See here local copy
Irish GA pilots are whining, but don‘t seem to have any influence at all. See here.
This has been doing the rounds here:
It’s bizarre…Sligo and Waterford have no commercial flights and should really just have an ATZ. I suppose the fact that the Coast Guard operates from them both has something to do with it.
In positive news, a majority stake in Weston has been bought by a consortium that includes a young Irish billionaire GA pilot. A nice improvement over the current owner who is closing it down for 20 days in September to film stuff in the hangars.
There must be some political stuff in this; nothing to do with traffic.
Irish GA pilots are whining
“Whining” is a rather derogatory term, describing something unreasonable. Of course they will not be pleased with the proposals, which are totally unreasonable.
This is a very strange and backward action.
Ireland has always been very practical with simple shaped CAS but it did use design techniques from 90s.
Unnecessary amounts of class C airspace! They should have gone on a field trip to Germany first to check out how class E can be used in between top of control zone and upper class C for regional size/use airports.
In fact much of the European airspace is mess and was never created with much consideration for VFR use.
I don’t get it. Rounds are cool, squares are not?
I find access to controlled airspace excellent in Ireland, so as long as that remains true then I suppose this shouldn’t be a massive deal, although it does seems completely over the top.
One potential issue, and I don’t know how this is currently addressed – but whilst the UK was implementing SERA with regards to VFR minima in class D airspace, my base was using the weather at the field to determine any CTR/CTA conditions (as I said, I don’t know if this is usual or not). Given the large amount of space this proposed airspace occupies, I wonder in typical Irish weather how often VFR access won’t be possible.
In UK, VMC in controlled CTR/CTA is decided by PIC, VMC in controlled ATZ is decided by ATC
There are few airfields in Class D CTR outside ATZ, where pilots would takeoff/land without asking SVFR but they would have to in ATZ, sometimes weather is different, sometimes pilots will exerce a different judgement (after all 600ft ceiling on a hill is 1500ft in a valley)
@dublinpilot must have a view and some local knowledge?
I attended the Teams presentation from the IAA that was held about these proposals on 28 July. The censorious tone of the presenter, like an unpleasant schoolteacher talking down to a class of dimwits, left me wondering whether the whole consultation process was a sham and my time could have been better spent. The attendance included many highly experienced professional pilots and instructors, whose comments and questions were dismissed in disdainful terms.
The principle allegedly being applied is that (i) there should be just two classes of lower level airspace – controlled C and uncontrolled G, and (ii) IFR traffic descending from FL080 to any published IAP at a continuous 3 degrees plus missed approach should be able to do so within continuous Class C protection.
Introduction of T type RNP procedures at Ireland’s smaller airports (EISG for example) with a 5 nm Initial Segment on each arm of the T means IFR traffic joining the procedure at IAFs on the arms of the T can’t do so wholly within a 10 nm wide CTA. So they propose to just widen the CTA/CTR to 10 nm on each side of the runway axis. This is about 270 cubic miles of additional controlled airspace just for this little airport. Incidentally EISG has little traffic and no scheduled traffic at all.
Large amounts of additional controlled airspace would not concern me too much if transits were freely given through the largely unused CAS outside Dublin. But the Irish AIP makes it clear that air filing of FPLs is not normally available. This appears to me to conflict with GM1 SERA.4001 and 4005(a). I made this observation in my own submission to the IAA, and the response I got was just “Noted”. So I am looking for who to complain to in EASA?
Not that I would expect any speedy action, but a formal complaint might get more attention.
