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ATC adverse weather avoidance assistance

Timothy wrote:

For example, Germany is always willing to help, and often offers it proactively,

We flew home from AERO Friedrichshafen VFR in at times marginal weather. FIS clearly had access to weather info as they were warning us about rain showers and urging us (several times) to “maintain VMC”…

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

I can always count on ATC help in Croatia and Bosnia but as @Peter wrote “it’s on my patch”. On few occasions I got proactively “hang on it’s just few miles more and you’ll be out of it” or “do you want vectors for avoiding it?”.

LDZA LDVA, Croatia

Airborne_Again wrote:

We flew home from AERO Friedrichshafen VFR in at times marginal weather. FIS clearly had access to weather info as they were warning us about rain showers and urging us (several times) to “maintain VMC”…

In Germany FIS are the same radar controllers for IFR.

EGTK Oxford

@JasonC – German FIS is provided by a separate team, not the radar controllers.

LSZF Birrfeld, LFSB Basel-Mulhouse, Switzerland

In Sweden FIS is provided by the ATC radar controllers…

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

does ATC have weather addons on their radars from specialized weather stations (e.g. met rainfall radars) or just the primary LRR/SRR returns? the latter (if it shows up) is far more aggressive than we think?

Last Edited by Ibra at 22 Apr 22:15
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

In the UK, FIS has no formal access to radar (though they can “sort of” see one.)

One of the several reasons why our service provision outside controlled airspace is so fragmented and, compared to the rest of the civilised world, shameful.

EGKB Biggin Hill

It’s about money, and blind adherence to ideology on stuff like duty of care.

The NATS line (posted by variously somewhat bitter employees on UK sites, under pseudonyms because the highly politicised NATS would fire anybody doing it, and repeated in meetings and presentations) is that most of GA pays no route charges, and since they are required to operate the “user pays” principle…

The London Info FIS people are FISOs because this is cheaper than an ATCO, and this means they are not allowed to “see” a radar screen. Well, in an attempt to keep a lid on the 1000+ CAS busts every year (of which ~300 are serious) they do have screens but they are not allowed to say anything on the radio which reveals this. So even if they see you busting CAS and heading for a load of CAA enforcement, they are not allowed to tell you but they instead tell you to call up e.g. Farnborough or some unit which is allowed to see “official radar” and that unit tells you to get out of there. Similarly they are not allowed to tell you that you are about to [probably] hit another plane. It’s a charade…

So expecting them to, wow, gosh, what next, see weather and, wait for this, tell somebody on the radio about it, is like the UK sending a man to the moon. They would need to do a joint venture with Warren Buffett and guarantee him serialisation rights at £10 per kWh for the next 100 years

I think the UK is a great country, which is one of the reasons I live here, but the blind obedience of stupid procedures (which I also see in my business, where H&S vermin / compliance spongers / bottom feeders make more than most), and some stupid ideology, is really frustrating.

But that is the way of “modern Europe”, with only the countries which have traditionally taken a “flexible view of rules” being the only deviants. There are lots of issues with offering weather data (liability / duty of care and all that crap) so only the pragmatic ones will do it.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

The strangest thing happened to me yesterday coming back from Losinj, I actually go ADSB weather displayed on the IDF440 around this area :

getting closer to LFLB – I got the message, weather data stale, and then TAF/METAR stale, which makes me think I did really pick up on something, it refreshed 3 times. And displayed both radar as well as METAR information. Pretty consistent with what I was getting from the ADL Images – only for much further out. Does anyone have any idea who is running a test?

LFHN - Bellegarde - Vouvray France

Garmin were running a site at AERO Friedrichshafen. Might it have been that?

EGKB Biggin Hill
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