What does radar service cancelled actually mean? Would it for instance be illegal to continue as per flight plan and could they legally do anything about it? After all they have not canceĺled IFR nor can they under ICAO flight rules. But we are talking UK here.
Can I ask why you flew on Z-FPL on LFAT-EGKB why not I-FPL? as the latter is easy to address…
I would just file I-FPL LFAT-EGKB via DET and ask Lille for FL80 and direct Detling, then going to Biggin you should get handed to Thames/Heathrow Radar at Detling who will vector before handover to Biggin, if it does not work, ask handover to cloudbreak at Southend, if it does not work ask to leave controlled airspace by descent at DET (if you look at the map there is no way you can go to Biggin without leaving controlled airspace)
You can’t refuse “radar service terminated” as you are the one asking to leave controlled airspace at some point (LTMA ATC don’t do FIS OCAS), the question is just how far and how predictable you can go before getting dumped out of airspace, but you can fly in clouds not talking to anyone until you reach Biggin ATZ and fly ILS or visual
(UK: you can fly in clouds bellow airspace base & min vectoring altitude, on your own without clearance or having to cancel, but your clearance (radar service) is limited to airspace boundary)
I also wondered about why not an I FPL when you were planning to shoot the ILS at Biggin.
we were told by UK ATC that radar services were terminated
Who was “UK ATC”?
Lille normally hands you over to London INFO 124.60 which has (officially) no radar. To get a handover to London CONTROL you need to be high enough; it used to be FL120 (and only Paris was able to do that handover) but has come down over time and may be as low as FL080 now.
If it was London Control they will drop you at some point because they expect you to be landing, especially if you filed at some level “below their top secret ‘minimum interesting’ level” which is something fully in CAS, like FL080+.
If it was anybody else, they are an ad-hoc service anyway (e.g. Farnborough) and will drop you anytime; they usually cannot offer you a CAS clearance anyway except their own bit.
There is an interesting new complication with the Farnborough Class E which you can bust if IFR but not if VFR, but you can change IFR-VFR without radio contact 
What does radar service cancelled actually mean?
If London Control it means they dropped out and you have to remain OCAS (stay in Class G, or E if still “VFR”). You won’t get back in, either, unless you follow another protracted procedure. They would argue they are just implementing what is obvious anyway: you are landing at Biggin Hill so have to descend anyway.
why not an I FPL when you were planning to shoot the ILS at Biggin.
Being IFR in the UK means nothing. You can depart IFR from say Shoreham and as far as privileges or clearances goes, you are just another VFR flight.
An “I” FP would have been slightly better because Biggin is more likely to expect you to expect to be asking for an IAP (BTW they use Thames Radar for vectoring etc so you get transferred to them ASAP; actually you may call them initially… I don’t remember).
So the UK goes against all ICAO annexes when it comes to a normal IFR flight?
Having filed an I FPL I would expect to fly my FPL (which will have been validated on autorouter by Eurocontrol) all the way to the IAF for Biggin Hill and unless there are other specific reasons, I would expect Biggin approach or whoever is responsible for Biggin Approach to approve/clear me for the approach and finally for Biggin to clear me for the landing.
The fact that one or other of the ATS services in the UK can no longer provide a radar service does not change that and says much more about the lack of a proper joined up ATS in the UK than about anything else.
If what they are actually saying is that we are cancelling your IFR when they say “radar service cancelled” then that is going totally against the norms and standard operating procedures set out in the ICAO annexes.
If what they actually are saying is “radar service terminated” then that is a different thing and means they will no longer be watching you (for whatever reason)and therefore can not give you guidance or information on such things as traffic.
Why does the UK need to make things so much more complicated, especially for overseas visitors?
“ Being IFR in the UK means nothing. You can depart IFR from say Shoreham and as far as privileges or clearances goes, you are just another VFR flight.
An “I” FP would have been slightly better because Biggin is more likely to expect you to expect to be asking for an IAP (BTW they use Thames Radar for vectoring etc so you get transferred to them ASAP; actually you may call them initially… I don’t remember).”
If Biggin gets I-FPL, you have PPR (without phone call ) and you get Handover to Thames (or just call them yourself), then you can fly a straight-in ILS like any “well respected IFR flight”…
Of course it’s not your IFR clearance in LTMA, but talking to Thames/Heathrow radar OCAS does the job with respect to in/out of LTMA, from Shoreham you are pretty much treated like VFR as they are not a secondary radar unit
I think that’s a confused description.
Firstly, you can divert to Biggin, or file a FP, and they will accept you. I’ve done that a number of times; Biggin is the standard diversion for Shoreham if you want a taxi ride below 3 digits to collect your car from Shoreham. Biggin is also properly run and is basically open as published.
I don’t know whether Biggin will refuse inbounds without a PN, but it’s not an issue because a phone call is easy, and anybody else is diverting there…
Thames have CAS clearance authority over a piece of LTMA east of London. Whether they are more likely than London Control to let you in to Class A ad-hoc I don’t know but very much doubt it.
But this is digressing. Gallois is right to question these bizzare practices but, as posted many times, they are the result of UK ATC funding politics, NATS cost recovery, 99% of GA not paying enroute charges, etc. France solves this using a “socialist” approach which works rather well for ATC services, and most countries do the same because it is so obvious that a privatised ATC just collapses the service. If you get into one of the GA groups on FB and start digging into this, you get instantly beaten up by a load of NATS people (in total contravention of their company social media policy, but that policy is suspended if beating up someone questioning NATS 
). I sometimes pop into these groups (to promote EuroGA of course; those groups have near-zero informational value ) I then block anyone kicking my head in, and so far I have blocked ~50 people from “that department”. These guys simply cannot see anything wrong, and regard any questioning of it as an attack on the ATC profession as a whole (always a productive tactic to personalise a debate which you don’t like ) which of course it isnt. Engagement on this is worthless. Computer Says NO.
As posted before, I don’t think the CAA “busts man” busts any foreign pilots in these situations – the foreign CAA would just laugh at the UK way of dropping an IFR clearance, especially silently. I have an illicit source for the MOR reports and don’t recall seeing anyone “foreign” getting MORd – or much more likely the MOR is filed (ATC are required to MOR 100%) and is suppressed before publication to avoid embarrassment.
The bollom line in all this is that UK regulars learn to game the system, and it works for them ok, but that is not how it should be. But then Europe is full of dodgy ATC practices; just watch some of the many flying videos I have published and listen to the total crap I’ve had there, outside the UK. A lot of stuff goes on because the locals know how to game their system. I am told Germany never has IMC between SFC and the MVA, for example, which is an astonishing meteorological phenomenon. And of course few want to criticise their own country, on EuroGA Only the Brits, and a few others, do that.
On the plus side, I’ve seen signs of things improving. The other week I flew to the Scilly Isles again, with my new-PPL son, as a “navex” for him, and we got very good service all the way, with transits. This was a Saturday. Even Solent were really nice and helpful !!
BTW it would help readability of people learn how to quote text from another post. It is all under Posting Tips and is very simple. Look at the bq method for example. I just don’t have the time to keep fixing it up.
Well the good news is there is now an official ’’independent’’ body for complaints against the UK CAA
https://www.pilotweb.aero/news/independent-body-for-caa-appeals-announced-8295330
Given what a mess the UK ATC (mainly London to be fair) is this could probably not come one second too soon.
gildnn wrote:
This is an old thread but since I was confronted with that UK ATC problem recently I thought I could ask how fellow pilots would deal with it.
We had filed a Z flight plan from Le Touquet to Biggin Hiill. Right after departure we got the IFR clearance from Lille control. Since it was overcast in UK our plan was to stay IFR to destination and fly the ILS approach into Biggin Hill. Just after passing the UK coast line, to our consternation we were told by UK ATC that radar services were terminated and to stay below the control zones around London. We asked confirmation and basically were told they didn’t care what we did as long as we stayed below their radar. Fortunately we could spiral down through a hole to get below the overcast and continued VFR to Biggin Hill at 2700’.
I wonder what our options would have been in real IMC . A very unsatisfying and frustrating experience that I wouldn’t like to repeat.
So basically my question is, can the pilot refuse the unilateral (and rather rude imho) “radar services cancelled” in case of valid reasons e.g. IMC ?
To comment on your post, a couple of questions. Did your Lille clearance include the words ‘’cleared to destination, via …, climb to …, IFR at altitude … etc? If it did the answer to London Control is a simple ’’UNABLE’’. The question on the Z flight plan is a valid one, you can simply file IFR from Le Touquet and expect IFR pick up with Lille Radar. Radar service terminated means exactly nothing in ICAO land. Though London Controllers have a tendency to think they are gods gift to mankind, simply inform them you wish to stay in controlled airspace, you are on a validated IFR flight plan, and will say so. use the term, unfamiliar with the airspace unable VFR. There is this sense of British exceptionalism with UK controllers that really should be taken up with ICAO. My view remains they are actively endangering the lives of pilots in particular that of pilots with less capable aircraft unable to climb up to FL350
I agree with the above suggestion for a foreign pilot but if a UK pilot did it, he would be busted and probably end up in a court prosecution due to poor attitude to regulatory authority.
But hey I might be wrong. It is just something that hasn’t been tested and reported much, because Brits are used to hacking it in cloud at 2300ft (used to be 2400ft until the CAA busts chief started busting people for 100ft into CAS) and foreign pilots who got squeezed like that don’t write about it on EuroGA afterwards One guy I spoke to who tried a variation of this, albeit with some bad (and pointless) attitude to ATC, got his license suspended and then prosecuted, which he lost despite having a top aviation barrister. But it would be a different thing if there was hazardous wx. There have been many anecdotal stories of foreign pilots having insisted on a continued IFR clearance, and received it, but obviously the authorities are not going to publicise this.
London INFO is just FIS with no authority, and London Control is just operating NATS policy which is (broadly speaking) NO service to OCAS light GA traffic (because it pays no route charges). The individual controllers are normally very good and as good as the best in Europe. I say “normally” because there is a certain amount of bad attitude within ATC, in every country.
The famous words “cleared to destination” are meaningless in the UK unless the whole flight is in CAS. But some units use them; the funniest one was when I got this at Scilly Isles EGHE, FL100 to EGKA, mostly in Class G, and with no clearance in reality and with the flight plan discarded about 30nm down the road
It isn’t " British exceptionalism"; it is the result of (a) privatised ATC and (b) a cost recovery policy.
