Gloucester EGBJ to Belfast City EGAC

I’ve been struggling to get excited about flying within the UK lately. I feel like I’ve visited most of the places that I’d like to visit. I am looking forward to being able to easily travel to mainland Europe again. The hassle of covid tests is enough to put me off a day trip, it’s simply not worth it. But of course I want to keep current, and I do enjoy flying, so I’ve been trying to come up with new destinations to explore. Last week we settled on Belfast. I hadn’t been to Belfast for 20 years and was keen to see how it has transformed. Being in Northern Ireland, part of the UK, no covid tests or certificates are needed, it’s as simple as flying anywhere else in the UK. Yet because it’s ‘across the water’, it feels like a great destination for GA, because flying would take 1.5 hours whereas driving & taking a ferry would take the best part of a day.

There are three airfields for Belfast. Newtonards EGAD, Belfast City EGAC, and Belfast Aldergrove EGAA.

Newtownards is GA friendly and has cheap landing fees, but is a 30 minute taxi to the centre of Belfast. Aldergrove and Belfast City are both international airports with commercial passenger traffic and have similar (high!) fees as each other. Aldergrove is also about a 30 minute taxi in to town, whereas Belfast City is very central, easily walkable in to town or a 5 minute taxi ride if it’s raining.

We settled on Belfast City, it’s central location being the main attraction, meaning we would spend less time travelling and more time enjoying the city.

GA Handling at Belfast City is done by AV Flight. I emailed them in advance to get the latest fee information, and they confirmed it would be £131.70 all-in for a day trip in the TB20. This breaks down as:

• Landing fee – £49.05
• Parking (24 hours) – £15.70
• Handling – £45

This is quite a lot more than I’d normally pay, but given the central location and saving time and money on taxis, thought I’d give it a go. Use it or lose it, as they say.

I filed a VFR flightplan, and emailed AV flight to confirm everything. Even though a GAR form is not technically required, because both EGBJ and EGAC are Police Designated, they insisted on them anyway. Despite me protesting about it not being required, they said that if I don’t file one in advance, Border Force would simply meet us on arrival and delay us by requesting the details in person. As that would take valuable time out of our daytrip, I reluctantly obliged and submitted a GAR for both legs, which made them happy. So much for handling making life easier!

I planned to route basically direct EGBJ to EGAC at FL100, but there are some airspace considerations:

• Y911 TMZ – Scottish Control – Class E so no clearance required for VFR
• Isle of Man CTR – Ronaldsway Approach – Class D
• Strangford CTA – Scottish Control – Class D
• Belfast TMA – Aldergrove Approach – Class D
• Belfast City CTA/CTR – Belfast City Approach – Class D

All of that is in a short space of time, and I was a little concerned by the number of different controlling stations, particularly as the airspace adjoins each other, and that in the UK you’re lucky if you get a co-ordinated handover from one agency to the next. That said, I thought I’d give it a try, and had a plan B to route slightly more West and lower after the IOM to simplify things if it was proving difficult to get clearance.

On the morning of departure, the weather was pretty good for the UK – 10km+ vis, few at 2200, temp 17, dew point 13, wind varying between 160 and 230 degrees at 4 knots. The TAF for Belfast City was promising too – PROB30 some heavy rain later in the afternoon, and a rather gusty 15 → 27 knot wind, but apart from that all good.

We filled the tanks before departing Gloucester, departed from runway 27 and turned on course for Belfast.

Climbing en route.

Initially I called Shawbury Approach (LARS) for a traffic service, although as usual at FL100 there was virtually nothing reported. Shawbury handed me to Valley, who I stayed with until coasting out. They were unable to hand me over to Ronaldsway so I freecalled them and got a traffic service.

Anglesey.

I was alerted to two military jets 500 ft above, crossing right to left, which I spotted fairly quickly. It was fun to see them zoom past!

I asked Ronaldsway if they could co-ordinate the clearances and handovers for my intending routing. They happily obliged and after a few minutes they confirmed I had been cleared to enter the Strangford CTA by Scottish Control, then passed me over to them. Shortly afterwards, Scottish passed me to Aldergrove Approach for the TMA, who weren’t remotely interested and told me to contact Belfast City approach almost immediately. Lots of frequency changes in quick succession but clearances were all forthcoming very quickly and it was a very easy and pleasant experience – not the uncoordinated mess I had worried about!

Langford Lough, descending for the approach to Belfast City.

The ATIS at Belfast City confirmed runway 22 in use, wind 170 degrees at 15 gusting 27 knots. Belfast City cleared me to enter their zone heading for Stormont, which I could not see on Skydemon nor did I know what to look for visually, so I asked for (and was given) a heading. The Tower controller wanted to know how many miles I wanted for final approach, to which I replied 1 – 2 would be fine. On that basis, he made me number 1 ahead of a Ryanair 737 who was on a 15 mile final, and cleared me to land whilst I was still downwind. The landing was gusty as expected and needed a lot of concentration, but the TB20 really does well in these conditions and everything worked out well. Total airborne time 1 hour 35 minutes. After landing, a short taxi to the GA Apron, where the handlers from AV Flight were waiting in a Mercedes people carrier. We received a warm greeting and they drove us the 500m or so to the passenger terminal and escorted us through to the landside exit.

We took a taxi to Belfast Cathedral, which took no more than 5 minutes. We had a stroll around the area before heading to the Home Restaurant, which I had booked for lunch.

Lunch was great. The menu is a mixture of Asian fusion and home classics. I enjoyed the Shiitake & ginger wontons to start, followed by a delicious chickpea and sweet potato dahl. It was very filling so I skipped desert and commenced a long afternoon exploring the city.

First stop: the botanical gardens, a twenty minute walk to the south of the city. The gardens have a number of indoor ‘tropical ravines’ (warm greenhouses!) but these were closed due to covid. Still, walking around the outside gardens was a very pleasant way to spend half an hour. The Ulster Museum is also located here, but the [free] tickets need to be booked in advance due to covid, so we didn’t get to look around.

Belfast College.

City Hall.

After the garden stroll, I walked back to the city centre to explore the Cathedral Quarter, which tripadvisor describes as the cosmopolitan and upmarket part of Belfast. When I arrived, I had to double and triple check my location on Google Maps because it looked neither cosmopolitan nor upmarket, but I was indeed in the right place! There are lots of typical budget stores there, the things you’d see in any UK high street. That said, there is a fairly new shopping mall called Victoria Square, which does have more upmarket brands including Apple, Hugo Boss, Reiss, etc and it’s architecturally interesting being part outdoor and part indoor.

The Big Fish – a 10m salmon. The blue scales are made up of ceramic tiles describing different scenes from the city’s history.

From there, I walked to the AC Hotel, on the west side of the docks, to the first stop of the Glass of Thrones trail

To celebrate 10 years of filming in Northern Ireland, Tourism Ireland created six giant, stained glass windows depicting some of the most iconic scenes from Game of Thrones and spread them across the dock quarter on a 2.5km walking trail.

The walking trail provided an enjoyable hour or so of strolling around the docks, getting a feel for Belfast’s historic past and it’s modern future. The stained glass is great!

Towards the end of the trail, you walk past the Titanic museum. I hadn’t pre-booked tickets so couldn’t go in, but the building itself looked great and seemed very popular with tourists. I did manage to go inside for a coffee in the cafe and had a look around the gift shop, which was full of titanic memorabilia.

Belfast Docks, with the Titanic museum on the right.

A funky solar bench, which also functions as a wireless phone charger!

Marina

Titanic installation

HMS Caroline – a floating museum.

From there it was back to the airport. Upon entering the main passenger terminal, I had to phone the handling company so they could meet and escort us through the terminal. We were taken through the fast track security, but still had to do the usual faff you get at a passenger airport like this – belt off, pockets empty, through the x-ray machine etc, but thankfully this was a quick process and within minutes we were back in the Mercedes van going to AV Flight’s office/lounge.

The two staff there were incredibly friendly and also very efficient. The lounge there was fairly basic but clean and functional, and featured a fridge with soft drinks and some crisps and biscuit type snacks, all of which were complimentary.

We paid up, and walked outside to our plane. (Parked behind an Aer Lingus jet!)

Our departure was quick – no waiting for commercial traffic – and we were on our way back to Gloucester in a flash.

I’m glad to have visited Belfast, I particularly enjoyed the walking trail and exploring the docks. With steep fees, I don’t think I’ll be rushing back for a leisure visit anytime soon, but I’m glad to have visited and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who needs to get to Belfast. The location of Belfast City airport can not be beaten..