Would it be right to say this exemption is about shifting responsibility from ATC to the pilot?
I.e under Sera you would be svfr under separation from ATC, while with this you are under implicit separation from ATC, however if something happens ATC will say… ‘Hey he was vfr, not our problem’.
Whatever about the rules, I don’t remember ever being VFR in Class D without being on a Radar Control Service. If I am under positive ATC control they better not be vectoring me into a potential conflict.
Finners wrote:
Whatever about the rules, I don’t remember ever being VFR in Class D without being on a Radar Control Service. If I am under positive ATC control they better not be vectoring me into a potential conflict.
Since, I brought up Sweden… Every tower in Sweden has radar, but procedural and visual (e.g. the controller can see the aircraft) separation is also used, in particular by separating IFR approaches/departures procedurally from VFR traffic routing via VRPs.
In the UK you always get a Radar Control Service in Class D, the instant you cross the CAS boundary.
So you can’t really do a see and avoid anyway, because you can’t change altitude or heading without ATC agreement.
bookworm wrote:
But it doesn’t need to cause overcrowding. If, instead of pretending that it is not separating the transiting VFR traffic from IFR, ATC simply labels it as SVFR and continues to separate it as it is today, nobody gets excluded from the CTR and the problem is solved.
Unfortunately, there are no separate rules for SVFR separation. From an ATC point of view, an SVFR flight has to be separated the same way as IFR flights get separated from each other, a SVFR clearance is technically an IFR clearance in that respect.
Cobalt wrote:
Under VFR, they can have four aircraft in the visual circuit. Under SVFR, only one, and he has to land when somebody else wants to fly an approach.
And that’s an arbitrary UK rule. If ATC is able separate the (S)VFR aircraft from the IFR, why not just get on with it? If ATC can’t do that, isn’t there a problem?
Not so. This is how IFR flights get separated procedurally, only one aircraft in the same sector at the same time with assurance that the next aircraft does not enter the sector before the one ahead has left. If the CTR is just one sector, that’s it.
In practice, I have seen controllers allowing more than one SVFR in the CTR at the same time. I think they can do that separation is somehow “assured”.
Regarding requesting an SVFR clearance when it’s say BKN 1600 (in order to be able to fly higher), this doesn’t work I think. A controller won’t issue an SVFR clearance when the CTR is VFR.
Peter wrote:
So you can’t really do a see and avoid anyway, because you can’t change altitude or heading without ATC agreement.
Interesting – that is completely different from all the VFR class D flying I have done. The VFR clearences have always been general and have never included neither altitudes nor specific headings, and although there is often traffic information, ATC workload permitting, I and every other pilot have always been expected to, and have done on numerous occasions, seen and avoided other aircraft as a matter of course, without thinking much of it.
It seems that class D flying is indeed not just one thing.
SVFR: At my home airport, I have at one point observed 4 aircraft operating in the CTR at the same time, during SVFR: two in the circuit and one departing in one direction while another approached from the opposite. As the latter one came closer, one in the circuit was held on the runway while the other had his downwind extended to make room for the approaching traffic. This is an airport used to busy VFR traffic. I do not think that some other airports I know would allow more than 1, possibly 2 during SVFR.
UK Class D (which is airport CTRs and such in most cases) is operated same as Class A / IFR except that you can get VFR transits. There may be theoretical differences but in practice ATC want you exactly where they told you to fly.
Sometimes I have had “cleared to transit xxxx not above 3000ft” or some such.
Peter wrote:
UK Class D … is operated same as Class A / IFR
Well I guess that goes a long way towards explaining the different attitudes towards cloud distance and separation then.
Finners wrote:
Whatever about the rules, I don’t remember ever being VFR in Class D without being on a Radar Control Service. If I am under positive ATC control they better not be vectoring me into a potential conflict.
Peter wrote:
In the UK you always get a Radar Control Service in Class D, the instant you cross the CAS boundary.
So you can’t really do a see and avoid anyway, because you can’t change altitude or heading without ATC agreement.
And there is the nub of the problem. Finners and Peter clearly think that ATC is looking after separation for them. So, probably, does that IFR flight popping out of the cloud. But ATC is not.
