I know of several which have a “traffic monitor” from NATS radars.
Which airports are those? I have heard various figures for the cost and they tend to be in the 20k-50k a year region.
Just get rid of FISOs.
Someone who used to run a UK airport and had a wide experience in this area posted that a FISO costs only 5k less than an ATCO. His point was that downgrading ATC to AFIS doesn’t save a lot of money but prevents things like instrument approaches.
Quite a few trials with ADSB going on with AFISOs at the moment as well.
Perhaps you mean Barton, which is working towards the world record for MOR filing for ATZ busts 
I reckon for every visible aircraft flying around there they are getting several with the CB pulled 
Peter wrote:
There must be an awfully fine line between the Swedish “situational awareness” and the person revealing they can see you
Of course they could “reveal they could see you”. They just couldn’t use the information for separation purposes or for vectoring.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
As soon as you use the radar feed for any useful purpose you ARE controlling aircraft, even to the extent that you are about to bust CAS so turn away.
No, you’re not. You could just as well say that as soon as you use position reports for any useful purpose you are controlling aircraft.
There is a definite difference between FIS and ATC. When flying outside the UK where there is proper FIS, you frequently get radar based traffic information, e.g. “a Cherokee at your two o’clock position is crossing your track, distance 3 miles, same altitude.” That is not “controlling aircraft”.
Peter wrote:
This old post by @bathman contains the interesting statistic that 15% of UK CAS busts are by foreign pilots.This is not surprising given the dodgy practices whereby your IFR clearance is silently terminated by London Info, when inbound to the UK.
This is not reflected as a category in the CAA stats so I wonder what they do with them?
I also asked that question and the reply was that the their NAA are informed and it is up to them what action they take. Which I would assume is effectively nothing.
Of course the real sadness was the multitude of suggestions from the audience as to why this is the case. All these statements of fact and I think I can safely use that term because failures within the system are so bloody obvious were completely ignored.
Peter wrote:
Which airports are those?
Biggin is one, but I have seen them elsewhere.
OK, but Biggin is a bit of a special case, paying a (reported, unverified) 100k a year to Thames Radar for a radar service, and having a note on their approach plates that if Thames Radar is active there will be no procedural approaches. I think Thames ought to have provided them with the bit of wire and a terminal for nothing, at that price…
Peter wrote:
UK airport towers are AFAIK never equipped with screens unless providing a radar service. The data feed comes from NATS who charge heavily for it. It may be that any UK tower, even AFIS, could install such a screen, but actually I am damn sure the CAA would never allow it. If there is no formal rule, they would implement it simply by not allowing the airfield to operate.
Peter wrote:
OK, but Biggin is a bit of a special case
I guess that anywhere that does it is a special case.
Airborne_Again wrote:
No, you’re not. You could just as well say that as soon as you use position reports for any useful purpose you are controlling aircraft.
I dont follow?
Position reports dont result in giving avoiding action for obvious reasons, whereas radar information does, or potentially does.
Surely, the point with radar information is you can see in real time with great accuracy if an aircraft is about to infringe (this discussion) or about to collide or potentially collide with another aircraft. What do you do with this information? Well obviously it is useful to avoid either the aircraft of CAS by issuing either an instruction (or I guess recommendation) to do something about it. It seems to me its at this point the line is crossed with your analogy of a position report. In the instance of a position report you are using information the pilot has passed to you, that is at best an approximate, and recommending from what you know from that report that certain action might be taken. For example, two aircraft might be reporting that they expect to be at a particular VOR at the same height and time. Inevitably you would warn both of this potential conflict and leave them to decide what to do about it.
An aircraft about to infringe and you might issue and instruction to turn left 120 degrees and descend 1,000 feet, but in so doing if you descend that aircraft in a radio mast or another aircraft you have a problem – and as simple as the basic instruction maybe, I suspect that is why the argument stands you need training in order to issue that form of instruction. If you cant issue such a proactive instrucrion that equally the argument must be what use is the radar feed in the first place?
For this reason I think it is different from the way you might use position reports.
I accept that you could probably wrap the arguments in cotton wool by enabling a non trained operative to use radar data by creating a new service where the pilot understands the information passed must only be treated as a recommendation, so for example G-XXXX can see you are about to infringe the London TMA in 3 miles, suggest a right turn onto heading 140 and descend 1,000 feet, you are responsible for your own terraiin seperation and avoidance of other traffic – but it is undoubtedly fraught with problems.
BTW there are very few “tower services” I am aware of that dont have a CAS veil – they indeed would be the exception, because anyone providing this service is going to be pretty busy and there are not that many places that are that busy with light GA alone. As soon as they have enough GA volume and it includes some “heavy” GA then they will call for CAS and radar will follow. Biggin is probably very unusual in also not having any CAS given the amount of heavy GA. I wouldnt be at ll surprised to see Biggin promote itself in a similiar way to Farnborough. I appreciate Biggin’s ATZ is protected airspace the same as any other ATZ.
Exeter is another Class G airport, but they actually have radar. There is a number of these. They have airlines so those without own radar can afford the NATS feed, and they can have it because they have ATC.
Biggin can obviously do it because it has ATC. They also do provide a radar service from the tower; I’ve had that a number of times. They reference stuff without concealing they can see traffic. The Thames Radar deal is for the approach service.
