Peter, there is no doubt you have a point in general. VFR should not be prohibited from entering CAS a priori, as the regulations clearly state that ATC must ensure expedient orderly flight unless safety reasons. This is something that I myself wanted to get clarity on upon getting my PPL and have found no rules which give ATC the power for baseless denials. So you are 100% correct about that.
But if we act as adults for a moment here. What you did on that flight isn’t helping our case. It isn’t training ATC to behave better. It’s doing the opposite.
You were on a sight seeing flight, were you not? I watched your video, and if we are honest you could have amended your route in such a manner where terrain would not have been an issue anymore. Yes, ok, the military activity wasn’t NOTAMed when you checked before flight but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t at all, and even so, certain R airspace specifically says it may be activated short notice and that you should check activity with ATC. So again, if we act as adults for a moment, you will admit that is so. You will further admit that you played dumb with the ATC instead of communicating honestly with honest intentions. Proof of that is your snarky smiley face in your written comment in the video about how fast you intend to descend. And then you began turning without communicating and you again confirmed you are descending as fast as terrain allowed but you weren’t really. Furthermore are we going to argue that he made up the military exercise and that in fact there was no need for you to descend?
If we act as adults and responsible men for a second, there is no doubt what the facts of your flight are. All I’m saying is that by common sense we can deduce that this kind of unprofessional behavior will contribute to this particular controller and perhaps other controllers he works with to be much more wary to accommodate VFR traffic in the future i.e. not helping your case at all.
Please sir, do better, take the high road next time, be respectful and ask for options and communicate honestly and follow their instructions while in CAS.
hazek wrote:
this is how ATC gets apprehensive and standoffish when it comes to granting clearances. Can you explain why you would blatantly ignore complying with what you said you would comply with? They asked you to descend FL130 in 2min and you said you would and then just didn’t and even made a snarky comment on your video about descending slowly with a smiley face. If I were that guy behind the screen responsible for that airspace, what I would learn from the encounter with you is don’t trust VFR GA pilots to follow my instructions and next time give them the middle finger which I know I easily can.Don’t you think that while you complain about ATC abusing their powers it’s actually you who is making it happen.
Apologies for my first post being this but as a fairly new PPL who wishes to have as much freedom in the skies as possible it really upset me to watch your video.
Things are not as simple as they may first seem and ATC is not infallible. I don’t know if you are familiar with Swiss airspace structure?
My understanding is that in the Alps area, airspace below 2000 ft AGL is always class G, even if it is above FL130. (Pages are missing from the Swiss AIP on the EAD (Eurocontrol) site and I’ve tried unsuccessfully to find the Swiss AIP on the BAZL (Swiss CAA) and Skyguide (Swiss national ATS) web sites so I can’t be sure, but from other sources this appears to be the case.) I don’t know the terrain elevation along Peter’s track, but if it was no more than 2000 ft below then his altitude was perfectly appropriate.
IMO, ATC was wrong in issuing a blanket instruction to descend below FL130 given the general terrain altitude in the area. In any case ATC can’t give that kind of instruction in class G.
If I had been in the same situation I would have made explicit to ATC that being below 2000 ft AGL I was in class G, So if I should fault Peter for anything (which I won’t) it would be for not having been more explicit in the communication with Swiss ATC.
I’m well aware of G up to 2000’ AGL airspace yes, but R airspace may supersede any existing airspace when active. This would be noted in the AIP. Now I don’t know his specific case where he was and what the airspace structure was but this is quite moot.
He was speaking with ATC, he was in controlled airspace and he received instructions and instead of communicating honestly and complying and he played coy and didn’t comply. I mean am I really so off base here to be extremely bothered by his actions? Have you seen his video? Was that professional behavior encouraging that controller to be more accommodating to VFR?
hazek wrote:
He was speaking with ATC, he was in controlled airspace
You said you were well aware of G up to 2000’ AGL airspace. Given the terrain altitude, it is most likely that he was in class G. Then you brought up a possible restricted area. Given the Swiss airspace structure where the base of class D is lowered to FL130 when the military is active, I find that quite unlikely. If that was really the case then ATC should have said so.
and he received instructions and instead of communicating honestly and complying and he played coy and didn’t comply.
I think he was clear about what he was doing and there was no comment from ATC. If fact I could not hear that at any point they actually said that he did not follow a clearance.
I mean am I really so off base here to be extremely bothered by his actions? Have you seen his video? Was that professional behavior encouraging that controller to be more accommodating to VFR?
Of course I’ve seen the video. Those who have been around EuroGA for a while will know that I generally advocate working with the system and not against it. But this was a case where it was very likely that in fact ATC was the “unprofessional” party by issuing instructions in class G that would have led Peter to descend into terrain. And as I said, if I had been in the same situation, I would rather forcefully have pointed out that I was flying in class G and would choose whatever altitude I considered safe.
OK, so you are an ATCO and somebody pointed you to a 2 year old video which has been seen by 250 people (I just checked the stats) and which nobody complained about before 
The problem with flying videos is that they are – of necessity – heavily edited, and a lot of context is missing. I might spend a whole day doing that but that is the price paid for a video which is not 7 hours long and which a) cannot be hosted anywhere and b) nobody would watch! That was a ~7hr flight, done in lockdown and planned with extreme care to not go wrong and forcing me to land and be stuck in quarantine for a couple of weeks. You can find more background here and here. It wasn’t some stupid trivial “sightseeing” flight. It was carefully planned via published notams, coordinated with your ATC colleagues all the way down the route, first with French ATC (who initially could not understand somebody would do such a “circular” flight) and asking them to coordinate ahead with Swiss ATC, with careful explanations to Swiss ATC of the plan, which was filed via Eurocontrol and which they obviously accepted there and then on the radio, and then they proceeded to drop me in the s**t with a casual kick-out out of the airspace. Sure, I could have dived down between the peaks, but who would? The instruction came practically at the very end (within minutes) of the relevant part of the flight, and ATC wanted to clear the airspace for the commencement time of some mil flying which was apparently suddenly requested by Swiss mil and which nobody bothered to notam. There was never any hazard; everybody knew where I was, I was on the radio, Mode S (a fair % of Alps VFR traffic is invisible), ATC in CH (and FR) are basically scared of the military and usually won’t coordinate with them, TCAS was clear, this was “deep lockdown” when almost nobody was flying, etc. If I had not put that funny comment on the video which got somebody’s back up, I doubt you would have even noticed.
Anyway this is off topic for CAS where VFR is not allowed, which unless one starts to really stretch the meaning to something completely different.
Perhaps the best reply to ATC would have been “unable due terrain” 
More seriously, I think @Airborne_Again is right that it doesn’t appear Swiss ATC took objection to @Peter’s flight path vs radio exchange. Any ATC professional will say something if he has a concern about the aircraft’s flight path. And also right that anything below 2’000AGL is Class G, so @Peter could have continued in that band without issue. But if one looks at the terrain, only an F-18 can really do that for very long.
Swiss civilian and military ATC is essentially the same, and there is no issue of being scared of the military. South of the line separating the lowland and the Alps, FL130-150 is active when MIL ON, which is M-F 0730-1205, 1315-1705 LT or by NOTAM. I haven’t checked the time of the situation in the video, but that might have played a role. I had a similar experience while doing airwork at over 14’000 near Chur when FIS gave me about 10 minutes notice that the FL130-150 Class C airspace would be activated due to military operations and I would need to get below FL130 by then. No NOTAM or other previous notification. So there may be a tendency on the part of the military to “forget” to issue a NOTAM occasionally, especially during Covid when they might have “assumed” light GA wasn’t in the air anyway. Or perhaps there were operational reasons. Generally, though, they are quite good to give notice in the daily DABS. Given the program @Peter communicated with Swiss ATC coming into Switzerland, they should have better anticipated and at least given him a heads-up sooner. Someone was maybe having a Covid snooze.
I recall saying that to them too
Haha you guys are real funny. I wont argue with you about this, it’s not what I came to this forum for.
But just to share what a newcomer such as myself sees in your comments and actions is that it’s clear you wouldn’t talk to me like an adult.. you’ve now concocted this theory that I’m ATCO which I’m not and are making statements which could be used for defense which I find really cute.. and that’s not just because in the video you mention the point at which you stop editing out time. I went and checked the airspace where you were, you were approaching TRA32, or as the Swiss call it LSR32 which appears got activated. This zone has limits of 2000AGL or FL130 lower and FL150 upper. So yes while over peaks there such as Mönch you would have been in the clear the terrain around there was certainly lower than your alt -2000’ putting you inside the R airspace had you continued in the same direction.
So yea, you behaved extremely unprofessionally and with behavior like that you’re hurting the rest of us. Any reasonable person would say the same.
But this might just be because I learned to fly in Luxembourg, where every flight starts at a controlled airport in a CTR, and most flights continue in our local class D TMA into which we get cleared almost without exception. Frankly I don’t know of any cases in the last 2 years where clearance was denied. And what is apparent is that the controllers don’t care about VFR in the sense that it doesn’t bother them at all since they’re not responsible for it in class D. What they care about is that you’re not in the way and you’re talking to them and they’ll accommodate pretty much any request as long as it doesn’t interfere with traffic that they are in fact responsible for. Speaking to some of them this perception was pretty much confirmed as correct.
But you do you and see where it gets ya. My limited experience so far has been nothing but positive. And I suspect this will continue. Filing a flight plan is important, calling the responsible ARO to check it was distributed to all relevant ATC is also, and then making sure you know the frequency to request clearance on and doing so well in advance using standard phraseology while flying at a reasonable alt in a stable fashion will get you approved through everything but the most congested CAS. But again you do you, but I really wish for the sake of all of us you wouldn’t do what you did in that video ever again.
while flying at a reasonable alt in a stable fashion will get you approved through everything
Let me give a better advice: while flying VFR at FL100-FL120 and refusing to descend will get you approved through every Delta & Charlie in Europe except Alpha
