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IFR directs and one-way airways

Interesting route there, chflyer! Looks like I’m not the only one flying in circles. ;)
Thanks for the links to Eurocontrol. That’s exactly the information I was looking for when I asked in the OP about alleviations from EASA. Let’s hope they considered the space below FL285 then…

Airborne_Again wrote:

From a GA point of view these charts paint too rosy a picture. E.g. Sweden is shown to already have FRA H24, but “might be level restricted”. Indeed, FRA only applies above FL285!

Indeed. I just asked EASA directly on their official GA forum: https://www.easa.europa.eu/community/topics/ifr-direct-routing-and-free-route-airspace
FRA and this DCT stuff is per regulation only above FL310, so it really has no positive impact on GA. I let them know that I would like to see these changes for light GA — knowing that my comment probably won’t have any impact whatsoever. However, I think it is very important to directly let EASA know about issues like this on their official GA forum. It’s great that they provide this way to interact and maybe this is exactly their intent, to understand better what the smaller stakeholders think.
I also asked Skyguide directly about the missing DCTs, answer pending.

Last Edited by ArcticChiller at 06 Feb 05:49

Revisiting this topic in light of this I wonder why there are any directional routes/airways in low level airspace.

It’s not as if everyone is doing mach 0.85 like one tends to have in the upper airspace. GA speeds vary a lot, from < 100kt (a TB20 with 50kt headwind ) to ~500kt (a TBM with tailwind). So the separation advantage is totally lost anyway.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

I wonder why there are any directional routes/airways in low level airspace.

Probably because nobody wants to restructure this waiting for airways to be completely removed like in Austria and Hungary.

LDZA LDVA, Croatia

Is that really likely to happen in Europe generally?

It would be pretty amazing.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

I wonder why there are any directional routes/airways in low level airspace

NW France lower airspace routes over channel are all one-way to UK, except mid-channel toward Lille

AIP PDF

Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

It is interesting that FRA is not without certain limitations related to border crossing, with defined entry/exit waypoints. For small countries like Austria the impact on routing is not always insignificant, all the more so considering that the geography also affects routing options.

If one studies the FRA availability in Europe SE of Austria where there surprisingly seems to be more progress, some borders between countries with FRA require crossing at such waypoints. For others FRA is extended to eliminate mandatory border crossing points. Also, in some countries FRA availability varies according to time of day …. related to night military activity? :-(

LSZK, Switzerland

The above PDF will expire at the next AIRAC cycle and it showed French airspace only, so here is the Jepp version which crosses the Channel:

This is indeed a problem for filing IFR flight plans. Hence the hacks mentioned above.

It is not the whole story though. In reality one can get a route like this to validate

and then get a SFD-TRACA by asking for it. It is still a very strange structure, especially as practically no commercial traffic is likely to be in lower airspace in this area (fairly obvious from FR24).

Are there currently any countries which have free route airspace and are adjacent?

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

Are there currently any countries which have free route airspace and are adjacent?

The so-called “SECSI FRA” covers Slovenia, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro. And is available rather low level, actually H24, at South of Austria. I think the Austrian part is not H24.

At least in Hungary, it really works. I filed a FPL with route (with latlong point) to the entry of the traffic zone of a VFR-only airport (at something like circuit height plus 500 or 1000ft, I don’t remember exactly), it validated. In practice I voluntarily cancelled IFR a bit earlier, after ATC confirmed to me “no airspace/area to avoid from present position to airport”.

Last Edited by lionel at 04 Jan 12:58
ELLX
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