@JL_MT I’m curious about the circumstances of the lack of clearance to enter. Would you mind andwering:
1. Did you file a flight plan and what was the route filed?
2. Did you fly a filed route?
3. At what altitude did you try to cross there?
4. How long before reaching the airspace did you call with your request?
5. How exactly in terms of phrasing did you make your request?
6. Do you know if the airspace was very busy at that time?
With these questions I’m not implying you did anything wrong or anything, I’m just curious to know exactly how it happened.
@hazek of course:
1.- We always fly with a flight plan because it is required to operate in LEZL and to enter controlled airspace in Spain. Route sometimes yes, sometimes not, but it is not a factor.
2.- Answered about.
3.- Published 1000ft from crossing coastline. In the case of D airspace, typical VFR altitudes in the area 6k – 12kft.
4.- We always stay under ATC since departure and they always ask about your intentions when contacting the initial contact with APP after departure.
5.- Sincerely I do not remember, standard phraseology and even discussion from time to time when rejection does not make sense, it is standard day-by-day coms work sometimes as a flight instructor and other times as a private owner in a private flight.
6.- It does not matter, they do not want VFR traffic crossing nor entering D airspace.
As responsible for the flying club and the school I usually received all feedback from members and students and always been the same in the last years. The last one stayed for more than 20 minutes waiting in VRP for crossing and finally, they decided to avoid CTR by the south.
As I commented, this is a topic we are under discussion with ATC providers, especially for the not allowance to enter in D airspace as a VFR flight.
I hope this helps. Good look.
And as I commented before, if you are not familiarized with the area, plan your trip without entering in the CTR and avoiding D airspace, if finally you ask and received authorization, your have the lucky day, if not, continue enjoying the views as planned ;).
Jl
Yeah, that helps thank you. Of course this is unacceptable practice given the regulations. However looking at the charts I do find that their CTR seems like quite out of the way for any sensible route to fly anywhere so could be they just don’t want sight seeing flights. But the regulations are clear, their job is to provide safe and efficient flight and the only reason they can refuse entry is if they’re reaching controller capacity.
I do wonder how they handle a VFR flight behaving like an IFR flight at say FL75.
Thanks for all your info @JL_TM.
I’m a regular flyer to, and thru, Spain, and my experience is the same, though not restricted to Malaga. Trying to cross the CTR/TMA of the big ones in Spain is declined most of the time, pro R/T, FPL, etc, or not. Not sure this is due to internal ATC rules, the sometimes heavy traffic, or just the sympathy of ATC towards VFR flyers.
OTOH it sometimes works, as it did last year, took off from Mutxamel LEMU and headed Southwest, for a coast following flight towards Malaga LEMG. Climbed to 4Kft, contacted Alicante LEAL for crossing, position report (position, as in 7 miles North of the field 4’000ft 10.. (and not a time report such as 2 minutes to your field, or whatever is heard every other day…)), and the request. They were quite busy, told to hold at position and altitude. After 5 minutes told to cross 1 mile West of the field behind the RyanAir on finals. Descended to 1’000 for the rest of the coast following, and cleared by the VFR reporting points thru Murcia/San Javier, Almeria, and later overhead Granada, en route to a northerly destination.
Having a plan B (or even C) is always a good idea, the more so when VFR flying 
@Dan This is what I meant by behaving as an IFR. It means using the correct phraseology for position reporting and flying a straight and level route. If you’re all over the place and appear as if without a plan of course they will not let you in. I experienced a VFR pilot getting into C airspace in France that if I was the controller I also wouldn’t let him in the way he sounded on the radio. When you have IFR traffic to take care of you don’t want some wild card guy trotting around your airspace unpredictably.
Would be interesting to gather more data points and approach trying to cross in different ways.
This could be a good discussion and a new topic, “Why do ATC providers when designing airspace use a type of airspace and later on in real operation do not apply their rules following SERA?” (Marketing in terms of statistics of A/B airspace vs others?)
For example, by default, Spanish ATC does not allow to enter D space to VFR flights in Malaga and Barcelona, something that is again SERA. In German same with C airspace FL100 above (although they are flexible if see you are professional in the topic), etc… In the end, the result is that you can not plan a flight without knowing the “local procedures” which are not written anywhere. That is frustrating for a lot of no-experience (and experience) pilots special under VFR. I sincerely prefer to fly under IFR rules in Europe because I know what to expect.
We are working with ATC provider (ENAIRE) on this topic, but it is not easy to change the inertia of the system.
JL
JL_TM wrote:
I sincerely prefer to fly under IFR rules in Europe because I know what to expect.
The problem, as I have identified it based on my own experience, is the inadequate PPL training. PPL can be obtained without much exposure to controlled airspace, and the training requires knowledge of dead reckoning navigation but not practical navigation (such as which points to plan your flight along, which altitudes, etc.) and totally ignores the topic of transiting controlled airspace, other than mentioning that you can try but should always have an alternate plan.
I had to do much more reading and digging, and watch other pilots who fly VFR in Europe and record and publish their flights, to learn how to approach this topic. I also had to ask numerous questions of AIS and ATC that I know locally. Thankfully, I trained at an international airport, which is obviously controlled and surrounded by controlled airspace, so I got plenty of experience talking to ATC, which helped tremendously in preparing me to know how to fly VFR in controlled airspace. It’s only when one learns to fly IFR for their IR that this is actually taught.
And so, naturally, all of this shows in most VFR pilots. Controllers are people too, and a few bad experiences of letting someone into their airspace, then having a headache while they transit and do everything possible “wrong”, naturally affects their perception of VFR flights to the point that they would rather invent an illegal policy just to not have to deal with it.
I’m still waiting for the first time I will get refused a transit. So far, in Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, and Austria, I haven’t had that happen to me, except once for Munich TMA, where our planned flight would cut the corner of it. That I can totally understand, and it wasn’t much of a difference for us.
hazek wrote:
Controllers are people too, and a few bad experiences of letting someone into their airspace, then having a headache while they transit and do everything possible “wrong”, naturally affects their perception of VFR flights to the point that they would rather invent an illegal policy just to not have to deal with it.
Very good analysis @hazek, and my perception too.
You are also right in saying most of the proper radio and nav work is taught only when going thru an IR (though I sometimes wonder here too). And it should not be so.
Regarding the radio, my observation is that for most people, including controllers, English is a 2nd (3rd?) language. Private (and some pro…) pilots often don’t realise the importance of learning the language of aviation. I will not even attempt rising the issue of language opposition as preached in certain big European countries…
Airspace class recognition is another fundamental that seems to be missing for most. I observe too many pilots getting a clearance thru say class C airspace and not realising that this airspace is controlled, also for them. And that any deviation is to be requested from ATC. I heard some changing altitude or direction (for example in the Lyon TMA, R/T exchange in French) before being reprimanded, sometimes several times. Actions of the few, ruin it for the many.
When I started flying too long ago, the minimum training for a PPL was 35 hours. It was later raised to 45 to cover radio-navigation and cross-country practice. No clue about the minimum syllabus today, and what is being taught, but the results are clearly disappointing.
Dan wrote:
my observation is that for most people, including controllers, English is a 2nd (3rd?) language.
That’s a point that I’ve noticed in the past also. I shared a flight through France many years ago with another pilot. When the pilot called ATC (just an initial contact call) it was ignored a number of times. I suggested to him that English wasn’t the controllers first language and that they probably weren’t used to Irish accents, so he might be better off slowing down his speech, particularly the call sign. But he couldn’t really help himself and kept running (at least some of ) the letters of the call sign together. He never got a reply from ATC.
I then asked if he’d like me to try, and the only thing I did differently was say the call sign letter by letter with a short pause between each one. Much to my friends dismay, I got a response on the first call and we had no problems after that. I just had to speak slowly.
I think people forget that it’s not the controller’s first language, and despite having competency in the language, accents do make things harder. As a native English speaker, I have heard other native English speakers, speak English (in person) and struggled to understand them. For someone for whom English is a second (or third language), who might not be used to the accents and listening to it over the crappy radios we have in aviation, it’s got to be hard.
Well, looks like things have changed quite a bit since my time in Malaga, and, as unfortunately usual for GA in Europe, not for the better. Bummer.
