I met Matt during his round the world flight, spent a day with him when he stopped over in Rome.
Very professional, calm, attentive to detail but with the enthusiasm and energy of a 19 year old.
You may well be right Petakas (and African Eagle above supports your view) but the problem with that presentation is that is not going to achieve the objective of showing the UK system’s faults to anybody who might be in a position to fix them.
I know little about other ATC cultures – other than that ATC is obviously like most professions in the way it selects on personality – but the UK ATC one has a strongly ex military / “we are the top professionals” culture. There is a lot of what one might call professional arrogance. I have been to NATS presentations where the presenter said “we visited [some US ATC centre] and their procedures were absolute crap”. They like to slag off GA incompetence, slag off bizjets for doing 2.5 times more level busts than airlines (my recollection from one presentation), etc. As a pilot who is nothing special but who does his best to not cock up, I found the presentations utterly depressing. Like the guy (I posted this before) who told me that anybody setting 7600 will get “shot down” and he repeated it when I queried it. And I tend to agree that the UK ATC system, especially London Control, is among the best I have ever seen, in actual operation, clarity and professionalism. If that video gets played at some NATS conference they will just get horrified at the lack of preparation and the general slack attitude and will chuck it into the “yet another unprepared GA pilot, 17th this week” bin. They don’t think there is anything wrong with their system! They play ATC recordings of “incompetent” pilots, including the sound track but with the callsign removed, to visitors, with the favourites being some probably 5hr/year pilot who sails right across EGLL at 1500ft and then turns round and does it again.
Talk to anyone involved in a CAS bust regarding their experiences in dealing with the 2 or 3 airspace policy individuals in the CAA… The bogus infringements tutorial and exam… There is a (thankfully small) element which really doesn’t like this sort of thing. The Big Q is how influential they are.
One would achieve more by doing a video which shows you filing a IFR (“I”) FP at say 4000ft, say Bournemouth EGHH to Aberdeen EGPD, departing with some Solent squawk and a handover to 124.60, and the resulting comic would do the job quite well 
Oh and add the bit that you have just got a fresh CPL/IR from one of UK’s premier FTOs 
One pilot I know, a CPL/IR, did that when the Autorouter first came out and after getting several heart attacks and causing nuke-sized mayhem in ATC, wrote me a fairly filthy email saying he will never touch it again. Well, the FP did validate
Peter wrote:
How would that be achieved? I sometimes do post-maintenance check flights around Norfolk, up to FL195, but no way can anyone give me higher. London Control once gave Norwich a bollocking for letting me go to FL200.
It can be achieved by asking the CAA for a permit. VFR in never permitted above FL195 without a special permit regardless of airspace class. This is according to both SERA and the International Rules of the Air.
However, I would accept an IFR clearance. It’s just that one could not be obtained.
Timothy wrote:
UK airspace is a bloody mess and I have regular meetings with senior (top) people in NATS, CAA and DfT where I do not hesitate to tell them so
I think it’s telling that the Ordinance Survey, one of the world’s best cartographic agencies, struggles to prepare a good VFR chart due to the absurd (and needless) clutter of the byzantine ‘design’ of controlled airspace in the UK. I’m sure that the root cause of a great many inadvertent infringments are due to chart clutter.
You can get access to Class C under VFR
How would that be achieved? I sometimes do post-maintenance check flights around Norfolk, up to FL195, but no way can anyone give me higher. London Control once gave Norwich a bollocking for letting me go to FL200.
If I remember correctly, when Europe tried to standarise class C above FL195 across Europe, it was was also agreed that while it was class C, VFR would be prohibited above FL195.
dublinpilot wrote:
If I remember correctly, when Europe tried to standarise class C above FL195 across Europe, it was was also agreed that while it was class C, VFR would be prohibited above FL195.
Then why not make it class A?
Peter wrote:
However, I would accept an IFR clearance. It’s just that one could not be obtained.
You can request an airtest with Swanwick Mil in the London FIR above FL195. This can be used for Boscombe Down airspace for example if you want to go high.
Check UK AIP ENR 1.1.4.8. It has to be outside the airways structure.
You can also do it in the Marham area, you just need to get permission beforehand.
boscomantico wrote:
I think this pretty nicely mirrors the experience of most GA pilots flying in the UK for the first time…
Some (many) years ago I was in the cockpit of an airliner out of Gatwick to Denmark.
Had a nice talk with them and we ended up talking about deconfliction service. Now from Gatwick I don’t think that is needed, but they told me that going to Scotland on another route they always got the deconfliction service, but they didn’t have a clue what is was. Having just attained my IMC rating I was a bit surprised that I knew this and they didn’t. All in all I think they were more focused but they knew as little as these guys about the UK specialties
So what about the professional pilots going into places where they transition OCAS?
