Thats the interesting bit. Repeating CE NATS’ comments:
Comprehensive impact assessments are rarely done and when they are, they fail to take into account the wider implications. For example, EASA’s aim to grant GA traffic greater access to IFR airspace is a fine notion in principle, but no consideration is given to the impact on commercial airline capacity and whether ANSPs will then be able to meet the requirements of the performance scheme. This kind of approach is driving the wrong behaviours and creating perverse outcomes.
To me he’s saying that the regulators are being naive – “What do you want, more integration or higher efficiency? You can’t have both with your current models and/or structures”.
If GA is that small compared to CAT (tens of millions vs tens of thousands), then why NATS is complaining about “the impact on commercial airline capacity”?
Tough personally, I prefer a two systems solutions with generous GA access to IFR airspace, like many challenges in life you can’t just leave it “free market and relative size forces”, you need to have some “principal/moral incentives” and the right “top executives attitude”, the rest will take care by itself: you don’t want rules/attitude to ban GA from flying above FL180 simple physics/economics will do that for you 
If GA gets too much IFR airspace access to create a big impact on CAT capacity and safety concerns, then it would make sense to apply the same heavy stuff from CAT to GA as well (e.g. triple mode-S, part-CAT/NCO…), on ATC workload from GA, lot of it can be solved by smart traffic management systems but that is more for GA to take on-board rather than NATS/EASA to push for it, so the “blame story” is also one sided as well (a big bulk of GA does not want IFR airspace neither, still will always blame it on NATS/ATC )
Dave – there seems to be a long historic tradition of ex-military in both CAA and NATS, as far as I know. It’s either that or political appointees with no aviation background at all. Which is even worse. When was the last person you heard of from a GA background in either organization?
The solution is simple – NATS only gets paid by each movement they service, no matter what it is. That’s what solved it in the US. Used to be you couldn’t get service at all VFR, now they’re falling over themselves to flight follow you and give you a squawk. Because they earn money doing so.
BTW, GA contributes through UK fuel tax to the aviation system, which the airlines do not. This figure doesn’t show up on the NATS books directly, but it’s not correct to say that GA does not contribute to NATS – they very much do so by alleviating other costs in the aviation eco system that would otherwise have to be carried by NATS little darlings.
AdamFrisch wrote:
Dave – there seems to be a long historic tradition of ex-military in both CAA and NATS, as far as I know.
Well, there’s history and then there’s fact. :)
NATS paid per movement. For sure. We would then find that we would be charged per movement, regardless of weight (2000kg) or Flight Rules.
Hypothecation of fuel duty – a long versed argument and is very much an International (ICAO?) thing. I think it’s also important to differentiate between Duty (ie customs, import/export stuff) and tax (VAT). UK duty on aviation fuels right now is about £0.53 for Jet and £0.37 for AVGAS.
…which goes right into the State’s giant debt hole. ANSPs get nothing of this.
and VAT goes on top of the duty.
I don’t follow the argument that nats being paid per movement should mean that we should be charged per movement. Is this not double booking the same item?
If the government funds a GP per patient seen then this follows that the patient would be charged per visit too regardless of their mass?
AdamFrisch wrote:
The solution is simple – NATS only gets paid by each movement they service, no matter what it is. That’s what solved it in the US. Used to be you couldn’t get service at all VFR, now they’re falling over themselves to flight follow you and give you a squawk. Because they earn money doing so.
Well, I never had a problem getting flight following in the US, IIRC it was denied only on one occasion and on that day the frequency was even crazier than it usually is in and around L.A.
Anyway, reading this thread there just seems to be something fundamentally wrong with UK ATC. Just yesterday I asked for and received a practice RNAV approach into KHHR. This airport sits right next to LAX and the approach is handled by the same controller who deals with the final approaches into the LAX south complex arrivals. IOW – a crazily busy frequency. For those unfamiliar: just imagine an EGLL controller handing practice approaches to an airfield that sits about 1 Nm south of the final approach path.
It is certainly generally true that all / most national CAAs have been the traditional destination for retiring Air Force personnel.
In some places this manifests itself in some funny attitudes (quite macho / dictatorial attitudes if these guys end up as aeroclub presidents, as they often do in certain countries) though it is by no means universal as some I have met are really great.
However the CAA has been mostly pro-GA. In recent years they have suffered a huge exodus of people (largely due to EASA taking over a lot of stuff) and it is always the most competent who jump off the ship first. So today’s CAA is a lumbering old wreck now, taking months to process a simple piece of paper. They still haven’t done my IR for which I did the flight in August…
The problem is with NATS – the subject of this topic. If you go to one of their presentations (and I have done a number of these) you need to bring some razor blades with you. They are utterly depressing, in the totally superior arrogant tone. They do a good job overall but I think this is because they have lots of competent people lower down, at the “coalface”, if not at the top management. For example I think London Control is the most competent/professional ATC bunch anywhere. It is also clearly a highly political organisation (to be fair, I have never known a large company that isn’t highly political) and this comes through in the “corporate bullsh1t” that comes out. I am told NATS really wanted universal route charges i.e. IFR below 2T, and in the UK VFR gets no assured service (well not from NATS, for sure) so probably not from VFR.
Europe’s light GA IFR traffic (in the Eurocontrol system) is negligible. I doubt there is more than a few k IR holders in all of Europe and their average annual hours are probably around 50. This is obvious when you fly somewhere, across Europe, on the radio. Lots of bizjets but almost no light GA. It is easy to do a 700nm flight and not hear a single light GA contact. So I cannot believe this is a current issue with a bearing on ATC capacity, in any airspace in Europe.
EASA and some GA rep bodies may believe that somehow European light GA can expand its IFR movements, but – we have done this here in many threads – I don’t believe this can happen, due to many reasons e.g. the difficult IR (the CB IR has made almost no difference, due to the exams and the FTO restrictive practice requirement), the lack of airports, airport opening times, ease of driving within central Europe which is a really small place, etc, etc. The US IFR scene is much bigger, for many reasons which will never happen over here.
On mid-level en-route frequencies, it is pretty obvious – jets and turboprops check in and get climb clearances to FL250+, while light GA typically cruises below FL200.
