FIR Handover - France or Belgium to London Info

I think you should file FCS1522 and MOR every time it happens. Might not change anything but at least the CAA wouldn’t be able to claim they are not aware of the issue.

Xtophe wrote:

I think you should file FCS1522 and MOR every time it happens. Might not change anything but at least the CAA wouldn’t be able to claim they are not aware of the issue.

@pilotrobbie, please see above. CAA people usually gives that advice to absolutely everyone. PLEASE file one. Even if you think that the CAS entry was denied justly, still do, as this raises the visibility of an issue.

UK CAA and UK ATC are 100% totally aware. This has come up on social media many times, and UK GA social media is dominated by CAA/NATS/ATC people

Yes; definitely file 1522 every time, but you will probably be the only one who bothers.

There was a bit of stammering, followed by I’ll call you back" A few minutes later he came back on and said contact Exeter when in range. I thought at the time it was a bit weird that he did not give me a frequency. But I found one, did as requested and there was no problem.

You had no IFR clearance at the time, as far as the UK is concerned The ATCO knew that but could not say it openly. However, the CAA is, based on what I’ve seen, not likely to bust a foreign based pilot, especially in dodgy circumstances like these.

So do I read this correctly that a foreign reg (happily keeping my YR reg) can result in better service? I would not doubt this if true, and it’s one of the reasons I keep the Romanian reg in NL. I’m foreign everywhere I go, and ATC seem more eager to help me than when I’m flying a club PH reg.

I doubt it has to do with the reg per say? but it seems to do with aircraft based in some airfields that are not connected by airspace/radar, if you are “visiting in exotic reg”, en-route ATC may try to keep you all the way rather than “losing you”, if you are flying local G-reg/N-reg ATC know that you can find your own way, so they dump you out ASAP !

Only heuristics, on F-reg, I have flown on radar service all the way to one grass strip and got the most easy pick up on takeoff the next day (cleared direct LYD on phone on the ground)

On G-reg/N-reg based nearby London, you get used to hear: remain outside airspace and radar service terminated, unless you have lot of money and you can afford operating from Biggin, Southend or Farbrough

Same if you live in Shoreham

pilotrobbie wrote:

Whilst I am not totally against filling an FCS1522 and MOR, surely there is a better way at solving this?

There might be. But unless you file, there is no problem! So, please do.
Thanks!

pilotrobbie wrote:

surely there is a better way at solving this

Well I’m not sure. What do you propose?
You made phone calls to London ATC. Conveniently it was the fault of Lille. So maybe you need to fill a French MOR as well ;)

The LoA are not in the AIP. It is an agreement between ATC unit. It should be transparent to pilot and not put secret unpublished restriction on pilots.

The thing is that if you are on a normal Eurocontrol IFR flight, and Lille hand you over to London Info, it means that something has already happened in the system to discard your IFR clearance. So not handing you over to London Control doesn’t cause any problem. LC are already not expecting you.

So this is a coordinated action. It isn’t just the UK end which is broken. It is some procedure agreed between UK and France. The French are merely operating their end of the agreement.

The fact that nobody from “the system” has posted anything shows that whatever is happening, is confidential.

Normally, if some ATC unit is supposed to hand you over to LC but doesn’t, it means that they phoned LC and LC refused to accept the flight. This happens regularly on Shoreham departures if one files for some “half serious” level like FL070. Somebody at LC looks at the FP and decides you won’t be in CAS for long enough to make it worth their while. An exception seems to be a flight with an EXAMxx callsign; they know the FTO examiner is expecting a bit of Class A because the test includes doing the radio in Class A. The unit then cannot issue the usual provisional IFR clearance (txp code, LC frequency, etc) and tells you to call up Farnborough or whatever. That situation is non-recoverable as your IFR FP has already been binned and you are just a VFR OCAS flight.

In the case of the Lille → London Info handover, I am pretty sure that Lille did not phone up LC and is merely operating a standing agreement.

This has been extensively discussed in the thread linked above. UK ATC pretends this is a good system, beat you up if appropriate (the CAA/NATS social media policy is suspended if a pilot is getting beaten up) and everything carries on because it is all due to funding so is 100% political.

Peter wrote:

So this is a coordinated action. It isn’t just the UK end which is broken. It is some procedure agreed between UK and France. The French are merely operating their end of the agreement.

Peter wrote:

In the case of the Lille → London Info handover, I am pretty sure that Lille did not phone up LC and is merely operating a standing agreement.

Can we know for sure whether they actually tried or not? It may be that there’s an agreement of the sort they wouldn’t want you to know about (LC ask Lille to dump stuff OCAS to reduce workload for LC) or it may be that they are supposed to hand them over and they try, and LC say unable, or it perhaps they’re supposed to hand them over and deliberately don’t. Who knows? In the latter case, perhaps it’s national politics – treating the UK as the ‘third world’ and demonstrating that it isn’t joined to the main Eurocontrol system?

I would favour the first option. ATC operational policy is generally for the convenience of ATC. CAT gets a look in, but GA certainly doesn’t, and in the UK with ATC privatised they can operate any policy they want in something approaching secrecy/denial – they’re able to keep the relevant parts of their written procedures under wraps as they are ‘commercially confidential’. Just look at the Channel Islands Class D – to make life easier for ATC they divide it in two at 2,000ft and, unless pushed on the matter, stuff all VFR below that hard deck so they can leave it to self-separate and forget about it. No-one will admit that’s the policy though, no more than anyone will admit that LC throw out flight plans that aren’t decisively in Class A or that they dump IFR traffic out of CAS with a silent and implicit cancellation of their en-route IFR clearance.

A question. If you’re approaching the FIR bounday and Lille tell you to contact London 124.6, what happens if you reply “Negative, G-XX is on an IFR flightplan and requires handover to London Control to continue flight in Class A as planned” ?