Michal wrote:
I would not call it own clearance, I would call it VFR flight
Only if you file Z, otherwise you should be IFR from the takeoff.
I think my confusion came from the great G areas in other countries (up to FL95 I saw mentioned) where you can fly IFR long before you enter CAS.
Vladimir wrote:
So shortly said you give yourself your own clearance (meaning headings, speeds, altitudes) for the takeoff and initial climb until you reach a place where ATC will issue the real clearance and take over but as opposed to a Z flight you can go into IMC (hoping you won’t hit someone, the probabilities of which were discussed in the other threads).
Well, if you want to put it that way, yes.
But I really would not want to see that terminology used because you can only have a clearance in controlled airspace and at that point I am still in UNcontrolled airspace.
The principles I described are not UK specific at all.
Michal wrote:
I would not call it own clearance, I would call it VFR flight – you might remember, that´s the way you were told to fly during PPL training.
Absolutely not! If I enter IMC, this is real, serious IFR demanding the same kind of navigation and separation from obstacles as any IFR flight. Not the way you were told to fly during PPL training.
Actually even more serious than departure from an IFR airport since in such cases you are always ensured of obstacle clearance if you follow published departure procedures – or if none are published by climbing straight ahead to 400’ AGL before turning. If you take-off IFR from a VFR airport you have to construct your own departure procedure and make sure you don’t hit anything.
At my home airfield that is easy. Earlier this year, I made a flight to Oslo/Kjeller (ENKJ). At that place it is not so easy because of terrain and airspace. I had worked out in advance both how to safely fly an IFR departure and what to do in case I couldn’t get a clearance. Fortunately the weather was good, so I didn’t need it.
Peter wrote:
The principles I described are not UK specific at all.
If you don’t get a clearance from Shoreham, then I agree that the principles are not at all UK specific.
But in any other European country which permits IFR in class G, you would have got your full clearance to your destination before taking off from a towered airport. So in that sense it is UK specific.
What about the other variations which amount to the same situation e.g. a “Z” departure? Or an “I” departure with an unmanned tower (weekends in France, etc)?
Peter,
I also think that the term “provisional clearance” is problematic. Is that really the official UK term for that?
A clearance is predicated on controlled airspace, whereas what you mean is an instruction on how to fly whilst within uncontrolled airspace, in preparation for a later CAS join…
Vladimir wrote:
Only if you file Z, otherwise you should be IFR from the takeoff.
If I am departing from uncontrolled airport, I can´t file I flight plan, I need to with Z. G class with allowed IFR is out of my knowledge but I guess most of Europe has G with no IFR allowed so to get into E, C, D or whatever you need to travel through G first.
I am NOT IFR from the take-off, so I need to fly according to VFR. No “self declared clearance”, but a normal VFR flight – no matter how long it will take you to negotiate the IFR clearance with your controller. So I need to behave as a VFR flight, make my own separation from other traffic and if in E airspace I need to keep horizontal and vertical distance from cloud / not only stay out of them. Keeping distance from clouds is especially tricky but this is another discussion.
Reading my post again – the point is – which of European countries are allowing IFR in G? I think that´s creating the difference and high voice. CZ is not allowing IFR in G. What about others?
@Michal wasn’t it that with SERA IFR in G is allowed everywhere and only a few countries continue to prohibit it thus violating direct EU law?
Looking at the few that still try to prohibit it it seems that those are the same one where E starts very low. It does seem to me that it’s more a mindset issue. But then EU law is EU law … There might something cooking in the background.
Stephan_Schwab wrote:
@Michal wasn’t it that with SERA IFR in G is allowed everywhere and only a few countries continue to prohibit it thus violating direct EU law?
SERA is clear in that IFR in class G is permitted. It isn’t even that it is permitted by default, there is a paragraph (SERA.5025) which specifically deals with IFR in uncontrolled airspace.
