If that is the case, then certainly not… on the contrary, that would rather reinforce the opposite.
Just this weekend I had a very positive ATC experience in Germany. The controller was proactive, knowing I had a flight plan, proactively notified me of a R zone that was not active, and reminded me that the Stuttgart shelf overhung my destination, and the max altitude. Regular traffic advisories to all. And he was doing this for at least a dozen other aircraft in his sector. It can be done. 
Thanks for that link @Peter. Edifying indeed.
Still, a sentence which I picked as interesting:
None of us are solely responsible for policy or procedures – that is simply not how any safety based operation can function, so for better or worse, what we do or say in our professional lives is corporately owned and supported until such time it is modified or amended by the same collective structure.
all of which is of course true, but which is no excuse for the stupidity and rigidity in its application. And:
So, to sum up, I will continue to read this thread and others, here and in other places, sometimes smiling and sometimes holding my head in my hands but please, please try to remember that we are dealing with human beings, be they pilots, controllers or regulators who ALL deserve to be treated with a degree of compassion and respect.
These are most definitely my views which may or may not reflect those of my employer ;-)
Bold applied specifically for the benefit of the UK CAA:
please try to remember that we are dealing with human beings, be they pilots, controllers or regulators
Dan wrote:
o for better or worse, what we do or say in our professional lives is corporately owned and supported until such time it is modified or amended by the same collective structure.
And thanks to the regulatory ratchet, once a decision has been made in the name of safety it’s almost impossible to reverse (even when everyone knows it’s not turned out to be the best idea).
On airspace, here’s a (probably fairly UK specific) trap that could have caught me out on Sunday when returning home. Most of the time, when we are VFR for any significant distance, there is high pressure – usually the QNH is at least 1013 or more. But we’ve been in the grip of persistent low pressure for a week or two but not without some uncharacteristically good weather north of the Watford Gap (for a change, what the Met Office simply knows as “except the north and west” has become “except the south and east” with all the bad weather going on there, while the north gets nice weather during a depression).
Going north west from Pole Hill, the airspace starts stepping up from 3500’, to 4500’, to FL55. It’s Manchester’s airspace and their QNH was something like 985 hPa. Going that direction generally you want to climb so you have decent height over the Cumbrian mountains (and to avoid Bowland Forest’s gliding activity).
The trap for the unwary is now that next section of airspace – the FL55 bit – is now almost a full thousand feet lower than it normally is due to the low pressure system and is no longer a “step up”. If you don’t diligently switch your altimeter to 1013 the moment you get out from under the 4500’ floor, it would be very easy to accidentally climb into the FL55 part because it now actually starts at altitude 4500. You may never know you’ve done it till the nastygram from the CAA arrives. I suspect that most moving map GPS software won’t warn you either, because it won’t know the QNH and will just take FL55 = altitude 5500.
Imagine the air pressure is not 985 but 965 and what is normally a step up ends up being a step down. You could be diligently doing “Take 2” and making sure you’re at least 200’ below the airspace floor, say at 4300’, and it could be a route you fly frequently and know well, but thanks to the low pressure system the base of what’s normally a step up in airspace floor ends up being an inadvertent bust!
See here.
The use of a “calculated QNH” instead of a straight 1013 when flying under CAS defined as a FL – the obviously wrong but “correct” answer to an obviously bogus Q in the CAA online test – was defended by “the man who can’t be named” (actually he can be named because everybody knows his name, but he likes to send people messages threatening them with his “legal team”) in a phone call I had with him. Sadly I did not record the call otherwise I would have obviously now posted the .mp3 But first I would have sent it to Richard Moriarty (the former head of the CAA who has since left – one of the very few competent people to have worked there in recent decades).
I think this is the relevant thread, if not, please move.
This Sunday, over Czechia, IFR in VMC, with flight plan, FL80, Praha Radar clears me to PADKA, bids farewell, advises ‘leaving controlled airspace, watch out for VFR traffic, contact Ostrava’.
Ostrava says ‘identified’ and not a word more.
30m later Ostrava calls me, asks about my heading, and suggests I turn right 30 degrees lest I bust a TFR or some such. After another 15m or so Ostrava re-clears me to PADKA, and in a few minutes hands me off to Krakow Info.
No tricks, no traps, no sweat, and, most importantly, no busts, no numbers to call. And no questions if I am at FL82 or FL80 – I really have to figure out why the KFC200 isnt’t holding altitude well.
Polish airspace was a maze of frequencies, with Info, Approach and two Director frequencies, but also no problems. I was too tired to ask for an approach to EPKK, but would have probably gotten one… Next time :)
Peter wrote:
the obviously wrong but “correct” answer to an obviously bogus Q in the CAA online test
What is this “calculated QNH method”?
The way I did it on Sunday was to have my main altimeter on the Manchester QNH, and the second altimeter on 1013 so as I came out from the airspace defined by altitude to the one defined by FL, I knew where I was in relation to it, it seems like the easiest solution! (I also leave the transponder on its flight level display at all times, but it’s down by the passenger’s right knee so not quite as easy to monitor).
I suspect it is getting some local unit QNH and calculating the deviation to 1013, somehow. Completely stupid but that is what the CAA head of infringing pilot persecution told me, in a tone which didn’t encourage me to ask for more detail. He said yes it should be just 1013 but lots of people do it using some QNH method and get it wrong, which is why he put the QNH based method into the exam!
30ft per millibar. 27 in ISA.
QNH of 1000 is 13 below 1013, so effectively 390ft
difference from a Flight Level.
If you fly at 4700ft Alt, on QNH below a FL50 TMA you’ll bust it by 90ft vertically.
