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UK CAA heel dragging on GPS approaches, including LPV, and approaches with no ATC, and CAP1122

Timothy wrote:

BHA

Is that this organisation?

Darley Moor, Gamston (UK)

It probably means British [something] Association. Most of these GA representative bodies can’t stand each other…

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Having read the headline “Sywell to get GPS approaches” I have to say I’m a little underwhelmed after reading the detail.

Don’t get me wrong it’s a positive step but it’s taken a long time and no doubht cost a lot of money.

The bits that dissapoint me are the max of 6 approaches a day and no intial instrument training .

Well I got my grubby hands on a approach plate for a recent HPS approach in the UK. I entered all the waypoints in manually into a Garmin 150 and then flew it in VFR and not surprisingly it flew it fine.

Now what I can’t quite understand is how an earth its take 4 or is it 5 years to come up with this. Seems like an afternoons work to me

CAP1122 (instrument approaches without an approach controller) appears to be superseded by CAP1961 CAP1961 local copy

I haven’t read it yet in detail but it sounds a lot more pragmatic than the previous attempts which no airport was able to design a safety case for.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Speaking of Sywell and its GPS approaches, and the daft Lands End GPS limitation, I’ve just read something in the UK trade press about the totally mad Sywell approach restrictions:

1st they limited the approaches to one per hour with a max of six per day, and only based operators. Practically useless.

2nd they allowed anyone to fly them but no training, no flying them in VMC, and all approaches having to be pre-booked by telephone. Totally useless.

3rd, the ATZ must be cleared before an approach can commence. Totally useless.

It’s a complete joke. It’s like selling somebody an ice cream and insisting they can’t start eating it for an hour. The whole thing is deliberately rigged to make sure no airfield can get any use out of these things.

In particular the CAA thinks that IAP traffic cannot be integrated with circuit traffic. Hmmm how is this done already, all over the place?

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Italy is exactly the same. No movements whatsoever in the ATZ when an IFR arrival or departure is in progress. Salerno (LIRI) for example.
OK, that’s Italy, but still.

Mainz (EDFZ) & Egelsbach (EDFE), Germany

Peter wrote:

In particular the CAA thinks that IAP traffic cannot be integrated with circuit traffic. Hmmm how is this done already, all over the place?

By FISO ?

There is the French method, where you only descend to the circling minima.

Nympsfield, United Kingdom

AIUI the “French method” is this and this i.e. they make sure the previous traffic has landed. It is possible they implicitly “cleared the circuit”, as these airports tend to have very low traffic anyway.

Something similar in Spain but I can’t find it right now.

You don’t get “cleared for the approach” by a FISO. ATC unions would not allow that anywhere in Europe The issue is solved procedurally, which sidesteps a FISO having to “control” airborne traffic.

The “circling minima” thing is a different issue and actually as this also shows the “circling minima” is only a recent change in the regs – AIUI.

Nobody seems to know what is going on behind the scenes, but it could be something simple like ATC/union resistance to allowing FISOs to do “something in the air” which presently requires the ATCO rank. Often, the simple explanation is the right one. Some recent happenings elsewhere on UK social media show just how extremely reactive the profession is to anything even remotely negative. For example I posted a video on which there was a transmission from Farnborough (ATC, obviously) saying “pass your message” and which I captioned in the video as saying they don’t have my details (which is pretty obviously generally true, on a first such call) and I got vigorously beaten up for that caption by a bunch of ATCOs from, as far as I could tell, mostly NATS units. To use my favourite expression, the profession is about as reactive as a 12kg ball of PU239 and a rearguard action along these lines would be pretty well guaranteed. BUT it would never be done in the open because it would look awful… I mean, they would be reducing GA safety to safeguard job demarcation, wouldn’t they… I mean, this is straight out of the golden era of Arthur Scargill and the NUM

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

It’s a complete joke. It’s like selling somebody an ice cream and insisting they can’t start eating it for an hour. The whole thing is deliberately rigged to make sure no airfield can get any use out of these things.

I looked at Stapleford the proposed LPV/LNAV is:
- Minima way more restricted than Class G VMC (+600ft ceiling and +4km visibility)
- Designed for “VMC training purpose” rather than bad weather arrival
- It need more traffic coordination/booking/slots than IFR-into-VFR

I hardly see much benefit for “based pilots” but maybe it’s something highly useful for “visitor pilots”, for the latter even with all restrictions, it still a good thing and good price to pay to get CAA and everybody onboard

Last Edited by Ibra at 06 Oct 14:54
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom
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