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Eurocontrol CTOT / airport slot assignments for light GA and how to get around them

Peter wrote:

ATC calling in sick or going on strike probably results in a CTOT for everybody, no? If not, their algorithm is poor because light GA at say FL150 is going to be no issue at all operationally.

A sector has a fixed capacity for a certain number of aircraft. The slots are calculated so that at no time this capacity is exceeded using the trajectory calculation of the Eurocontrol system. Certain sectors in Switzerland have an extremely low capacity limit. Also there are sectors of large vertical extent — simply because GA is no factor and there the 9 B747 + 1 TB20 15k feet below can lead to a sector being switched to flow control. Yes, that is poorly designed but chopping up a sector means work and given that there are very few GA aircraft, they (= the countries, not Eurocontrol) don’t bother. Switzerland should improve but Skyguide is generally not among the top performers in the Eurocontrol performance reports…

As I mentioned my guess is that RPLs are in front of the queue and when looking at the Zurich sector, I assume > 80% are on RPLs.

Lately I’ve flown frequently into Friedrichshafen EDNY via DITON and seen the CTOT citing congestion there. Must be one of those sectors.

I then changed my route a bit and the problem went away. It really is the Zurich area that appears overloaded. And when flying through there I have big planes above and below me within 1000 ft. It’s a smaller world there.

Frequent travels around Europe

From here

The requirement to obtain slots for IFR stems from an airport having the status of Coordinated Level 3. This is common throughout Europe (see recent discussions about Greece). It is not something from the airport but from ATC and is supposed to help manage approach capacity. Germany has been practising this for many years at its most congested airports and everybody who doesn’t have a time matching slot in his/her flight plan gets a nasty message threatening fines up to 50k€ (automatically forwarded by autorouter nowadays…).

If you file a Y/Z plan with a flight rule change to VFR at any point before the IAP, you do not need a slot. You are also not cheating the system but you are playing by the rules. With you being IFR, you take capacity of the approach sector which could then enter flow control mode and cause delays. As IFR traffic you are separated from other IFR traffic which means you take a lot of space and time. If you are VFR, there is no separation between you and other IFR traffic so the airspace capacity that you take becomes zero (airspace C/D). They still have you on RADAR and make sure you don’t cross any flight paths but they don’t have to respect separation minima for that anymore. They would just vector you to somewhere practical, wait for the right moment and then send you towards the airport where you can approach with a traffic pattern and only cross the IFR procedure after your base turn.

So yes, if the weather is good, do ATC a favor and file a Y/Z plan with a flight rule change.

Last Edited by achimha at 02 Sep 12:52

Perfect explanation, Achim, many thanks for help

Berlin, Germany

Achim, your explanation is only partly right. With a single runway you still have to plan for a gap in the IFR inbound flow. It doesn´t matter if somebody does a visual approach (IFR) or flies the same approach VFR. A full IFR approach at 90kts of course is more disturbing of course.
As ATC however we don´t check if somebody has an airport slot, at least not where I work. If we see too much traffic in a period of time we call NMOC and let them regulate the traffic (issue slots).
Also, unlike in the US, we have to provide standard separation between VFR and IFR traffic in airspace C.

EDFE, EDFZ, KMYF, Germany

Would it be correct that if you change an IFR flight to VFR at the destination country border, or earlier (by filing a Y flight plan) you cannot get a slot as a result of anything in that country?

This is what I have been told recently, but I wonder if it is true.

For example in the current Greek (Fraport purchase of many Greek airports) situation we have PPR (the usual thing, issued by the handler) and slots (issued by some central Fraport office). The PPR takes a day or two, the slots can take longer and thus scupper your plans.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

Would it be correct that if you change an IFR flight to VFR at the destination country border, or earlier (by filing a Y flight plan) you cannot get a slot as a result of anything in that country?

Yes. Slots (CTOTs) result from certain sectors being under flow control, i.e. above maximum capacity. If you are not IFR according to the flight plan inside that sector, you cannot get a CTOT because of that.

autorouter shows you the names of the regulations that cause your CTOT (other solutions don’t). The intention is to allow you to determine where it comes from. This is also why we visualize delays on the map with color shading. More than once I have changed my flight plan to get rid of a slot using this information.

Don’t mix CTOTs and airport slot requirements please. They have nothing to do with each other even though they both serve the purpose of managing capacity.

Last Edited by achimha at 03 Sep 06:15

Peter wrote:

For example in the current Greek (Fraport purchase of many Greek airports) situation we have PPR (the usual thing, issued by the handler) and slots (issued by some central Fraport office). The PPR takes a day or two, the slots can take longer and thus scupper your plans.

These are Airport slots and nothing to do with IFR VFR or sectors.

EGTK Oxford

Is there any possibilty to request a slot for the ifr flight directley out of autorouter or any other flightplaning-/routingtool?
The only thing I know is to put a rmk into the dfs flightplan and the nice guys there will arrange everything with the slot.
Going out of EDDS ir a slot is always necessary.

EDDS , Germany

These are Airport slots and nothing to do with IFR VFR or sectors.

How would an airport slot be dealt with? Is there any way to avoid it? Again, in the Greek situation, it seems to be taking 2-3 days to get one of these.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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