Aveling wrote:
Names of stations witheld, not to protect the innocent, but to protect the potential vendetta victim.Hence no MOR on this
As others have said, I don’t know why you wouldn’t report this. Do you honestly believe ATC will be as friendly if you infringe their airspace even by as much as 100 feet? I’ve had enough of the attitude of some airspace “owners” – Bristol Hypergalactic Airport springs to mind – banning anything through their airspace with that fabled phrase of “remain OCAS due to controller workload”. The airspace belongs to all users, controlled airspace is not restricted or prohibited and should be treated as such. The only way we will get things to change is to report every such occurrence.
Ibra wrote:
Cardiff/Bristol put Notams that required FPL for VFR transits (which did not help the situation given that the average Brit PPL never filed an FPL and the few who filed them in SkyDemon did not have much understanding of how they are distributed in UK: only London/Scottish FIS gets them, the rest of en-route ATSU needs to be add manually)
I don’t understand what that’s supposed to bring. Let’s say I want to fly EGBJ – EGTU, file a VFR flight plan indicating a crossing directly overhead routing Clifton Suspension Bridge VRP & Cheddar Reservoir VRP at 3500 feet, will Bristol even get the flight plan? I’ve heard that VFR flight plans go from destination to departure aerodromes but not to units in between.
Or is this just another way of Bristol shoving two fingers up to GA to get rid of it from their area of responsibility? You didn’t file a flight plan so you can’t come in here…..
No operational reasons as far as I am aware? I doubt VFR FPL (assuming distributed to the right units) does anything useful when it come to offering VFR zone transit in the typical UK CTR but maybe I am missing some tricks? but it’s like PPR to empty grass strips, some think they help planning arrivals & departures slots, I mean like LHR or JFK, no s**** Sherlock !
Ibra wrote:
No operational reasons as far as I am aware? I doubt VFR FPL (assuming distributed to the right units) does anything useful when it come to offering VFR zone transit in the typical UK CTR but maybe I am missing some tricks? but it’s like PPR to empty grass strips, some think they help planning arrivals & departures slots, I mean like LHR or JFK, no s**** Sherlock !
@ibra, I think that the PPR process just makes all the things cheaper, as for bigger places ATC will give you orders to do something while A/G or AFIS cannot.
It means that you can use cheaper process (A/G+AFIS vs ATSO) to achieve the same results, plus it helps to co-habit with the airfield neighbours (to a degree!).
While for FPL for VFR in the UK I don’t see much point.
In some other coutry if might help you getting Flight Following while you fly A to B, but in the UK you cannot get that continuous service anyway…
Same story for IFR OCAS – if it was continuous service you could’ve asked for a deconfliction service, and off you go, but for the present situation?
Hm.
I just REALLY hope that people that are refused zone transfers would file MORs every time.
Indeed, any refusal one should follow up with phone call to the unit, MOR, CHIRP and FCS, more paperwork for ATC means refusing VFR transit with no operational grounds is a pain not worth the hassle…
On FPL, anything that get sent to those named CTR for VFR/IFR transits is assumed to be lost forever, or pretended to be lost for any practical purpose, asking for one to be filed does not help much other than adding extra bureaucracy
Then the easy way for everybody is to ask for VFR transit and be given one if traffic flow allows it
I have noticed recently that Farnborough is very helpful and professional to VFR, even while juggling jet traffic.
I admit that I am very confused by VFR transits in the UK.
Under EASA it mught be a fudge brought about by rules made by committee but they do distinguish between 1) an FPL whether that is filed before flight or an AFIL FPL filed in the air a minimum of 10 minutes before the point at which you want it to commence and 2) a “flight plan” which you communicate in the air when requesting a service such as permission to enter or transit CAS.
Surely when you call say Bristol for transit, you call them up, they say pass your message, you then repeat your registration, say aircraft type, pob, altitude, request etc.
Then the answer to the question "have you filed a flight plan? is “yes I just filed one” as laid out in both EASA (which I suppose means nothing in the UK now) and ICAO Annexe 2.
This reminds me of a conversation I overheard whilst listening in to Birmingham not too long ago. It as a good VFR day, there wasn’t a great deal of traffic on the radio and the radio was generally fairly quiet. A helicopter called up for a basic service and a zone transit if it was possible. He was told there were a couple of aircraft to be inbound so no crossing and to remain outside.
Sometime later he asked again if it was possible to transit if the traffic was out of the way. He was refused yet again.
He tried a last time then got a pretty aggressive response saying that it was a busy airfield, busy workload and not to ask again for a crossing.
Had it been me receiving that on the radio I absolutely would have reported it.
I’m always a little bit cautious about ragging on the controller for having no traffic because sometimes they can be working on multiple frequencies. I’d still report it though.
I did have one controller in the US (at an airport, while departing) come back very aggressively “I’m on two other frequencies, can’t you hear I’m talking to other aircraft?” after making a second call a full 1 minute after the first and getting no response. Unfortunately, in an aircraft with a single radio (and no dual watch), no I can’t tell, unless the controller simultaneously transmits on all the frequencies he’s on (which some places do, but it seems not all places).
I did wonder about that, and if perhaps there was some reason they wouldn’t say. Simply saying politely that he was working other frequencies and too busy to accommodate a transit would have to me seemed far better than what I overheard.
I wondered if there’s some negative impact on ATC admitting they can’t manage the airspace properly to allow transits.
