No fly zone around Windsor Castle, London

[OvertHawk]

Originally Posted by WHBM

If traffic to Heathrow is exempt, and others require ATC clearance right down to the ground anyway, rarely given because of Heathrow conflicts and generally (in my experience) given a routing well away, just what does this new measure achieve additionally ?

Nothing whatsoever in real terms.

But it may give some backside covering value in the event of an incident that might expose people to the question of "why was there not a no-fly zone?"

[OvertHawk]

Originally Posted by Ancient Observer

About 15 years ago, a friend took me and SWMBO on a very posh helicopter from Denham to Farnboro and back. With some er, interesting "pretend" landings at Farnboro. His clearance to fly thru the notional no-go area around LHR flightpaths was granted in about 5 seconds by the ATCO. I guess they are used to the Royalty flying in to and around Windsor.

Low level helicopter transits inside the class D to the west of LHR underneath the approach / climb-out are commonplace bread-and-butter stuff for pilots and controllers. Happens hourly. Virtually none of it is Royal. Virtually none of it goes close to the new restricted area.

This whole thing could not be more of a "non-story". It will change nothing at all.