Questions and answers with ATC

Probably under their inability to provide procedural service.

And why is that required?

Simple. In Class G and F, anyone can fly their “operator specific / personal / ad-hoc” “procedures” and descend below MSA as necessary for landing (if under part NCO, that is).

Which, @Timothy, is probably the point you want to make.

But for that you need to leave Class E airspace first. And the band of airspace below the MRVA and down to the lower level of Class E airspace (1,000ft AGL in the Czech republic) requires an IFR clearance to IFR in.

Since ATC does not provide a clearance, this effectively “IFR prohibited” airspace. They cannot offer a radar service below the MRVA (by definition), so to provide a clearance they would have to offer “procedural separation” (which could be ultra-easy, for example, they could simply only permit one aircraft in that band per sector; that would do the trick).

Until somebody successfully challenges the existence of this “IFR prohibited” airspace, either by getting it reclassified to class G below the MRVA, or by forcing ATC to provide a service, pilots will do what they have always done – lie and penetrate this band “VFR”.

Cobalt wrote:

Since ATC does not provide a clearance, this effectively “IFR prohibited” airspace. They cannot offer a radar service below the MRVA (by definition), so to provide a clearance they would have to offer “procedural separation” (which could be ultra-easy, for example, they could simply only permit one aircraft in that band per sector; that would do the trick).

It is actually worse than that. According to PANS-ATM (ICAO doc. 4444), ATC is not allowed to clear you below the MRVA unless you are on a published route.

I’ve been bit by this at my home (uncontrolled) airfield. There is radar coverage essentially to ground level and the MRVA is 1500 ft. Even though I can define my own route to the airfield with a MSA (according to enroute critera) of less than 1300 ft, ATC refuses to clear me lower than 1500 as my own route is not a published one…

There are lots of NO CODE. According to AIP Norway

IFR: code 2000
VFR: code 7000
Gliders: code 7100
Unmanned aircraft: code 7200
Helicopter ambulance flights: code 5200
Helicopter police service: code 5300

Cobalt wrote:

lie

The law of unintended consequence

In Croatia 2000 is VFR.

I have never heard of this 2000 code thing. Not in the PPL nor in the CBIR syllabus.
Airborne_Again wrote:

Sweden. 2000: Not mentioned

At ELLX, since installation of ground radar, we are supposed to:

• set 2000 before shutdown, after blocks on
• keep 2000 until we get another code with our clearance, and in particular between startup and clearance, and when taxiing without a clearance (such as on the aprons). The latter, typically for light GA is taxiing from the hangar to the fuel pump.

In practice, VFR traffic just keeps 7000.