Clearly one must have a Plan B, which is outside controlled airspace (OCAS). Well, it could be doing a 180 and flying back home, but that’s not much use 
For me (flying in the UK) – Plan B actually is going to be CAS transit, and plan A is to go around. Usually I don’t plan it other than for training purposes..
Rationale – if I already have a plan to go around, why bother? ATC for a VFR PILOT are useless most of the time, sorry.
For Germany, Austria, Italy, France and Spain I always had very pleasant service as VFR pilot. I get a clearance to cross, practically any time I ask for it. O.K. I don’t ask for crossing, say, Frankfurt in FL70, which would not work due to the type of approach pattern here. But I regularly cross Stuttgart and Munich on VFR flight planned routes, and also often climb above FL100 which is CAS here. In my only experience for Croatia so far they didn’t want me to enter CAS, but excused it with high IFR traffic load. But if I am flying on a flight planned route, my plan A is actually to follow that plan and request crossing. But even without flight plan I don’t bother to ask if it is in my way. But if there is a way around it and it won’t cost me more than a minute to fly around it, then why not. Maybe my trick is, that I always ask way ahead, if it is possible. For example you can ask FIS for coordination, which works out great in Germany.
For here I actually don’t know what’s all about it, but there seem to be huge differences to the UK.
When it’s less efficient for distance & time, personally, I prefer when it’s wholly in CAS except one or two segments or wholly OCAS except one or two segments, the other configurations are a nightmare to handle
There is also weather mixtures, although, I have to admit once I am above sector altitude VFR in CAS, I request to fly an altitude such that I rarely have to request for heading changes
In general I plan straight lines when flying anywhere for a reason, but plan to avoid obvious “Barriers” like London/Paris/Frankfurt etc.
I also think the answer to this question is “It depends what country Im in”.
Regards, SD..
Sure; in France you normally do get a CAS transit (still have to look after yourself on RAs etc) except near Lyon or Nice, so I reckon people there really just forget Plan B. But everywhere else you do need Plan B.
In the UK, 2 busts later and 100% sure the CAA man would love to ground me because of my mentioning of this, I nowadays plan a flight to be all at a single level, OCAS, and flyable on autopilot. But in any case I would just fly Plan B and if I get a transit, that’s a bonus.
Depends on distance flown and type of CAS (not al CAS is the same):
- When going across half of Germany VFR below FL100, I’d typically plan around CAS as the additional time is negligible
- On shorter distances I’d not plan to cross Class C below FL100 around major airports as one typically doesn’t get the permission anyways.
- On very short distance (and hence at lower altitudes) I do plan with crossing ClassD/CTR (except in Frnakfurt) as you typically get it
Malibuflyer wrote:
I’d not plan to cross Class C below FL100 around major airports
Indeed, in busy Charlie VFR is separated from IFR, once I have layered IFR approach plates and MVA vectoring charts on SkyDemon, I can’t see how a transit would work other than having to descend to fly perpendicular to overhead runway axis at 1000ft agl just like flying the visual circuit for VFR departures/arrivals? I do expect it to work above FL100, if that is where SID/STAR flattens and hold stacks stop
Class D should be easy as no IFR/VFR separation is involved on ATC side but it may not be managed as such…
arj1 wrote:
For me (flying in the UK) – Plan B actually is going to be CAS transit, and plan A is to go around. Usually I don’t plan it other than for training purposes..
Rationale – if I already have a plan to go around, why bother? ATC for a VFR PILOT are useless most of the time, sorry.
+1 on this, especially any where near Bristol Hypergalactic Airport – whenever I’m heading north / south, I’ll always route past Bristol CAS to the east because to the west you’ve got Avonmouth – Indian country with cherokees everywhere – and further west is Cardiff. Since giving up LARS, Bristol has really become the pits in terms of access to CAS, so my plan B is actually plan A – route around CAS, it just doesn’t make sense to aim for it when those immortal words are uttered “remain OCAS due to controller workload”.
Really winds me up because if Hamburg, Düsseldorf or Stuttgart can grant crossings, why not Bristol? I’ve logged reports of when I’ve been denied access to CAS – after all, the word is CONTROLLED, not REFUSE ACCESS – but nothing happens….
Steve6443 wrote:
he word is CONTROLLED, not REFUSE ACCESS
:))) RAAS instead of CAS?
