RAF Flights Dakar To Brize Norton
 

Idly scrolling around FR24 this morning (and the other day, too) I noticed that the regular flight from Dakar to Brize Norton appears to take quite a detour into the Atlantic, skirting around to the west of the Canary Islands before taking a more direct track towards the UK. Any ideas why?

Perhaps not welcome in Spanish controlled ATC space ? The GIB-BZZ flights seem to do the same.

The French do the same with US DOD flights.
then they’ll plug up to a US Air Force KC-135 over Chad...

Perhaps not welcome in Spanish controlled ATC space ? [/QUOTE]

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Not exactly. You don't need Dip Clearance to go through somebody's FIR, just through their territorial airspace. And yes, the Spanish are sometimes "difficult"; back in the 60s when Franco was rattling the fence at Gib and we had a standing detachment of Hunters there, we would avoid Spanish territory but talk to Seville Centre for clearance. They were fine - as long as we avoided their territorial waters/airspace.

Your experience significantly differs from mine. Sevilla used to pointedly ignore us on HF when we were inbound to Gib. One day after repeatedly trying to raise them we slipped in the call “ Sevilla Speedbird xyz at 55” We got an immediate response of “ Speedbird xyz, Sevilla?” When we then continued, “ Speedbird xyz relaying for Rafair 123...” comms failed again, go figure.

YS

According to gcmap.com a great circle route would go over Mauritania, Western Sahara, a tiny bit of Morocco, Portugal, the very north of Spain and Brittany. The oversea bit of the route would pass quite close to the Canaries (which could raise the Spanish airspace issue, I suppose) but it does seem odd that they would be that difficult about a RAF flight (a fellow NATO member, after all) which hadn't originated in, or was going to, Gibraltar.

A quick and dirty google maps estimate suggests that the longer route adds about 300 miles to the flight; not a lot, I guess. I'm still wondering why, though!

I believe the navigation service charges on the longer oceanic route are a lot less than the more direct route so maybe it's more cost effective. I don't know though if the military are exempt from these charges.

Why are the RAF operating to/from Dakar ?

That reminds me of my time working in Jeddah FIR in the late 70s. Every morning there would be an ElAl flight Tel Aviv to Nairobi and it would go down the middle of the Red Sea. The flight would call up Jeddah and it was a circus watching the controllers studiously ignoring them, turning their backs on the controller's desk, noses in the air etc. Hilarious!
Around the same time, there used to be regular USAF SR71 flights down the Red Sea and nobody spoke, either pilot or controller. Kind of "if you don't mention it, it isn't there" but the radar faithfully plotted it's progress.

Stopover on the way to/from the Falklands.

Those bl**dy tourists get everywhere ...

Because of the runway work at Ascension Island I presume ?

Back in time of old and the C-130 Ascension-Stanley airbridge day's I have fond :*memories of hanging around on the ramp in Dakar whilst our bespoke southbound VC-10 was refuelled en-route to Ascension, so the RAF using Dakar isn't new.

Cape Verde (which is the usual stop off point during the runway works in ASI) has a restriction on flights due to Covid-19, so the SAA is operating via Dakar until that restriction is lifted.

Whether or not Musket 90's suggestion on the Dakar flights is correct (and it sounds perfectly reasonable to me) it certainly does appear that Spain continues to demonstrate antipathy to RAF flights to Gibraltar. There's currently an A400M (ZM407 if you want to take a look on FR) which left Karup in Denmark earlier this afternoon, flew across the Netherlands, Belgium and France before crossing the coast just east of Montpellier and flying to a point roughly halfway between Sardinia & Menorca and then making a sharp turn to the west (thus avoiding the Barcelona FIR) and is currently orbiting east of Gibraltar.

Slightly OT, but.....
What's TARTN49 up to tonight? RAF flight from Brize Norton, over the North Sea, a couple of ovals, then up to Scotland and similar at the moment.

Air to air refueling - there's a couple of Cobham Falcon 20s over the North Sea as well so presumably there are some Typhoons at play...

Ah thanks.... looks like it's heading home at the moment