I was reading an article in Aerokurier about changes to airspace at several german airports; they have recognised that modern airliners have sufficient performance not to need huge swathes of airspace lower down in the departure sectors hence the sectors at each end of the airport will be declared D(HX) or C(HX) and will be activated or deactivated depending upon the runway in use. This will be announced on the ATIS – in the case of Berlin-Brandenburg, they will have a separate VFR-ATIS frequency. When in the deactivated airspace, all aircraft will be required to keep a listening watch in case the runway direction is changed, at which point, a 10 minute warning will be issued.
Here is a link giving the details (unfortunately in German) but it should be interesting to see how this is received and whether infringements will rise because of this. Additionally, parts of the TMZ have been declared HX allowing non transponder aircraft to fly closer. I’m happy to see a rollback of airspace rather than more and more airspace grabs….
Important to notice: The activation of such an (HX) segment will also be broadcasted on the local FIS frequency. Therefore if you are on the FIS frequency (which is a good idea in these areas anyways) you do not risk to miss an activation.
I’m not so sure what to think of this. On one side, it’s good that GA becomes a little bit more ‘free’ airspace, on the other side: One still need to take care of those activations etc. It makes stuff not more uniform. Personally, I prefer just a class D airspace as long as ATC is willing to let VFR-traffic cross easily. It works also perfect in countries like France, Denmark or Poland, where there are big class C or D TMA’s but with transits offered almost automatically, so why not in Germany?
Frans wrote:
so why not in Germany?
One of the reasons might be that at least compared to France and Denmark (have a look at the Mega-Airport Billund!) Germany is already much more restrictive in assigning D and C airspace in the first place. Imho although sometimes it is a nice shortcut, there is no region in Germany where there is actually a need to transit through C/D.
In addition at least in my experience if we compare apples to apples (so Frankfurt and Munich to CDG and regional airports in France to Leipzig or Hannover) there is no relevant difference in getting transit clearance between Germany and Fance.
Malibuflyer wrote:
Imho although sometimes it is a nice shortcut, there is no region in Germany where there is actually a need to transit through C/D.If you prefer to fly low VFR, I agree, but otherwise, Düsseldorf/Köln, Stuttgart, Hamburg etc. do have quite big TMA’s for example. On some longer cross-country flights trough Germany, I flew in FL110 to prevent all this asking. Just one clearance for general class C and you’re “in the system”. I’ve never been kicked out once inside class C, but to obtain a clearance for every single TMA is not so easy. Radar sends you back to FIS as soon as you leave CAS and the asking starts again for the next TMA. If the FISO is not so motivated or too busy, he/she might just tell you “crossing not possible”. Unfortunately, the DFS still doesn’t want to publish their Radar-frequencies for each TMA on the charts. Bypassing Langen Info would already greatly help.
