Excuse my ignorance, but this is what I don't understand either.

Someone publishes a GPS approach (or you make your own) to an uncontrolled field. You pop out at the minimums set: if you see the airfield, you land. If not, you go elsewhere. It's in G airspace where you don't talk to anyone anyway.

Why is this illegal?

You don't need a clearance to land, if there is no ATC in the tower. What you do need, apparently (though I have no reference) is a clearance to fly the approach.

For a G-reg, it is not illegal to fly a DIY (unpublished) IAP. And yes this is another reason why GPS approaches are moot in many cases, especially if they don't deliver lower minima than the existing NDB IAP (Shoreham is one example).

For an N-reg, unpublished IAPs are banned by FAR 91.175 and this appears to apply worldwide.

Most aerodromes in Australia with approaches are OCTA. No clearances required to do the approaches. You just get on with it. Often only a traffic information service is provided. Not even radar derived, just position reporting.

In that case it doesn't sound like there is something in ICAO rules mandating ATC for all approaches, unless Australia has filed a difference.

This consultation came out in June 2011 and closed the following month, when you were definitely flying IFR.

I may have picked the wrong bone, but I see you are a keen writer, perhaps writing some 200 posts per month of which many find interesting to read.

In my opinion it would have been far better for you to have also been responding to such consultations, either as an individual or through your pilot representative organization.

Your occasional post which targets the unions and "money squandering" at privatized ATC is something that nobody in your country actually cares about, as shown by the (lack of) responses in this consultation.

In a nutshell, GA is responsible for its own death, really.

I think you're confusing how NATS is owned with how ATC in the UK is funded. The consultation was about the former, not the latter. NATS recovered its costs and more from users long before it was privatised. The effect of privatisation from the users' point of view was probably an efficiency improvement, and thus lower costs.

That's right - the privatisation took place way before 2011.

Also my comments on costs would be exactly the same for any business which charges out its fixed costs divided by the amount of product/service delivered, which arguably it has to in some way. Marginal costing works only until you reach capacity :) The airlines apply a lot of noisy pressure to remove what they see as subsidies for GA or whoever.

That said, aviation is a nice gravy train for large numbers of people, and that is yet another thing which holds back progress.

The key factor is that most countries treat aviation as a part of their transport infrastructure. In the UK, this has been separated out, for far longer than I've been flying. That directly leads to the issues which hold back the development of GA.

And surely you were not surprised?

On issues such as this it is as much the governments resposibility to decide whether to protect minority interests because usually they are the least able to protect themselves. Rarely can ga have a hope in hell of taking on the enormously well funded machinery of other lobbyists.

Either we want a centrally funded regional infrastructure of airports which incidentally are unlikely to ever be able to fund themselves with the current framework or we dont.

We seem to be suffering from successive UK governments' (plural) attitude to the essential infrastructure of the country. Privatise, allow the private providers to make a good proft for shareholders. But do nothing to protect the actual facility itself.

Water, Electricity, Gas, Road fuels. Police (it's being mooted), NHS? Post office (watch this space; that's all about to go for a ball of chalk). It's all going down the pan (apart from the water, most of that gets lost from leaky mains).

Good grief, even Clinton Cards has gone into administration in the last couple of days; whatever next? :rolleyes: