FIR Handover - France or Belgium to London Info

pilotrobbie wrote:

I still think the issue is a procedural one or an issue with how the LoA works, rather than a political one of not wanting GA to access the LTCC area, because they’d be preventing Stapleford, Denham, Oxford & Shoreham etc

I think it’s very ATC specific, depending on who you talk to, for sure when flying to Biggin or getting handed over to Thames/Southend on the way to Stapleford you tend to get the red carpet, going IFR to Elstree is way more interesting, I will pay your fuel to L2K if you can predict where you will join & leave

pilotrobbie wrote:

From experience (forgetting all outbound departures, where 100% of the flights have allowed CAS entry) – ATC have pretty much asked me what I want to do and given it. They even let you change over frequency once they have issued a descent out of CAS (whilst your still in CAS).

Don’t change to 7000 though

I guess the quality of service is very relative, maybe worth having few legs in Scotland, France & Belgium, US? as benchmark to get an idea of where the bar sits on how you get treated under IFR?

The other thing is consistency, you will have load of flights with no issues then one day it goes badly for no reason

In France on an IFPL inside or outside CAS doesn’t make a lot of difference as far as French ATS is concerned, as long as you are flying what has been filed or what changes that you have agreed with ATS.
According to my ACC friend if London Control will not accept you even with changes in altitude or route, suggested by the ATSO in France, then there is little or nothing they can do about it. Although I believe it is marked in a book as aircraft not accepted, nowadays.
He has no idea how the UK system works, but had heard rumours of flight plans being binned by London Info (possibly from me telling him what has been written on this forum 🙂) He had also heard about difficulties experienced when the IFPL takes the aircraft out and back into CAS.(That one was not from me).
AFAIK the 2 groups meet at managerial level quite regularly, so maybe things will change.

The major difference is that in France the whole ATC system is joined up – so as you say inside or outside CAS doesn’t make much difference because it’s the same system looking after you.

In the UK there are two parallel systems:

1. The Class A system connected to the major airports and their Class D control zones. This is where commercial traffic and ‘professional pilots’ (i.e. those with an IR) are looked after.

2. The Class G system where you are entitled to nothing. ICAO obligations are complied with via London Information (non-radar) and then a bolt-on to that is the Lower Airspace Radar Service (LARS) which does not cover the whole country and is significantly reduced outside Mon-Fri 9-5 because much of it is military. Also you may or may not get a service from a random airport with radar that you happen to be passing, but that is really for their benefit rather than yours and you’re not entitled to it.

Obviously some IFR traffic needs to pass between the two systems. Solutions are easily workable for those going from G to A shortly after departure or A to G shortly before arrival, but there is no process for ad-hoc transition from G to A (i.e. when they are not expecting you) or for dealing with flights that pass from A to G but need to go back to A later on – i.e. you get ‘dumped’.

It won’t change unless/until the UK addresses the ATC funding issue and the politics around reserving a lot of airspace for ‘professionals’ and adopts a more sensible model like the French one with sectorised ATC covering both controlled and uncontrolled airspace.

Graham wrote:

Obviously some IFR traffic needs to pass between the two systems. Solutions are easily workable for those going from G to A shortly after departure or A to G shortly before arrival, but there is no process for ad-hoc transition from G to A (i.e. when they are not expecting you) or for dealing with flights that pass from A to G but need to go back to A later on – i.e. you get ‘dumped’.

It won’t change unless/until the UK addresses the ATC funding issue and the politics around reserving a lot of airspace for ‘professionals’ and adopts a more sensible model like the French one with sectorised ATC covering both controlled and uncontrolled airspace.

If I understand it correctly, that only applies to “kids” – us, GA pilots. If you a pilot of, for example, scheduled CAT flight, I’m sure they will accomodate you CAS or OCAS.

There must be lots of unwritten (or confidential) rules; for example ATC know very well that piston GA can’t climb at +2000fpm, so even though you are supposed to advise ATC if unable to achieve the standard +500fpm, in reality they don’t bother about it.

And similarly with the level of service; a bizjet gets a very different service. I don’t know how ATC works this; they obviously know the aircraft type but also they have the flight plan and if the flight plan says FL450 then they will obviously treat you differently.

Airlines flying in UK Class G normally ask for a deconfliction service, IME.

arj1 wrote:

scheduled CAT flight, I’m sure they will accomodate you CAS or OCAS.

They can exceptionally fly IFR OCAS, they still need to be on proper radar IFR deconfliction or traffic service not on basic service from London FIS or the (heavy) workloaded LARS ‘ATC’ (it’s FIS by the way), also they are not allowed to fly IFR bellow MSA with IFP even in VMC, if you see someone in VMC please report him

If you are well connected to airspace with Radar or IFP SID/IAP (e.g. Southend, Biggin, Cambridge, Newquay, Oxford) then OCAS/CAS in these places under IFR is a walk in the park but in pistons/bizjets you still have to be very careful…

arj1 wrote:

If I understand it correctly, that only applies to “kids” – us, GA pilots. If you a pilot of, for example, scheduled CAT flight, I’m sure they will accomodate you CAS or OCAS.

Correct, although CAT looks to minimise time outside controlled airspace – if the departure or destination are OCAS then it’ll be a case of getting too/from CAS as quickly as possible. As Peter says they will take a deconfliction service while OCAS, which can be a pain for them because the controller will have to vector them around unknown traffic. Before they got their CAS Farnborough for many years attempted to work this the other way around – they would vector GA around (even as far as calling up GA that wasn’t working them) to keep certain OCAS spaces clear for their jet traffic. In fact it’s almost certainly the sole reason they participate in LARS.

OCAS airports generally want and apply for CAS (e.g. Oxford, Exeter) to connect them to the airways system because it makes them more attractive to their commercial customers.

I don’t think the going out and in again problem really applies to CAT because they fly so much higher – they get in and then stay there.

Graham wrote:

In the UK there are two parallel systems:

Thanks for this explanation. It’s the first time I’ve understood this in all the research I’ve done on the topic!

@dutch_flyer happy to help. Peter’s article on IFR flying has a very good summary, of which I’ll reproduce the bit which is relevant to this:

IFR flight plans for flights within the UK

As mentioned above, the UK does things a bit differently from the rest of Europe. There is a largely water-tight division between the IFR/airways controlling units, and everything flying below that. The airways traffic gets a proper service, while everything below gets something ranging from nothing at all to some kind of part-time radar or flight-information service.

The most common error is to file an IFR flight plan which is too low and which lies partly or wholly in Class G, perhaps with bits in Class D, and one of several things can happen:

a) The flight plan will be discarded by London Control and will be effectively treated by ATC as a VFR one, will thus get sent to departure and destination only, you get no enroute clearance at all, and nobody enroute will know anything about you.

b) The flight plan is accepted by London Control. You get airborne, and on contacting the first IFR unit they will assume you have the full IR etc and will send you up into the Class A airspace. This is OK if you have an IR and have planned for this, but some pilots who have just the IMC Rating (no IFR privileges in Class A) have inadvertently managed to file such a flight plan and have ended up tearing their hair out when they get directed into Class A airspace. London Control (or whichever authority is handling you in the relevant part of the UK) does not have procedures for routing such pilots around in Class G and Class D, avoiding Class A.

So, if flying low level OCAS IFR around the UK, the best way is to either not file a flight plan at all, or file a VFR one and then change to IFR when airborne (which is just a pilot decision; no ATC clearance is needed in Class G).

The chance of getting a “popup IFR clearance” i.e. a clearance to enter Class A for an enroute flight, is very small, so if there is any chance of you wanting to do a high altitude IFR flight (which in most of the UK implies Class A airspace) then you better file it at the proper high level to start with.

So, proper Eurocontrol IFR in the UK needs to be filed rather high and FL100 is a good starting point.

A couple more things which seem to be UK-specific:

It is common to get a very early descent prior to arrival. ATC may be trying to do the pilot a favour by dropping him out of CAS, or they are just trying to wash their hands of traffic which gets in the way. This may be fine if you have 30nm to run in a straight line, but is not OK if they drop you out of CAS in the middle of the London TMA and you have to work your way around, remaining below the 2500ft Class A base, in between many airfield CTAs, back home. This is a persistent complaint from UK private pilots. The pilot is in fact entitled to request to remain in CAS and to be given an appropriate route back home, but he has to descend sometime! The situation is gradually improving.

A silent loss of the IFR clearance. Often, when flying from France to the UK at levels below FL100, one gets transferred to London Information (a purely VFR FIS unit, with no official radar) instead of London Control (the IFR radar controlling authority for southern UK). Your IFR clearance has been discarded but you will not be told… you will discover it allright when you continue the flight, towards some controlled airspace…… London Information has to renegotiate a new IFR clearance which could take some time, and they may be unable to do it due to workload. Unless heading for one of the coastal airports (e.g. Shoreham or Lydd) in which case you will be descending anyway pretty soon, always refuse a transfer to London Information on the grounds that you are on an IFR clearance and a Eurocontrol flight plan. I think this problem occurs because France is generally Class E below FL120 which is handled by various units (including their very good radar-equipped FIS services) and above that it is done by Paris Control, and only Paris Control has a co-operation agreement with London Control… This issue, which till recently used to occur below FL120, can catch out a foreign pilot, who is flying on an IFR flight plan, who will be expecting his IFR clearance to be maintained, and who won’t know that London Information cannot continue his IFR clearance. This EuroGA thread illustrates the UK issues pretty well