They would blockade all the airports and minor airfields....... ooer!

The problem being that a protest in the French style involving leaving a pile of burning rancid sheep carcasses on the apron at Luton would be hampered by Ryan Air almost immediately picking them up, chopping them into bits, putting the remains in small plastic cartons, and flogging them to the punters at £15 a pop.

Would setting up class D airspace for 50nm around London, and keeping a well armed helicoptor hovering 24/7 over any stadium in use not be an ecomonically cheaper solution?

Someone turning off their cleared track, and making a bee-line for the statium could easily be shot down.

It would be a lot more effective than trying to scramble aircraft to intercept when someone who has filed their flight plan and got their clearance number suddenly leaves their cleared track!

I wonder if we have the wrong end of the stick? After all, even Civil Servants must notice, eventually, that a light aircraft has all the the destructive power of a car on a motorway.

Maybe they just plan to flood the airspace with UAVs to watch people and traffic on the ground, and don't want us bumping into them.:*

Also, the Farnborough and Fairford airshows occur during this period - just to make life interesting.

RIAT in 2012 will be 07/08 July, Farnborough a week later.

Sorry, I'm sure I'm missing something here...

Can anyone please tell me, what is going to (or what could) happen at the Olympic games that requires this restriction placed on the airspace for 20/30 miles around it in every direction?

Analogy: Do they restrict the airspace above a football stadium during a big game? No...

Very confused by this! I'd be tempted to turn the Xponder off and fly lowish...!

Utterly fecking barking.

I especially like this bit. Who sits down and makes up this crap?

Unpowered glider :

1. Launches from specified BGA/RAFGSA*** sites only, activation of which must be notified to the relevant control authority a minimum of 2 hours before launch.

2. Remain within 3nm of launch site.

Cross Country Gliding (unless launching and recovering from the sites above where exit from and entry to the Restricted Zone is solely contained within 3nm of the launch site) and Other Sites: Booker, Kenley.

1. File a Flight Plan on AFPEx or AFTN between 24 hrs and 2 hrs before take-off and follow it - no airborne or faxed flight plans will be permitted.
2. Receive an acceptance message and approval number to flight plan.
3. Establish and maintain 2 way RT with appropriate control agency quoting approval number.
4. Squawk and maintain discrete transponder code as allocated by the appropriate control authority.
5. Receive an ATC service and comply with ATC instructions.

:ugh:

Who arranges for thermals to line-up with your flight-plan? What if you are loosing height but can see a thermal 5mile off your flight-plan route? Do you get shot-down because you didn't stick to it? How do you file a revised flight-plan from your glider? How can you then hang on for 2 hrs before activating the deviation?

So many questions.......
So few braincells..........

How the fcek can you file a flight plan for a gliding flight? :ugh:

I can see AFPEX crashing spectacularly due to thousands of unnecissary flight plans being filed.

So many balls-ups, so little common sense.

Has anyone actually put thought into this? Or is it just that David Cameron and chums are neurotically !!!!ting themselves paranoid that something bad happens on the school sports day, and so have commanded from high, as usual, with their clunking iron fists?

Smithy

Steveking, That was my thought exactly. Our school is microlights, and none of our aircraft have transponders, and we are in the restricted zone. So, that basically means we are grounded from mid July to mid September. Now, given the olympics are 27 July to 12 August (which is 2 weeks), why the **** is there going to be an 8 week ban.

Are they worried that someone is going to take off 2 weeks before the olympics, and just keep circling in the clouds (in their radar invisible plane) so as to make something happen.

And as for a month afterwards, if that's the post-olympic party, I wanna go.

I think we should all lobby our representitive bodies (BMAA, LAA etc) and ask them to get involved.

I really hope it doesn't kill any businesses. That would be a disaster...Olympics come to town, businesses down the pan!

IPZ

As a comparison, when Greece had the games in 2004, they simply screwed their GA. No VFR flights at all within the relevant area. But IFR was apparently allowed, which is why I don't understand why they don't allow IFR within the RA (by IFR I mean flight planned airways IFR, under London Control). I assume that airway sections passing through the RA will be locked out via IFPS in this case. Not that that would help GA and flying schools which are mostly VFR-only.

Don't forget to ask your MP to help you get compensation for loss of earnings. If the restrictions are not both necessary and proportionate I don't see why you should loose financially

Having seen the cost of attending this profligate waste of taxpayers' money in order just to watch a few people running, jumping, splashing about and throwing things, I would recommend anyone with such a burning desire to save money by buying themselves a 54" 3-D HD television set, several crates of wine and watching the whole b£oody nonsense at home.

It really is UTTER bolleaux!

I have to say that this thread reminds me of nothing more than my misspent youth when I would delight in poking a stick into a termite mound and watching the seemingly mindless panic of its inhabitants. Has nobody read the bit that says "The Government, CAA & NATS will work with airspace users and others to ensure that the planned measures, and their potential impacts, are fully understood and discussed before the Statutory Orders, to legally implement them, are made towards the end of 2011." Has nobody considered engaging with the process and explaining their concerns? Or is it just easier to bitch on an anonymous forum and expect someone else to sort it out?

If this takes place, which I'm hopeful it wont, but if, then every GA airplane in the UK should go up with XPNDR turned off and bust that airspace. I would like to see the CAA try to sort a hundred infringements out, or furthermore, try to prosecute that. Fat chance of backing any allegation up with evidence in such a case. A bit of civil disobedience does democracies good once in awhile.;)

But honestly, as someone said - if you really had bad intentions, which RAF scrambling aircraft would that be that could intercept an aircraft before it got to its target from outside the zone? It's utter madness. Nobody could reasonably intercept that, assess the situation, define if they're friend or foe in the time it takes to fly a couple of NM. Even if the interceptor was already airborne, in that quadrant and had the fastest aircraft known to man, could they achieve this.

Rotarywise. yes. i have, and am. Let's see if i get a response

I have no intention to, SoCal.

But hypothetically - prove that I busted that airspace. How are they going to do that without physically sitting next to me in the cockpit? In fact, turn transponder off and prove that I busted anything. Can't be done unless they visually see me do it.

I would not call it "bitching". It is a debate which (as one tends to discover perhaps years later) is read by hundreds more people than post on here, and some of those silent ones are in a position to do something.

It is also read by the CAA (definitely daily, and has been for years), the DfT and god knows who else.

It must be obvious that the purpose of the RA is to create a "known traffic" environment which enables an "intruder" from outside the RA to be intercepted in time. But some bits of it don't make sense e.g. the gliding restrictions, and the pinching of the N-S route to the east of the RA which is bound to create a very narrow tunnel through which a load of planes will be squeezing through, trying to follow the exact line on their GPS.

I agree with Beagle and I immediately t0ss out the sports supplement of any newspaper, but that is a purely personal preference and a lot of people do enjoy organised and televised sports :) It probably won't make any money overall; it's a bit like the EU which is just a massive gravy train which people ride while it has steam.

Also I think the flying schools should get together and take legal action for compensation for loss of business. They probably can.

Try looking at it as a charter helicopter operator. Under the current "rules" Battersea Heliport (10 000 movements a year) is shut from July until September. I flew in Athens as part of the broadcasting team for the 2004 Olympics and there was none of this total load of b******s.

If you are a commercial operation (flying school, air taxi etc) I suggest you go to the authorities and demand you fees back for that period as the authorities are effectively stoppping you trading.