Flying under controlled airspace with limits AGL - Spain in particular

Phil, first of all on the LEIB chart if you look closely, you will see that the VFR arrival route is Class E.

Secondly, I wouldn't worry too much. I've been flying in Spain for 15 years or so and with some rare exceptions always got the route and level I wanted. File the flight plan and tell ATC your intentions, usually works.

That said, I do vaguely recall being held quite low on a flight to LEIB many years ago, but that was coming from the south, so more or less crossing their arrival route, actually I think the controller made a comment o that effect.

A word of warning though, re Valencia (in case you're not familiar with it): the GA parking is on the far side of the airport, miles away from the terminal and met/flight plan office. They force you to use a handler to drive you from your a/c to the GA terminal - which has a huge and empty apron right in front of it! Someone is getting a nice kickback there.....

So no SVFR means no VFR flight in Class A in Spain at all?

According to ICAO airspace classification, A means no VFR at all. SVFR in class A in terminal areas (Heathrow) is a UK only thing, which will stop with SERA. If airspace designers mean A then you should use A, full stop. If they mean B or C and call it A with SVFR it should not be A.

BTW, another completely useless thing is airspace A. There is hardly any reason for this airspace to exist. If you want to have full separation and no VFR, then you use airspace B and don't issue clearances to VFR traffic.

Airspace A just means you're very inflexible. Remember the ash cloud madness in Europe where they grounded all IFR traffic (by CFMU means)? All flights were carried out under VFR but in countries with airspace A that was very difficult.

Let's hope that SERA will make the UK convert its airspace A to B. It's a pity that B is not found in Europe today, I have always liked it in the US. A great way for VFR and IFR to coexist in an environment where good separation is crucial.

Phil, two more things:

1) I posted some general comments re flying in Spain here, it's a reply in the French/English RT thread

2) I also posted a PDF with Spanish phrases in the 'documents' section

Have a look and enjoy the trip.

PS: Note to Peter: can you perhaps post the Spanish general info somewhere findable? I wrote it as reply in the French thread, but it might come in handy for pilots like Phil who want to venture into the Wild South ;-)

Ah, and one more thing, actually a very important one:

Have you checked the NOTAMS for Valencia and Ibiza ?? AFAIK Ibiza is IFR only in summer !! Same may apply for Valencia (it certainly does for Malaga most days of the week).

This info gets buried in a NOTAM that comes out when the summer season starts and remains valid for 3 months, then gets renewed (they used to keep it valid for the entire length of the restriction, but now at least update it very 3 months). This means you have to dig way back into the NOTAMS!!

Anything which anybody can knock together into a self contained usable form, please let me have it and I will put it under Articles or Tech Resources.

The best format is plain linear HTML (no tables, frames, etc) with any images simply inline - example. That flows nicely in any browser. Images max 800 pixels wide.

If this is not possible then a PDF is the best way but please don't use the absolutely latest Adobe PDF format... try to save the PDF in some older format e.g. Acrobat 5.

SVFR in class A in terminal areas (Heathrow) is a UK only thing, which will stop with SERA.

Are you sure about that? I thought it was an ICAO thing. We have the same rule in Ireland, but no need for it, as no class A CTRs.

In Ireland we generally tend to follow ICAO rules, so I'd be really surprised if this was out of step with ICAO.