Am I the only one who notices the pilot eating and drinking like he doesn’t give a f*ck?
Am I the only one who notices the pilot eating and drinking like he doesn’t give a f*ck?
I thought the same. No way would I post a video showing that going on. It gives GA a really bad name.
JasonC wrote:
I always loved the respose a friend of mine gave to “what service do you require outside controlled airspace?” To which he replied “ The best you can offer!”
12 out of 10 
mega!!!!!!
I have sometimes said “the best I can get”
dublinpilot wrote:
The UK comes up with some really good procedures. The problem is that they are only applicable in the UK, so unless you’ve flown there before you don’t know them. And it’s not practical for pilots flying half way around the world to familiarise themselves with the local procedures for every country that they will overfly. The UK should try to get their idea’s passed at ICAO, and stick to ICAO procedures until they do that.
It would odd to expect a non-UK pilot to know any of that stuff when transiting the country. Otherwise, the ATC communication strikes me as remarkably and pleasantly polite, like a chat between friends, but slow and indirect.
I met Matt G. briefly after he landed upon completion of his record around the world flight. He was pretty cool and collected after flying 2500 solo miles non-stop over water from the middle of the Pacific. At that time I believe he was 19 and had been flying a grand total of two years.
I got a kick out of Shoreham asking them to report a 5 mile base entry!
A lot of their reactions to UK ATC were I’d guess intentionally making fun of the situation for the camera. It’s a funny video regardless of cause.
If they flew around the world they probably knew how to file a flight plan…
I will admit, as a North American, I was left speechless for a moment the first time I received a, “pass your message”. I guess it is analogous to ‘go ahead’, but just unexpected in the typical North American radio lexicon.
Same goes for the IFR call up. In Canada or the US a pre-filed flight plan is ‘on the system’. In North America, I wouldn’t hesitate to mention, “on a ‘vfr or ’ifr’ flight plan to XXXX”. I would expect the controller to find the plan, activate it or create a strip, give me a transponder code, and either query about flight following (vfr) or sort out the clearance (ifr). As North American ATC in each sector is joined up, you would be on your way to the destination XXXX… with your details passed to each unit as you go.
The UK is nutty in this respect. What is the point of an IFR plan if you keep getting dumped at the end of each controlled area… ? Oh well, it is how it is.
London Control uses Go Ahead. So does Shoreham ATC and others, at times. So I get the feeling that Pass Your Message is getting a lot of people rather bored
Europe (not just the UK) doesn’t have the US support for IFR popup clearances. The Eurocontrol system isn’t set up that way. It is set up for airline traffic which flies almost totally in CAS, end to end. The UK is more watertightly separated than most other places (you can do IFR in Class G, on your own if you like, but getting that elevated to CAS for the whole route is next to impossible, notwithstanding SERA supposedly making airborne filing capability mandatory) but really no different fundamentally. Europe is many countries, the USA is just one big one which is a big advantage.
The UK does have one unusual oddity: if you file a Eurocontrol IFR flight plan (I,Z,Y) and it isn’t “obviously in CAS” then London Control will throw it out. The action may not be obvious before you get airborne; it will be evident only when the first frequency (and possibly squawk) you get is some local unit, or London Info, rather than London Control. A visiting pilot would never realise that e.g. 124.60 is London Info and thus your IFR FP has been quietly binned. Then you have to complete your flight under VFR, OCAS (in IMC and other hazardous wx, as necessary) not least because nobody down the route knows about you. Other countries won’t bin the FP in this way (AFAIK) but still your ability to fly OCAS for a while and then ask for a climb to FLxxx will vary according to where you do this. ATC coordination (etc) may well make it impossible. That is why once I am sitting at say FL150 I tend to stay there even though it is VMC everywhere and FL100 would be more efficient. You may not get a climb but you almost never get forced to descend.
What they tried to do would not work as a normal procedure anywhere in Europe AFAIK. The ATC coordination isn’t in place. You could make it work piecemeal, which is what happened to them in the end.
Just because something “worked” around the world doesn’t mean it was done correctly for local procedures. ATC gets all kinds of pilots who are basically “lost” and they do their best (well, usually, sometimes they cannot understand the language) to help them. So if you do a post mortem on the flight, you might say it “worked” but actually it caused mayhem behind the scenes. These guys might have busted CAS etc but nobody is going to go after them because it’s very likely they are leaving the country pretty soon anyway. It is the locals who have an easy handle who get busted – or pilots who did something big e.g. busted an airshow prohibited area.
Wow, seems like a pretty bad system for GA.
Bad for “high altitude” IFR GA, yes. You have to plan the flight and fly it more or less as planned. But almost no European GA pilot has an IR, relatively speaking to VFR. So there isn’t much traffic. When you fly IFR you hear almost nobody else “GA” on the radio.
