I am sad to report that today I have had to raise a formal complaint with SARG about City Zone not providing VFR access.
City Airport was closed and therefore there was no IFR traffic to protect. There was not a great deal of VFR traffic in the zone, but even if there had been, NATS have no duty to separate VFR traffic, so there was no reason to deny access. The controller gave traffic density as a reason, but the radar recordings will show that to be nonsense. It was really a bureaucratic thing about their saying that I should have precleared the flight with them.
When I told the controller that there would be a complaint, he offered a South to North transit, but then accused me of penetrating EGR157, which was simply untrue as I was at 1400’ QNH. That was clearly just trying to “get back at me” and massively unprofessional.
This is a great shame after 20 years of excellent service from Thames and Heathrow.
This adds fuel to the need to resist increased controlled airspace.
Who or what is SARG? And what is the exact authority of “City Zone” ? Whilst admitting I have never studied the subject ad fundum , it often seems to me that the prime source of confusion in the UK is the lack of a 1:1 relation between airspace and authority. IOW the rule I observe in most places is that airspace is chopped up into well-defined bits, each having an ICAO class between A and G, and each having ONE service operating it – offering information for the uncontrolled bits and offering control for the controlled ones. But this 1:1 relation seems to be absent in at least part of the UK airspace, seeing the recurring questions like “whom should I best contact when flying from here to there at such an altitude”.
Round here, if an aerodrome is not active, its associated airspace automatically becomes inactive in parallel, and the associated frequency/service becomes unavailable/unauthorative (sp?) So that, with City Airport closed as you report, I wouldn’t even have called them..? What are they doing there anyway, controlling a bit of airspace that isn’t active and hence not controlled?
Who or what is SARG? And what is the exact authority of “City Zone” ?
I asked myself the same two questions 
In German, a “Sarg” is a coffin, but this one is probably something different.
Safety and Airspace Regulation Group (SARG) is the part of the CAA responsible for regulating airspace (among much else.)
There is no confusion about who controls London City Zone. It is contracted to National Air Traffic Service (NATS), who control all the airspace around London airports. There is also no confusion about the fact that it is Class D, and should be operated as such.
No, confusion is not the issue here, it is an airspace control service which is overstepping its authority. That’s the really nice thing about the UK: we can fight back and have the backing of our CAA to do so.
Oh, I missed the bit about the zone being open when the airport is closed. It was until 9/11. After 9/11 it became permanent Class D. But it’s still only Class D.
Not exactly relevant but I sympathise with this. Especially given the reason.
In an area I used to fly VFR around a lot, a non NATS airport had a horrible variance of access depending on the controller on at the time. It was class D but DID have IFR traffic most of the time, and annoyingly one or two of the controllers would shut the airspace to VFR traffic if they had just one VFR traffic in the zone, due to density. There were another couple of controllers who allowed as many as possible in, including formations and non transponder traffic.
I believe the local flying club did raise this matter but it’s hard to argue anything if the controllers feel that its a safety issue. You could suggest that they may lack competency then but I don’t think it’s necessarily the case, and also hard to say much about as long as they pass their own recurrence stuff (of which I am not familiar).
To bring this onto a slightly wider scale… it is my observation that, gererally speaking, in Europe, only the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland really have the “habit” of denying VFR aircraft access to class D and class C TMAs/CTRs.
Other countries don’t really have this. In the Scandinavian countries, VFR and access to these airspaces is a non-event, seamless and almost second nature. This is also true for many eastern European countries. But even in countries like France, Belgium and Italy, it seems to be a different mindset of controllers. ICAO defines that VFR can operate in C and D (subject to clearance), so when a pilot calls in beforehand and makes a comprehensible routing request, the controllers (rightly) feel almost “obliged” to issue a clearance, unless very pressing reasons dictate otherwise. “Lots of traffic” is not per se a sufficient argument to outright deny a clearance to enter.
That’s really the way it should be, not that, “well, I flightplan to go around that CTR, but anyway, I’ll just give it a try, call in and maybe, if I’m lucky, get a shortcut”.
In the USA if a controller sees you skirting round Class C they might actually offer you a clearance un prompted, even in rush hour.
Recently this was offered to overfly Chicago Midway en route to Du Page.
It was really a bureaucratic thing about their saying that I should have precleared the flight with them
I would agree.
City Airport was closed and therefore there was no IFR traffic to protect.
I wouldn’t know, but could there have been IFR transit traffic at the time? Or significant amounts of VFR traffic where a controller may feel they would be too busy to provide any meaningful traffic information that would actually assist in helping prevent collisions?
there was not a great deal of VFR traffic in the zone,
Could they have been on another frequency? I wouldn’t know again.
This adds fuel to the need to resist increased controlled airspace.
I think there is a huge element of distrust, in the UK, between GA pilots and controllers, which is probably not helped by the airports that have established controlled airspace also have over-the-top pricing/handling that has essentially kicked out a significant number of GA flights.
That said I cannot support the notion of pre-clearing over the telephone or PPR either.
Have you tried talking to the controller over the phone after the flight to get more of an explanation?
There are some telephone numbers in the AIP.
There has been a lot of discussion since then, and all is now resolved. Feathers were ruffled, lessons learned all round and I hope that things are now on an even keel.
