STANSTED TMZ PROPOSAL

[Brian Hope]

Jon, are you guaranteeing clearance into a TMZ without a transponder?
Have to say I think the Class D approach is wishful thinking. Stansted is not overly helpful now, believing they will fund additional controllers for the 'new VFR' bits is a bit like believing in the tooth fairy.

[Jonathan Smith]

But Jonathan, Farnborough are already down-grading services on busy weekends due to workload. Try getting a traffic service on a Sunday...

What makes you think they'd want want to take on more work....

But all you need is to make contact with Farnborough, pass your flight details and be given permission to enter the TMZ in a non-equipped aircraft. No 'clearance' required (it is not controlled airspace) and nothing more than a Basic service unless you ask for it.

Make it Class D and controller obligations change and are potentially more onerous particularly with reference to met criteria.

[Jonathan Smith]

Jon, are you guaranteeing clearance into a TMZ without a transponder?
Have to say I think the Class D approach is wishful thinking. Stansted is not overly helpful now, believing they will fund additional controllers for the 'new VFR' bits is a bit like believing in the tooth fairy.

The word 'guarantee' is very difficult to promise in that a huge variety of rare circumstances may mean that Farnborough are not able to instantly 'guarantee' permission to enter the TMZ for non-transponding traffic i.e. dealing with an emergency etc. However, this is not a 'clearance' we are talking about and there would never be an air traffic reason to not give permission to enter. For this reason I believe that gaining permission to enter the TMZ for non-equipped would invariably be immediately available upon request.

Lets not forget also that Mode C/S equipped aircraft would be able to continue to transit the Class G airspace of the TMZ without any requirement to contact anyone or do anything differently from today. That would certianly not be the case if the airspace was reclassified Class D.

[Jonathan Smith]

Now I'm really baffled at this proposal. If this is what is being proposed then there is nothing to worry about it at all. It just drives a coach and horses through the need for a TMZ.

Of course, they could say that there are too many non-TX aircraft in the zone so bog- off somewhere else.

I don't think it is so 'baffling' when you remember what is trying to be achieved by the TMZ.

A TMZ is going to do nothing to address the infringement problem. Indeed I suspect detected infringements will actually increase. What it will achieve is some mitigation of the severity of infringements by generating a 'known' environment with reference to level information around the Stansted CTAs. Post the TMZ establishment the controller will either be able to see the level of traffic transitting beneath the CTAs or will know that the primary contact observed beneath the CTA is in contact with an ATC agency (Farnborough) and has confirmed it's level. Post the TMZ establishment, if ATC are not in contact with a primary contact observed within the lateral limits of the TMZ then they will no longer 'deem' the aircraft as being beneath the CTA, will assume the worst and avoid this traffic with IFR traffic under their control - thus mitigating the impact of the most serious incidents experienced under the present arrangements.

Perhaps you can now see that Farnborough would never have an ATC reason to prevent them allowing access to a non-compliant aircraft but merely need to acquire the knowledge that a primary contact is operating within the airspace, along with some verbal confirmation of the level of that contact.

[John Brady]

Jonathan,

although you say that Farnborough will never have an ATC reason to prevent access by non-compliant aircraft, that is not entirely correct.

The update says quite clearly that Farnborough will only provide transit aircraft with to access to areas B and D (under the stubs). Whilst aircraft landing in areas A and C (under the wings) will be able to gain access by letter of agreement or by ad hoc radio clearance from Farnborough, transit aircraft which cannot comply with the transponder requirement will be excluded. So these areas which represent the majority of the airspace are total exclusion zones for non-transponding transit aircraft.

Now I think the arrangements proposed for areas B and D are pretty good and should be quite acceptable to the GA community. However, I still maintain the LAA draft position about the basis for establishing the TMZ in the first place. The CAA has said TMZs should be established at infringement hot spots but the NATS proposal is not made on the basis that these are hot spots but rather that TMZs enable ATC to manage infringements (in all such airspace, hot spot or otherwise). If this is approved as presented and the principle established is then rolled out across the country, much sport and recreational flying would cease. The LAA would not oppose the establishment of a TMZ (with appropriate mitigation) at a demonstrated incursion safety hot spot. But we need to protect ourselves from the establishment of a principle founded on other than incursion safety risk.

I suspect that areas B and D are hot spots but NATS will not demonstrate that with data. It may be that when the infringement safety data for the CTR and areas B and D are removed from the total figure, there will be no particularly strong case left for a TMZ for areas A and C. But perhaps there is. As I said before I did not know why NATS refused to give us the infringement safety data we asked for but it is stopping us taking an informed view.

John

[Nick Allen]

John, If NATS is 49% state owned, as an earlier poster mentioned, might you be able get the data you require under the Freedom of Information Act? (Apologies if this suggestion falls into the egg-sucking category; and thanks for all your work on this.)

[John Price]

The CAA have confirmed to me that NATS are not subject to the Freedom Of Information Act, as they are deemed to be a private company.

John.

[iancallier]

Intrusions are filled onto the CAA database MOR system -so the CAA should be able to provide all of these.
Ian
Somebody(ATCO) would need to interpret them

[Mike Potts]

I replied to the document, in it I said that I was surprised that NATS had not given the Farnborough North service a chance to settle in.
As non transponder pilot who uses this service is seems a much better alternative to all that is proposed. If a pilot is lost, transponder or not unless you can contact him on radio a TMZ means nothing and what is to stop the pilot pulling the plug on the device, pleading an electical failure??
Mike

[Rod1]

10 pages on this at;

http://forums.flyer.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=54214

Including a significant amount of input from our friends in ATC.

Rod1

[John Brady]

I asked NATS about the news item by AOPA on charging GA for services outside controlled airspace. Their reply just received is helpful in relation to the proposed TMZ at Stansted:

"NATS has no plans to charge GA users for the services it provides them outside controlled airspace. The costs of providing these services are, at present, recovered through our en-route charge, and we have been in discussion with the Department for Transport and the Civil Aviation Authority to see if this will remain legal under forthcoming Single European Sky legislation on ATC charging. I am pleased to tell you that the Department has advised that the present arrangements should continue. Equally, NATS has no plans to charge GA pilots for transponder carriage, or for entry to a Transponder Mandatory Zone, as this would be detrimental to the proposed safety benefit.”

John