Menu Sign In Contact FAQ
Banner
Welcome to our forums

Has VFR got easier or harder?

Generally, over the years VFR flying has become much more easy, most of the improvements applies to IFR flying too. Better and more accessible weather and flight planning options. Vastly better navigation (AKA GPS/moving map). And being part of Schengen takes a lot of issues out of planning too. Once your limited to the custom airports the options are far less and it adds complexity once you do arrive at such airport. The benefit of Schengen travel especially applies to VFR flying with so many smaller airfields to choose from. Covid-19 has shown what freedom we usually enjoy. UK wants to do their own thing with brexit, but it’s offset with the positive outlook that Romania, Croatia, Bulgaria ect. are aspiring to join Schengen.

The areas making things worse are mostly price issues. Higher fuel prices (especially by addition of excise tax and VAT) has caused a significant increase in operating cost in GA. Not all countries treat this the same way, but generally speaking it’s a big factor and has fueled UL market running on Rotax. Its ironic that airline travel is free of both VAT and excises tax, running on cheap JET fuel even for private leisure travelers. Its one of the reasons airline travel is unproportionally cheap. Ultimately it takes some interest out of GA for people wanting to go places and not just do a quick turn around the local airport. But also airports taking full advantage of the monopoly have negative impact. Greece being the saddest example.

Finally, airspace structure in some areas of Europe could be improved for VFR pilots, with less class C/D and more class E airspace. Germany is great example of how one can combine a densely populated area with airspace structure that works for VFR too. Planning a VFR trip where one has to rely on in-flight transit clearance of class C/D airspaces adds significantly to planning and pilot workload. Some places use widespread class A to keep VFR out altogether.

Potential future threats are increased use of PPR, environmental views on private flying (symbolic for sure) and the airspaces that drones are expected to use low level. Maybe not significant issues to high flying IFR traffic but could very well be for lower flying VFR traffic.

Overall still there are more things to be optimistic about than negative IMHO.

THY
EKRK, Denmark

Maybe, nowadays enforcement rate of applicable law is higher than, say, 20 years before.

In my flying career, I busted a lot of laws without knowing it, or learning about it only afterwards. I do not mean to give specific examples here, but just related to what is posted here busting airspaces and landing at aerodromes without permission for that type are definitely among them. It never was something threatening anybody, or generating any trouble, as by means of common sense I stayed away from critical infrastructure or high traffic, when I did not want to go to that specific infrastructure. There was always a margin left for making errors, on both sides of the COM device.

I never got prosecuted.

But as far as I am reading about it, this is narrowing down. As everybody has GPS in cockpit, you’re flying intentionally very close to the limits of clearances / possibilities without clearance needed. But on the other side, when you go over that limit, “they” know that you should have known in that moment. And at least to a high degree, that is true. You won’t tell anybody that you’ve mixed up one river with another – a problem that, 20 years ago, really brought you in such trouble without realizing it.

Another example which comes to my mind here is nature reserves, for example in the alps. As they were “installed”, a really high fine was set up (and still is, several Aviation Units) if they are busted. I never busted one (as far as I know), but I only learned from them by chance, reading the information pages provided on a pin board at a local aerodrome, where I happened to land just the day before I “wanted” to bust one of them. There was no NOTAM about it. I think that today there could be some senior citizen looking into flight movements of Flightradar24 and reporting whenever any aircraft was inside such a nature reserve. But as they are presented in the mobile apps like Skydemon, nowadays it is more realistic to say that if you bust such an area, it is done intentionally.

But in general, GA today is not any more the “adventure” that it was decades ago. You get a brilliant weather information – heck, you can even estimate cloud tops prior and during flight. And you get any information about what you need for any cross-border flight.

Germany

There is certainly much more enforcement. Especially here in the UK where all discretion has been (officially) removed from ATC; they must MOR everything. A decision has been made to smash the issue with a hammer. It’s quite horrible. And the CAA person(s) in charge have been running not-very-subtle activities on UK social media, including threats to admins, to block discussion of it. Outside the UK, maybe more but I don’t get the impression it is really tighter.

As regards adventure, this from 1986 is a bit of an adventure, pre-GPS Once GPS arrived, navigation was 100% accurate. I think @quatrelle and @propman may remember some of those days. I never saw them.

I don’t think busts are ever intentional, despite what NATS/CAA here like to claim. What I see, watching others, is that configuring the rather complicated apps to work exactly right takes a lot of understanding. You potentially get warnings constantly. And it is easy to make the mistake of planning a flight at home, with the airspace declutter settings wrong, and then you can bust stuff in flight if you are distracted by something. I’ve done a number of CAS busts which were either un-noticed or I got told off by ATC (and got done for every one (2) in last 4 years, since the new smash-them system came in) and all of them were due to distractions. In fact my last “sentence” has only just expired on the 2 year basis

The cloud tops forecasts are a little better than 10 years ago, but only a little. You still need a plane which can climb 5000ft above what the forecast says

I’d say the AIPs for Europe are much better today. Even 10 years ago they were often useless. This is important because the AIP is the only reasonable briefing source for airport data. Well, not sure about Greece… but they don’t really care, so it is ok.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

In fact my last “sentence” has only just expired on the 2 year basis

Are you going to start flying in the UK again?

EGTR

Not really… to the Scilly Isles, Cambridge all the way round the LTMA, and such like; rest (e.g. Scotland) will be IFR at FL100. Not sure what interpretation the CAA guy is operating these days i.e. whether it gets reset back to a warning letter, or whether you get something else.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

UdoR wrote:

But in general, GA today is not any more the “adventure” that it was decades ago. You get a brilliant weather information – heck, you can even estimate cloud tops prior and during flight. And you get any information about what you need for any cross-border flight.

Convenience of progress and adventure might be a little opposite of each other. The old days with poor gyro instruments, limited weather forecasts, no smart phones, no internet to book hotels, new currency in each new country ect ect surely was “adventures” but also a lot of trouble too. The reality of “good old days” are often forgotten or romanticized as time goes on. GA flying in going places, is a large hill to climb even today, compared to just about any other method of travel still, so I appreciate the progress making things easier. Yes todays aviation is less adventures, but I sure wouldn’t want to trade back.

THY
EKRK, Denmark

The reality of “good old days” are often forgotten or romanticized as time goes on.

I agree.

I didn’t enjoy the glamour of spending hours sitting at Wangen-Lachen in the rain, trying to send a fax (using Winfax) to Zurich for exit customs PNR.
I also didn’t enjoy discovering LSPV has avgas (but nobody knew that until we landed, causing a lot of hassle further back).
And I didn’t enjoy LIPV and much else in Italy being “vapourware”, so we flew LSPV-LGKR and skipped the whole of Italy
It was the same in Spain.

Communication is much better today, and it makes a lot of difference.

I am quite certain that a lot of stuff “worked” because

  • radar coverage was poor so you could fly all over the place and nobody knew you were there
  • pilots were real men who knew their Aztec could carry 10cm of ice, but 15cm might be pushing their luck (only kidding; you get my drift)
  • the airports were not yet run by the yellow jacket fake-MBA brigade
  • outside of Europe, if you landed somewhere and looked slightly crazy, they just thought “another crazy Englishman, he looks a bit fibrous so he won’t taste so good in soup” and left you alone (today you might just get shot, for amusement)
Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

I’ve touched on this subject before, but round here things haven’t changed that much or I should say pilot’s haven’t changed their methods much since the 1980’s. Even with GPS fitted they don’t tend to use it except for more than the occasional direct to. Many still use some sort of paper charts, although the free French charts available to download to a phone or tablet are beginning to take hold.
For Notams, weather and flight plans, Olivia was a major step forward and many still use the latest version.
For IFR, that is a different thing. GPS systems have become de rigueur as has the internet for flight planning, SIA, Aeroweb etc. There are a few, would you believe who actually pay for Rocket Route :)
The thing is that French pilots are used to getting a load of services for free and don’t see the point in paying out a lot of money unless it’s for something special. Food is usually somewhere near the top of the list for special expenditure:)

France

gallois wrote:

Food is usually somewhere near the top of the list for special expenditure

Don’t know why exactly, but reminds me of that picture about shopping in time of crisis..

Last Edited by UdoR at 05 Jul 14:09
Germany

I would say that it’s gotten a lot easier to be an informed, competent, well organised VFR pilot with a good clear plan for your flight.

But I’d also say that it has become less acceptable not to be an informed, competent, well organised VFR pilot with a good clear plan for your flight!

To say that in a differnt way, in the past you might have gotten away with navigaiton mistakes that you won’t get away with now, because they were a lot easier to make back then.
In the past you might have gotten away with using incorrect information (such as getting customs proceedures wrong or getting the opening times wrong and landing after the airport closed) because it was harder to find such information.

I think one balances out with the other to leave the required skills and organisation effort roughly similar. It’s easier to get info and navigate now, so you’re expected to do that properly.

EIWT Weston, Ireland
Sign in to add your message

Back to Top