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Brussels blocking UK from using EGNOS for LPV - and selection of alternates, and LPV versus +V

OK; what I am saying is that nominating an alternate which you could fly to if you had to is a no-brainer. It is not as if we are flying to Easter Island.

So the UK losing LPV doesn’t seem to me to have the legal issues mentioned. I’ve never had the slightest problem nominating UK alternates and usually have several of them.

A German magazine publisher has posted some potential info (google translate):

Of course, the ESSP also accepts applications for an EGNOS Working Agreement (EWA) from outside the EU. Otherwise LPVs in Norway, Switzerland or Serbia would not be possible. For this, the ANSP (ATC service provider) has to declare itself compliant with the Single European Sky (SES) regulation.
And exactly that – EU regulation through the back door – is of course a huge no-no in the UK at the moment. For political reasons, of course. In my opinion, GB could keep the EWAs alive, but they don’t want that.
It’s not even about money, by the way. Use of the EGNOS services is completely free. It’s about bureaucratic-political sandbox games.

So it would appear to come back to the UK not wanting to obey the ECJ, because that would nullify much of the brexit operation.

And it would then be utterly hilarious if the EU were willing to authorise the UK to use the “safety of life” signal certification for the £35M/year payment mentioned above IOW, Brussels would be authorising the ignoring of ECJ / Belgian law rulings (relating to the SES) for £35M. I wonder if any other deals are going cheap? I don’t believe Brussels were willing to do that for £35M.

Also it cannot possibly cost £5BN to set up your own SBAS, given you already have the ground faciliies up and working. And it cannot cost £1BN/year to run it. I can imagine the EU spending money on that scale, but that’s because that is what the EU does: it gets lots of countries involved, lots of people have massive get-togethers, big parties, lots of conferences, lots of writing specs so different firms can build different bits of it (like different bits of the Eurofighter) so everybody feels good about it… the EU has always strongly preferentially approved and funded collaborative projects, so everybody applying for the money would get together with some other outfit in another country even if you had no technical reason and no interest to work with them. The result is that everything costs 10x as much and takes 10x as long. No commercial project in a single country would be run that way. Also EGNOS was a part of Galileo which was a massive EU “we cannot depend on Americans for our security” prestige project, which except for the very small bit of EGNOS has become a while elephant which practically nobody uses or has a reason to use.

So, overall, I am not so surprised the UK walked away from this artificial money pit. It’s just a pity that the opportunity which some bits of UK GA had to improve on the back of it, have gone. And a few commercial ops will have higher minima, too.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

OK; what I am saying is that nominating an alternate which you could fly to if you had to is a no-brainer. It is not as if we are flying to Easter Island.

And then that alternate needs to have the minima of the second best possible approach. So if that approach is an ILS, you need the minima for a LOC (it becomes a non-precision) from one hour plus or minus the ETA at the alternate. Any temps, probs etc all need to be taken into account to be legal. What I’m trying to say is, it becomes pretty restrictive even for CAT.

LFHN - Bellegarde - Vouvray France

I learn something every day…

What if you have two alternates. Do you need to have a TAF for both of them at/above their LOC minima?

It is easy to have lots of alternates “in your head”.

I can see it may be harder for passenger jets given they fly with minimal fuel most of the time.

It will be interesting to watch this page in June

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

And then that alternate needs to have the minima of the second best possible approach. So if that approach is an ILS, you need the minima for a LOC (it becomes a non-precision) from one hour plus or minus the ETA at the alternate. Any temps, probs etc all need to be taken into account to be legal. What I’m trying to say is, it becomes pretty restrictive even for CAT.

Is there actually such a requirement under PART-NCO? I am well familiar with this as a PART-CAT requirement but I am not sure it exists for NCO.

CAT.OP.MPA.185 refers:

(c) Planning minima for a destination alternate aerodrome, isolated aerodrome, fuel en-route alternate (fuel ERA) aerodrome, en-route alternate (ERA) aerodrome

The operator shall only select an aerodrome for one of these purposes when the appropriate weather reports and/or forecasts indicate that, during a period commencing one hour before and ending one hour after the estimated time of arrival at the aerodrome, the weather conditions will be at or above the planning minima in Table 1.

What if you have two alternates. Do you need to have a TAF for both of them at/above their LOC minima?

Assuming you only legally require one alternate in the first place, then no. Not being able to meet the planning minima for our destination alternate is the most common reason we have for nominating a second alternate in the first place. So typically if we are flying to ‘A’, and our alternate is ‘Z’ but it has a CAT I ILS and its forecast 550m all day, then we would nominate a second alternate to comply with the planning minima requirements. Once in the air planning minima goes out the window and if we want to divert to ‘Z’ in 550m rvr then legally that’s allowable.

Last Edited by Pirho at 27 Feb 22:01
United Kingdom

In the US, there is no requirement for diverting to the filed alternate when a diversion is called for, it is simply a fuel planning and filing requirement.

KUZA, United States

@bookworm would know about the EASA regs in detail but we haven’t seen him for a long time.

I have never heard of a need to plan for the 2nd best approach at the alternate.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Here Part NCO IR local copy That was the planning bit.

Operationally

LFHN - Bellegarde - Vouvray France

Where is the part about having to choose the second best approach type?

I still don’t see how this affects flying to the UK. There are loads of places with an ILS, so you can nominate as many alternates as you want, and very few with LPV.

No doubt NATS thought the same way: if we are going to chuck LPV away [for the time being] may as well do it before lots more airports get it.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

Where is the part about having to choose the second best approach type?

Part-CAT has something like that but not part-NCO.

The document file @LFHNflightstudent refers to is a draft of part-NCO from the first air ops regulation from 2012 and should not be relied on in any way. Even if nothing was changed from the draft, there have been several updates to part-NCO since then.

NCO.OP.141 that he quotes is for helicopters.

For airplanes, the relevant part is the beginning of NCO.OP.140: “For IFR flights, the pilot-in-command shall specify at least one weather-permissible destination alternate aerodrome in the flight plan.”

“weather-permissible aerodrome” is defined as “an adequate aerodrome where, for the anticipated time of use, weather reports, or forecasts, or any combination thereof, indicate that the weather conditions will be at or above the required aerodrome operating minima, and the runway surface condition reports indicate that a safe landing will be possible;”

“adequate aerodrome” means that it is generally suitable for use for the particular aircraft, as regard runway length, runway load bearing capacity etc.

So there is at present no requirement for the wx at the alternate to be any better than required for some approach.

EASA has recognised that this is not really satisfactory and is planning to tighten up the planning wx requirements for alternates in a coming revision of part-NCO.

Personally, I’m using the planning minima from part-CAT – both for alternate and destination.

Last Edited by Airborne_Again at 28 Feb 08:51
ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

@bookworm would know about the EASA regs in detail but we haven’t seen him for a long time.

I’m still recovering from the thread where you claimed I had a full time paid job at EASA. 😀

I think you have settled the issues in this thread. The current Part-NCO rules have no planning increments for alternates. The Opinion related to NPA 2020-02 should be out soon, and will include planning minima, refined a bit vs the NPA, and not as restrictive as the FAA increments. They are based on the IAP available, with a ceiling increment and visibility minimum, not the “next one up” rule in Part CAT.

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