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Europe's craziest airspaces

Peter wrote:

But then what is the difference between that and Class D?

https://www.euroga.org/forums/hangar-talk/8477-greek-tma-classification-mayhem#post_161485

ESME, ESMS

The big difference is that in the UK Class D is often operated as Class C.

EGKB Biggin Hill

Well, yes, but that is down to ATC policies. Reclassifying the airspace isn’t going to happen without abolishing those policies. If a unit wants the ability to block traffic at any time (which, outside the USA, is the key quid pro quo permitting the deregulated world of VFR flight, even if nobody wants to spell it out quite like that) they are not going to agree to Class E.

This – not letting VFR traffic into non-A airspace – is a problem all over Europe. Start with France above FL115. Then the Swiss one of no VFR in Class C above FL130 over the Alps (variations of that one) where the terrain goes up to about 12000ft…

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

ATC policy must be led my national policy, and that is led by politicians and civil service, not the ANSPs.

In the UK, you have representatives working on this.

EGKB Biggin Hill

Peter, how many times was your VFR transit request denied above the Alps?

Shorrick, rather than asking me, since I fly mostly IFR nowadays, why don’t you post something informative and useful to other VFR pilots here e.g.

“Zurich always allow VFR in their Class C”
“Zurich usually allow VFR in their Class C”
“Zurich allow VFR in the following parts of their Class C … … …”

Other specimen phrases might be

“The policy changed [year]”

I am sure you get the idea

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

If it gains any traction, it should focus airports and ANSP’s minds as to how much they really need. There are swathes of airspace in this country which are clearly not required, but there is no incentive (indeed a very strong anti-incentive) to release it.

My number one concern about charging by the m3 is the way airports and ANSPs then seek to reduce their costs. While it’s good to incentivise release or reclassification of airspace, I wouldn’t want them to not release, but simply attempt to pass those new costs to their users.

That could make our navigation service charges on inbound to an airport even more expensive?

Last Edited by James_Chan at 08 Oct 07:54

It’s true though, Peter. It doesn’t make sense making general statements based on one-off experiences 15 years ago. Even one day after the event, it does not make sense, since it’s purely anecdotal, there may have been very specific reasons for the refusal, there may have been slight misunderstandings on the R/T, etc. It’s not the task of others to provide counter-evidence, but to point is to not post these things in such categorical terms, based merely on one-off experiences. Certainly not 15 years later, if all later flights have been IFR and the recent VFR cross-country experience is so slim.

As a counterexample, three weeks ago, I received a nice VFR clearance for FL145 going northbound crossing the (contoured in yellow) Swiss general Class C (MIL was “on”) and the class C airspace block “A9”:

Shortly after, I even got a clearance to cross the Zuerich TMA, still at FL145, on course:

Does that mean they will always give such clearance? Certainly it doens’t. Again, the experience is nothing but anecdotal. What Swiss ATC’s policy is we all don’t know. Prop 99%, if there actually is one, the official policy is to allow VFR aircraft in subject to various things, like workload, traffic, military blah blah blah. Which tells us exactly nothing wrt future flights.

Now, I am certainly not a big fan of Swiss ATC. From my experience, they are bad people wrt to VFR GA and GA in general. But, as the above example shows, there are positive examples.

Now, one might say that this one time they refuse a clearance in class C might be enough to ruin your day, due to to clouds below, or whatever…. but that (really needing a class C clearance in order to avoid getting into difficulties) really is a situation that one should try to avoid when VFR, by always making conservative weather decisions in the preflight phase. At the very least, one can (and must be disposed to ) turn around, even if that decision is a hard one. It nicely fits to the previous Innsbruck thread.

In the above case actually, I was in that same “corner”, i.e. if they hadn’t given me the clearance, I would have had difficulties to continue the flight (there was cloud from about 10000 feet (i.e. way below the peak of these Swiss mountains) to just below FL145, so no way to stay under the clouds either. I was ready though to either a) change my routing or b) turn around completely and stay in Italy.

Mainz (EDFZ) & Egelsbach (EDFE), Germany

How about this:

I flew VFR through Italian A-class airspace above the Alps by asking nicely.

I think it is therefore safe to assume that Italian airspace policy is to allow VFR in Class A depending on how nicely one asks.

Is that informative ?

Last Edited by Shorrick_Mk2 at 08 Oct 10:41

Timothy wrote:

From one point of view this is great. What we Brits call the “Freedom to Roam”. But on the other hand, there is always a niggling worry that we may have missed something or not be quite as cleared as much as we think we are…

This is really the challenge all pilots encounter once they receive the PPL in their little hands. It has been (mostly) drilled into us that ATC is God and and the Rules of the Air are to be respected like the word of God under the threat of prosecution and fine or worse, confiscation of licence. So we swallow incomprehensible airspace constructs out of fear (justified it seems in the case of the UK) and go to extreme lengths in an attempt to comply. And then the French come along and use non-standard terminology that causes us to be unsure about what we are really allowed to do. While getting clarification is always the recommended approach, I suspect that we would have a pretty good case if someone tried to prosecute on the basis of such a vague exchange.

LSZK, Switzerland
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