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UK CAS transit "application" by email (or web, or ICAO flight plan) - how crazy is this?

Timothy wrote:

How so?

If you get 3 refusals regarding a particular piece of controlled airspace, you may stop bothering to ask, assuming that the answer will be no. Perhaps 97 requests are successful elsewhere. Technically, that’s a 97% rate of approving transit requests, even though the proportion of routes on which crossing of controlled airspace would be useful but not granted may be a lot higher than 3%.

For example I fly around the corner of the Stansted CTA/CTR at BPK quite frequently. It adds about a mile to my track, so I don’t bother to ask to cross, but I doubt I’d have a 90%+ success rate of cutting the corner if I asked.

Peter wrote:

On top of that, anybody will realise that the data entered is likely to go into a database to assist the location of infringers, on the relevant occassion or any other occassion. NATS certainly keep a database; on two occassions they emailed me immediately, while the CAA had to pretend they don’t know and they sent a letter to the N-reg trustee. So a lot of people aren’t going to use this…

The Class D form goes into a database to find infringers?? NATS keep radar traces. Is that what you mean?

What do you mean the CAA pretended not to know. Why on earth would they do that rather than writing to you directly which they have the power to do?

EGTK Oxford

The website, posted earlier asks for the pilot’s details

Personally I have no issue with it, but I can see some will be concerned.

Re writing to the trustee of an N-reg plane, this is standard practice. It would appear that while NATS keep some kind of a database, the CAA doesn’t (perhaps due to DPA/GDPR/etc) trawl through its licensing records, searching for a given tail number. If they did that, they would find most tail numbers seen flying in stuff like license renewal/revalidation paperwork.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Class D transits are very rarely refused. Over the years the only problems I have had are with Stansted (repeatedly so) and Bristol. Both are a nuisance, to the extent as Timothy mentioned, you end up not bothering. Of course the more that happens then the less refusals there appear to be. Southampton had a bad reputation as well, although I have never had a refusal, but I have heard many given. The seem better the last few years.

I cant imagine prior requests will make any difference at all. The issues are always density of inbound traffic and weather. Stansted is a classic case in that I have requested quite a number of transits in poor visibility, but as soon as the controller is working hard on the inbounds, they arent interested in working GA.

I think strangely there is still some controllers who appear to almost despise GA. I came out of Bournemouth very recently having paid their exhorbitant fees, to be sent out of the zone as quickly as they could, because they were clearly more concerned with a couple of biz jet arrivals. I made a complaint, but they expressed nothing more than token interest.

I think the “problem” is it is tempting to simply run 50 feet under the “stub” and ILS outisde CAS which actually rightly should be avoided and not bother requesting a clearance.

The other aspect I find annoying is that some controllers appear not to grasp what you are trying to achieve. I have always tried to indicate my intentions as far away as I can with a clear indication of the reason. The point is to enable me either to plan to go around or expect a clearance. If nothing is forthcoming, but a clearance is granted late, the purpose of the routing becomes pointless.

I do appreciate some may say why not just route around. I think there is a point of principle of securing access to airspace which is often under utilised and therefore there should not be an issue. I think there can be a safety aspect because it takes you into a known traffic enviroment, in contrast to creating narrow strips of airspace around the edges into which all the GA traffic is “squeezed” often also in a narrow vertical band as it is constrained by class A above, and if you are burning 1 gallon of finest every couple of minutes the saving is not unreasonable to pursue.

“Its introduction was originally to help with some bad UX design problems / human factor issues for inputting flight data on new electronic strips systems for “popup” (i.e. non-filed) requests.”

Maybe they should design it properly?

Kent, UK

Isn’t there a data protection issue there? Surely they shouldn’t collect and store your name and email address without good reason, and what reason is there with regard to the transit request?

EGLM & EGTN

Maybe they should design it properly?

Of course but this is the UK.

Anything that is to be designed properly here costs money that people don’t pay.

Then it’s about going down the cheaper route of patching up flaws with other flaws and keep repeating it, until it costs just as much and until nobody knows what’s going on anymore.

Then try and make someone else the scapegoat.

;-)

Last Edited by James_Chan at 04 May 09:08

Peter wrote:

Current nav tools like SD can generate and file an FP easily, but SD are paying EuroFPL some money for filing them, and the SD business model is based on not too many being filed

I don’t think it does, or not to a large extent. It is my understanding that filing a FP through SD requires purchasing “FP credits” which have a unit cost between 1.00 GBP (pack of five) and 0.46 GBP (in bulk of 50) plus VAT. So it looks like they cover their costs based on your estimation (based on one message per FP), and make profit (directly when bought in small batches, and through expiration of the credit after one year when bought in bigger batches).

ELLX

SD do give you a few free flight plans with the subscription.

Andreas IOM

Peter wrote:

IMHO, at the root of this is “standard” UK PPL training which is

This was certainly my case when I did my PPL. Post PPL you’d get bewildered instructors when showing a video of a Gatwick overhead transit.

However, these days I frequently hear “student” callsigns requesting Southend transits, so at least someone is doing things right!

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