Egelsbach is a complete joke safety wise. It's the homebase of Netjets Europe with a lot of heavy stuff flying, the Frankfurt TMA limits operations to very low level and the terrain around it is difficult with hills and forests. It's one of the worst places to be VFR in difficult weather.
Creating instrument procedures for Egelsbach is apparently next to impossible because of Frankfurt's 5 runways and the missed approach trajectories. Egelsbach would negatively impact operations in Frankfurt and that's a big no.
The real issue is the IFR in airspace G ban which really is a ban for IFR without ATC radio contact (after all that's the real difference between airspaces G and E, the latter ensures radio contact). Therefore SERA is a very welcome change and I hope that Germany will respect it and allow IFR in airspace G.
Of course the likelihood of very low clouds is much lower in Germany than in the UK so in reality, it is less of a problem than it appears to be. However, the deadly accidents in Egelsbach show how stupid the current regulations are.
A very similar case is Samedan (Sankt Moritz) in Switzerland. VFR only but used by big jets and impossible to create instrument procedures (due to terrain). They "solved" it by banning most airplanes from flying there, only locally trained pilots are allowed.
And, in a G-reg anyway, you can land with a DIY IAP
I assume you mean you can descend on any path you like as long as you remain 1,000' above any terrain/structure within 5nm whilst in IMC.....meaning your home-made IAP must have you in VMC by at least 1,000' AGL....difficult in the Highlands but is possible at say Oban by descending over the water whilst tracking outbound from the NDB towards BRUCE intersection
I assume you mean you can descend on any path you like as long as you remain 1,000' above any terrain/structure within 5nm whilst in IMC.....meaning your home-made IAP must have you in VMC by at least 1,000' AGL....difficult in the Highlands but is possible at say Oban by descending over the water whilst tracking outbound from the NDB towards BRUCE intersection
Actually, no...
In the UK there is no reg prohibiting a "DIY" descent.
And everything not prohibited is permitted.
The requirement to be 500ft above / away from [various stuff] does not apply to takeoff or landing. (Caveat #1: the next words are "in accordance with normal aviation practice 
)
Similarly MSA does not apply for takeoff or landing (obviously, and same caveat).
Caveat #2 is that they could get you under the "endangerment of the aircraft" clause.
There is no known case law on this in the UK and no known prosecutions. Not even in the one case I know about where a pilot crashed off a DIY IAP, survived, and said so; actually crashes on DIY IAPs are extremely rare. On that one he designed the approach but didn't design the missed approach and crashed when going around
For an N-reg there are some dissenting views on 91.175, suggesting it doesn't apply in an airspace (e.g. the UK) where there is a conflicting and more permissive regime. My view is that 91.175 does apply.
But you can always descent as you suggest i.e. to the MSA, so you can always do a DIY IAP whose MDA is the MSA.
I've often wondered about Oban (haven't yet been there) and I guess doing it over the sea is the obvious thing, but there is plenty of terrain sticking out of the water too. Whereas doing it say south of Shoreham there is nothing, apart from France...
I used to do a lot more of this before I got the IR...
because of Frankfurt's 5 runways
Oh, where does the 5th runway come from?
And everything not prohibited is permitted.
Which means the UK CAA relies on people acting safely on their own volition rather than being regulated to act safely....this is probably more to do with the great difficulty in bringing in new regulation due to the cumbersome nature of the rule-making system rather than a pragmatic culture!
Yes; designing DIY IAPs needs to be done really carefully. I was just making the point that it isn't actually illegal to do this in the UK, in a G-reg, or in any other reg whose State of Registry does not prohibit it.
What is more tricky is designing ones which are actually useful. Obviously if you make MDH=MSA then you are OK in all respects (so long as you can actually navigate ) but it's not terribly useful.
There are a lot of properly designed approaches around, where there used to be a public IAP but the airfield lost its ATC and then the IAP became "de-published". Goodwood is one case. Also a lot of IAPs exist which are the "intellectual property" of a based commercial operator but the locals tend to have them and they fly them. I think Elstree and Goodwood are two examples. Welshpool is another but I don't know where that comes from; there is/was NDB/DME there (not very reliable, IME) and presumably they were originally installed for a reason. I designed a very careful GPS IAP for Welshpool, with some Shawbury VOR/DME fixes to make sure, and tested it in VMC, but never got around to flying it for real.
Given that there is an NDB and DME at Shoreham, was there not an IAP there in the past as well? And with the SERA and EASA regulations superseding UK CAA regs, will the concept of DIY IAPs still be possible?
But getting back to the original topic, how difficult would it be to have a central Clearance Delivery service accessible by phone to give the IFR clearance, presumably with a "void if not airborne by xx"? Surely this is not asking more of the system (ie personnel workload) than them having to deal with your airborne request...
Given that there is an NDB and DME at Shoreham, was there not an IAP there in the past as well? And with the SERA and EASA regulations superseding UK CAA regs, will the concept of DIY IAPs still be possible?
Shoreham has full ATC and both NDB/DME and GPS approaches, so that's OK. If it lost ATC then it would lose all these approaches, which has been a real concern at times because ATC is expensive. Probably a bit less now, with the passenger service to Paris obviously needing official IFR capability.
But getting back to the original topic, how difficult would it be to have a central Clearance Delivery service accessible by phone to give the IFR clearance, presumably with a "void if not airborne by xx"? Surely this is not asking more of the system (ie personnel workload) than them having to deal with your airborne request...
I think a lot of people have asked questions such as this. Usually various objections appear. The "clearance void" concept is American so it can't work here
I think the basic problem is that the IFR services (London Control) are seen to exist for and are funded by airlines, and they want to always retain the capability to "say NO" to any request from GA.
In reality, if you have an IR and file a Eurocontrol flight plan, they nearly always let you into the system, but not always IF you departed from an OCAS airport.
If they implemented a "clearance void" system then, in theory, 100 pilots could book the slots and saturate the system. It's like the endless justification for PPR; the airports are officially afraid that suddenly 100 planes will turn up.
This is also why IMHO deregulating VFR is always much easier than deregulating IFR. With VFR, the CAS owner always retains the option to say NO and that's the end of the discussion. With IFR, you have an implied whole-route clearance (so long as you remain in CAS).
That reminds me... somebody needs to phone up La Rochelle (in French) and check with them they are actually fully open on the 18/19 and 25/26 May and there is no known big event going on
From eurocontrol flight planning perspective there is no issue, these are treated as composite flight plans. For traffic flow purposes AD connecting points are used system wise IFPS in order to calculate flows and capacities...An AD connecting point is an agreed point with ATC from where you start the IFR part..Technically only your IFR route part is taken into account...
I gave La Rochelle a call. Basically no handling is mandatory if you park on the grass for small GA aircraft. So far they know, no special activities are planned that would prohibit us from landing there in May on the 18/19th of 25/26th. There is also a handling agency called Aerolux which is sending me an e-mail with a handling offer. Then you can park on the pavement/apron instead of the grass and the handler can arrange for the taxi, but again, the handling is not mandatory. As soon as I get more details, I will post them. Gr. Sjoerd Jan
