To play the devil’s advocate, a light aircraft bringing down an airliner would be the deathknell for GA in much of Europe. It is worth avoiding.
Didn’t NATS also have a part to play in the development of the Airspace Aware, which was far cheaper than a purely commercial version would have been? It has its limitations but I have found mine pretty good.
Personally I think some form of electronic conspicuity will become mandatory for aircraft and drones. The Realpolitik will be what concessions we might obtain in return for agreeing to it.
Peter wrote:
In the vast majority of the earth’s land area, GA would be banned immediately if it wasn’t for ICAO principles.
That won’t happen. There is enough commercial GA which is more or less necessary, as is flight training.
I agree it won’t happen, but the vast majority of the populated world is run by totalitarian regimes who really don’t want people flying around in planes. Start with a couple of big ones: China and Russia. No GA there and there is never likely to be any significant activity (other than below the radar / with bribery of officials, etc). In Africa it exists because there are few roads and limited government surveillance.
a light aircraft bringing down an airliner would be the deathknell for GA in much of Europe
Despite that atrociously dishonest Gasco poster further back, I think that would not happen. There would be a huge review of the whole system. I think:
To play the devil’s advocate, a light aircraft bringing down an airliner would be the deathknell for GA in much of Europe. It is worth avoiding.
You got that upside down: Such an incident would prove that CAT is unsafe and must be banned from any airspace also used by GA.
Unless of course the GA aircraft was infringing, which is more likely than the airliner being in the wrong.
Most people fly in an airliner from time to time. A few tenths of a percent of us fly in GA aircraft. Who is at fault would be something of an irrelevance: public sympathy would be with the airlines.
I was joking, of course. Commercial interests will always come out on top in today’s world.
Where under UK Airspace are the sand dunes depicted in that poster?
Most of Scotland north of the Great Glen used to be restricted 4 days a week up to 5,000’. Now it’s only restricted by NOTAM a few days a year.
Tain Gunnery Range is very helpful. When active, there are regular “not in use” spells when targets are refurbished. They’ll tell you when, and contact by radio near that time will likely get entry.
Bombing is mainly (all?) by simulator now.
PS Easy VFR Basic, originally Airspace Avoid, is free, with a free update every 4 weeks.
I must admit that the Land Rover and the sand dunes had me baffled…..
It was poster that left me completely baffled, both by the message and the graphics.
kwlf wrote:
Unless of course the GA aircraft was infringing, which is more likely than the airliner being in the wrong.
I’m totally not sure of that.
First, most airliner pilots are very far from having the same level of situational awareness about traffic and airspace that GA pilots have. I was at a presentation by the head of safety at a local airline at an AOPA safety conference. He said most of his pilots have absolutely no clue what airspace class they are in. Even around their homebase, that they fly in and out of regularly (between several times per day for short-haul to several times per week for long-haul). The man on the radio tells them to go somewhere, they do. Then they make a safety report about a small airplane being in the same space. Except it is in class E airspace, so really, the small airplane operating under VFR is not under ATC control, not necessarily in contact with ATC, and separation from such traffic is not provided by ATC.
Second, even if aware of airspace class, I doubt most of them keep a good visual lookout, and I doubt even if they did, they would be able to see and avoid a small aircraft coming from the right, and thus to properly yield right of way as the law says they should.
