Peter wrote:
Who is imposing that one every 2hrs limitation?
This is a slightly difficult question to answer, as the CAA won’t say that they are applying the limitation, but the airfield in question certainly doesn’t want it.
The conversation will have gone something like this:
“We need to see evidence that you have mitigated the risk of MAC on the procedure…no, that’s not sufficient…um, still no…getting warm, but no banana…colder, colder, warmer….limiting approaches to six a day? What a brilliant idea, wish we’d thought of that!”
Thus the CAA can slope their shoulders and say that it was all the airfield’s idea. Yes, Minister in the flesh.
It’s all part of the “resist GNSS approaches at uncontrolled airfields at all costs” campaign that has been run in a small but powerful group in the CAA’s AAA group.
There are a number of mitigations, however.
I loved @Balliol’s comment about going feral. It describes the situation to a T. The CAA are losing all credibility on this subject. It is a matter of Policing by Consent, and GA can no longer consent.
I wrote the the Head of AAA and the Head of GA recently on this very subject and included the line:
Because the CAA is seen as not making sensible decisions regarding GNSS, it creates an atmosphere of “normalisation of non-compliance”. (“If the CAA is going to be so silly about this, its other rules are probably silly as well and can be safely ignored.”) This is potentially dangerous.
For the avoidance of doubt I don’t advocate going ‘feral’ it is just what can happen if people widely perceive unnecessary restrictions. I have frequently seen this with alcohol bans in certain situations – rather than a ‘two can rule’ which gets pretty well policed and obeyed, a total ban just drives it all underground and people end up being stupid and drinking dodgy stuff rather than a controlled supply.
I have not done it for a couple of years, but one used to be able to get practice approaches (to a low approach and go around) at Farnborough relatively easily.
I believe it was limited to Mon-Fri 9-5 and had something to do with who was technically paying for the controllers during those hours. I must have done about a dozen, some with an instructor and some without, and was never refused although was often asked to do an SRA/PAR/whatever as a quid pro quo.
One could not book a slot nor get a firm yes on the phone beforehand, but if you did phone you usually got a “should be ok” or “probably not this morning” sort of response.
I can speculate how likely this is to be possible once they have their CAS….
Timothy wrote:
Firstly, as Peter says, unless there is IFR within the ATZ ({2nm – 500m} @ 318’/nm suggests a cloudbase of 550’), there is absolutely no way to stop a training flight announcing s straight in approach at, say 6nm
There is also nothing (except prudence) to stop any aircraft from flying the procedure as far as the edge of the ATZ and then turning away at the last second. Assuming a 3 degree glideslope and a 2nm radius ATZ they will have flown down to almost 600 feet, which perhaps for an IR(R) rated pilot may be as low as they want to go anyway. They may or may not choose to talk to the FISO.
If one can’t get a slot because they are limited to six a day then instances of the above may increase, and thus the risk of a MAC which the CAA thinks has been mitigated has actually been increased, but it’s ok because no-one’s breaking any rules….. ;-)
Graham wrote:
thus the risk of a MAC which the CAA thinks has been mitigated has actually been increased, but it’s ok because no-one’s breaking any rules
Quite. There are a number of ways in which CAA rules and recommendations increase risk, too many to list, but ranging from not accepting US STCs, to using ADF in place of GNSS, to how navigation is taught, to how people are supposed to arrive at VFR airfields in poor vis and so on. I bang on at them and they smile and nod but little happens. The problem is that rather few regulators have relevant experience, most particularly of GA IFR.
My hope rests in Grant Shapps. Someone who actually knows his onions.
Maybe this helps someone looking for a weekday training field in northern Germany!
Another suggestion for those in the north of Germany, also for weekends, is Sønderborg EKSB, just across the border.
They have ILS, RNAV, and for those that wish, NDB approaches. Plus very little traffic and zero restrictions on training instrument approaches. I don‘t even think they charge for low approaches. Landings are 15€.
Just went there on Saturday, and while this was not really a training flight, but rather a short afternoon visit to Sønderborg city, it was good to do two approaches (one there and one back home) for currency.
Skrydstrup, very close by, is also great for approach training, but is PPR.
Danish ATC is the most friendly you can find.
I recently renewed my IMCR rating after letting it lapse 5 years ago, and yesterday flew my first solo flight since passing the renewal. I wanted to maintain currency, so I thought I would do a short flight from Gloucester to Cardiff, landing at Cardiff using an RNP approach. I phoned Cardiff ATC to request PPR, “no problem” they said, then I mentioned I was planning to fly an approach to land. “We are pre-booked all day I’m afraid” was their response (this was 9.30am). So I cancelled PPR and made alternative plans. Cardiff has very little commercial traffic nowadays, so I was surprised to get that response.
I’ve been thinking about this afterwards and have been wondering whether this is another UK quirk and how other people deal with this kind of restriction. If I hadn’t mentioned the desire to do an approach, and then just flown there, and on initial contact with Cardiff Approach declared myself IFR and requested the approach, would I have been likely to get it?
Is this an airport-specific thing, or is it common across all UK airports?
Do people plan their IFR trips in advance and phone the airport up the day/week before and ‘book’ an IFR approach? If you are being spontaneous and decide to go somewhere on the day, how do you manage?
As it happened, I flew to Bembridge (IFR in the cruise, then landed visually), had a nice lunch there before flying back IFR to Gloucester. I didn’t book an approach with Gloucester when booking-in, I simply requested it on initial contact and was granted it straight away. Not sure if that was just luck or the normal way.
Would love to hear thoughts from fellow UK members.
You need to ‘book ILS’ if you are doing “ATO IFR” (BSRFI under VFR) or simply don’t say it’s for training or practice…it gets more funny when they say no for “IR Airways exam flight” or you get 9am for ILS and 3pm for GPS !
It’s not an issue if you are based in ILS airport but doing IFR training from uncontrolled airports is a lot of hassle to organise approaches
Private flights: I usually PPR for ‘visit’, file IFR, activate, land under IFR 
My experience is that:
- some airports require an IFR approach (as well as landing itself) do be booked via a PPR (or via an IFR flight plan) and would not accept traffic unless you prebooked
- some airports require an IFR practice approach to be booked and they have a special booking system for that and separate slots, while if you say that you are going to fly in, then they just say “OK”, and then it does not matter if it is VFR or IFR (for example, EGMC/Southend).
One problem is that schools (FTOs) book an hour at a time, thereby excluding the approach for that time (unless the inbound is a “real” flight).
And then often they don’t turn up until late.
IMHO the “power balance” is set up badly. An FTO wanting to block a whole hour should pay 1/24th (or other pro rata if the airport is not H24) of the total tower cost 
I have better luck turning up without booking. Sometimes I get refused, occassionally accompanied by some airborne FTO instructor making a pompous idiotic remark on the radio talking to me like I was a 5 year old (“next time you want ice cream you need to book it”) But that’s OK; I can come back a week later. Or sometimes they say they will be free in 30 mins, which is fine.
Posts moved into a very similar existing thread.
