rest of Western Europe when it comes to GA use of controlled airspace.

I know a number of opinions (but with no backing data) have been put forward, mostly alleging higher traffic density, but even if that is the case, surely you would then go and hire more controllers to deal with that? I struggle to believe that such a comparatively expensive place to fly can have such an appalling level of service.

I would be most appreciative if anyone can point me to any relevant studies explaining the reasons for those differences (please note, as for mere opinions, I think I've heard most of them already).

zkdli, I don't think many (any?) of the alphabet organisations will accept that infringements are actually a significant issue until it's all too late and has ended in tears.

The safeguards were there, shame they were actively opposed/ignored.

I'm sure you know the answer to that one really:

"Hiring more controllers costs money. Who is going to want to pay them? - not the GA pilots wanting transits, and why should anyone else?"

"Hiring more controllers costs money. Who is going to want to pay them? - not the GA pilots wanting transits, and why should anyone else?"

And the answer to that is: The GA pilots do not want transits. They only want to fly in that airspace, and they would be just as happy were it uncontrolled. Since it is the heavy iron who needs the airspace to be controlled, they pay for the service. But they only pay for the service; they didn't buy the airspace.

Now now Bjonhall you have a fundamental error there. THEY DO OWN IT or so it seems at times! I have always thought that if the CAT wanted such restrictions on airspace (for safety reasons of course) then they should be obliged to pay a rent on the volume of airspace required. I wonder how soon it would start shrinking then!!!

The government believes in “the polluter pays”.

The big airlines demand big chunks of controlled airspace. Why? Well in about 1975 at a CACAAC meeting (forerunner of NATMAC), I heard the CAA people remind everyone that their prime remit was the protection of the fare-paying passenger. By then, airspace had effectively gone from being free to all to being nationalised so that the Government could do what they want with it.

So if the polluter pays, who should pay for the additional personnel - air traffic controllers - to allow access by GA? Why NATS, of course. But that would increase their costs, which would either affect profits returned to shareholders, or be passed on to their customers – those they charge for CAS services, mainly the big airlines.

And who are the shareholders? According to NATS web site, that would be “the Airline Group, BAA and DfT”.

So that’s why the polluter, in this instance , does not pay.

As we have seen, when politicians make the rules, they are different for them (and by extension their pet projects) than for everybody else. NATS just gets run as the politicians wish. Fare-paying passengers wield lots of votes. GA does not. So GA can get st****d as far as the powers that be are concerned.

Chris N.

Unfortunately I don't, otherwise I wouldn't have asked. I had of course heard before the speculative argument you put forward, but never seen any proof such as in the form of a policy document or similar. And it still doesn't explain why this issue is largely unique to the UK amongst Western European countries.

How many other Western European countries have a privatised 'national' ANSP?

A number of things are different in the UK compared to other European countries.

NATS is a private company, for a start. This puts a totally different slant on how services will be funded, etc. Most (all?) countries in Europe have a national ATC service which they maintain well, for national security reasons if not others, and this is why you find when you fly into France suddenly everything changes; you get a radar service everywhere, every unit you call up has your flight plan to hand, even small airport towers have a radar data display, etc.

The UK implements a near watertight division between VFR and IFR/CAS services. The latter gets the usual seamless control from London Control, etc, while all other traffic is kept separate and gets a FIS (which does not provide a radar service so few pilots call it up) or the occassional radar service from a LARS unit. LC will absolutely not provide any service to VFR traffic, or IFR traffic which is below their CAS layer (loosely speaking below FL080 or so).

As suggested above, this results in a situation where you have absolute control and right next to it you have airspace (which quite often is shaped into a bottleneck - even better for PPL-level navigation skills as trained in the UK ;) ) in which you have traffic which is not only uncontrolled but also totally unknown, without transponders in most cases and often without radio. With the typical airport CAS, it takes just a few minutes at say 100kt to enter the CAS and end up overhead the said airport and bring operations to a halt.

Most if not all of the IFR/OCAS airspace is Class A; not for any good reason but it has been that way for a long time. It should really be Class B or C. Class A of course prohibits VFR implicitly.

The UK has the advantages of lots of Class G and the ability to fly IFR in it, even non-radio i.e. without ATC clearance or any flight plan. One can fly all over the UK in Class G. Of course this works only if the pilot can actually navigate; many cannot and they bust bits of CAS. But nothing can be done about this because the training is so poor and refuses to embrace modern navigation technology.

The extensive Class G, with its relative lack of a useful service, works well with the UK model of "user pays" because GA (below 2000kg) does not pay so it doesn't "deserve" a service so it does not get one. This incidentally is why the IMC Rating works so well in the UK - it is a "DIY flight in IMC, with no service" kind of thing.

Also, UK GA has been historically quite effective in restraining the growth of CAS. This has been achieved successfully no doubt due to the fact that no ATC service needs to be delivered OCAS ;)