I see we have yet another restricted airspace at the request of the police for this summit. How is such an idiotic (in my view) procedure supposed to stop a determined terrorist act? Even in a small 2 seater it would be there before any military aircraft could intercept. Am I missing something or are we just going to have to go along with the idiots who want this. Now I have to say it is unlikely to affect me for such a short duration BUT it is becoming the norm and must not be allowed to proliferate. Please explain where I am wrong if such is the case.
Can you details about the RA (T) you mention?
The restriction will last from 3 to 5 September 2014 and will cover a broad area from Bristol in the east, to Bridgend in the west, and from Crickhowell in the north, to the Somerset coast in the south. The restricted area will extend from surface up to flight level 105 (around 10,000ft).
The temporary airspace restriction, or RA, is being established at the request of Gwent Police and South Wales Police as part of the overall security arrangements for the Summit, which is expected to be attended by a number of heads of state and senior ministers.
Aircraft entering the restricted area without authorisation will be subject to interception by police or military.
Copied from the Pilot magazine email.
Reading the AIC (link above) just emphasises what I was saying about proliferation. Please have a read and you will see what I mean. Some are properly justified but many are just plain stupid.
When we had the dreadful Olympic TRAs here in the UK, 2012
lots of people said it is stupid because to fly in the zone you just had to file a flight plan, and they would never intercept you in time if you filed a moderately intelligent route (taking you close to one of the targets) and made a rapid dash for it at low level.
I think “they” weren’t quite that stupid and there was some sort of layered defence system, but it wasn’t obvious how it would ever be 100%. I think they were looking for certain types of threats, and I guess most of the relevant ones would have been carried out by stupid people. The key risk would have been a suicide attack and it is really hard to recruit somebody with more than half a brain for one of those. 9/11 was a real exception and I think it’s a mistake to think that it would be easy to duplicate it. But the powers to be continue to think that way.
There is always a massive amount of job creation. A year or so ago I went to a presentation in London where some quite pompous (although perhaps not pompous if you are in that line of work) RAF chief was astonishingly self-congratulating about how the whole Olympic thing was managed, and you will always get this in peacetime when the armed forces have by definition not much to do except to justify their existence.
These RAs are the norm now. I wonder why we express surprise when they are notified. Also don’t underestimate how quickly a Typhoon over Mach 1 can intecept an aircraft that intrudes.
We have just finished with the Commonwealth Games, restricted areas. One had to call up, give oodles of information, get a specific squak code, they would file your plan.
I flew three times, and each time it was a shambles. First, they did not file the plan, therefore when I called up, I had to go through it again with ground, who then had to fit me in, with the others that they had filed a plan for.
Second time, they filed the plan, but on return, ATC, could not find the return code. I, after about five minutes of hold, rather tersely gave them the code. Another five minutes passed, then they ‘found it’. Now during that 8 minutes of hold, we could have done anything……
Third, the wrong code was allocated. On each occasion, it was evident that the controllers were under some pressure, and it was evident in their voices, and commands. I got the impression that NATS, were not given additional resource, and had to cope with the additional workload, with standard staffing. This obviously grated.
We also had a 24 hour sentinal, droning in the overhead hold, 24/7, for two weeks. Lot of fuel!!!!!!!!!!On the subject, has anyone else noted the massive expansion of military and restricted ares around our coastlines. I was astonished when I went to plan a well traveled route, only to find that it was nigh on impossible to get through.
It’s not just here! I flew to a conference in LA a few months back (from Az, not UK!) and after parking at Santa Monica and reaching my hotel, had a note pushed thro’ my door next morning saying that the President (yup, that one) was coming to town – to the hotel I was in, in fact. Only then did I check the TRA’s on Foreflight, which had been clear on my arrival, to find a whopping great no-fly zone centred right over the airport. Fortunately the timespan ended before my planned departure, but it did totally scupper a planned side trip to Catalina Island for which I’d carried lifejackets all the way from UK.
I suspect it’s the very same President who is the cause of our little inconvenience in Cardiff next month.
Can we persuade them to have these summits on a cruise ship somewhere in the mid-Atlantic rather than putting massive swathes of our airspace out of action?
