Consultation regarding London TMA extension

[flyin'dutch']

In April's magazine an article by John Brady about the proposals by NATS to extend the London TMA north.

It is the area to the North and Northeast of Cambridge/Stansted which is affected, in part down to 3500ft.

Further information on the consultation can be found
here

And the information for Aviation Stakeholders:

by clicking here

John has asked for comments to be emailed to him at [email protected]

[John Brady]

Thanks Frank,

It is now apparant that there should be a fair bit of give as well as take in the airspace change and following a meeting with NATS, the BGA and I have asked them to look at a number of areas to go back to class G or to have the boundaries shrunk. I have drafted an article for the May magazine and will post a briefing and more maps on the website at the end of April (when I get out from under all the other stuff including mode S)

John

[flyin'dutch']

Cheers John, hope you didn't mind.

Fair few changes proposed so thought this needs as wide an airing as possible.

On the Flyer Forum I said that my main objection was the complexity of the shape and size of the airspace proposals. Which I said was a result of the of NATS policy, someone said that was a sweeping statement and invited me to elaborate.

FWIW this is my take on the issue:

But some responsibilty has to be laid at the doorstep of NATS which until very recently thought that airspace managment entailed having chunks of airspace which they could use exclusively by guarding the outside perimeters and not talk to anyone wanting to use it.

Especially when looking at the higher bits of airspace (say over 6000ft) few people will care as long as they can get reasonable access for transits.

and:

Until last year NATS attitudes were very much that whatever happend OCAS was someone else's problem. That was at it's worst 4 or 5 years ago when other than CAT nobody could get any service from the major players in the SE.

Sometime back NATS has obviously realised that to provide safe services in CAS you need to something more than just guarding your own backyard, similar to the notion that you can not provide effective healthcare for the nation by just dealing with people who knock on a quack's door nor effective policing by having coppers sitting in the local staion.

That has new air of change has improved vastly the situation and has culminated more recently in the listening out squawks trials and further implementation thereof.

It is my contention that if NATS was able and willing to extend the levels of service we are now a accustomed too in some very busy parts of their airspace (Luton springs to mind) to new bits of airspace which are currently class G and no good for CATS and would come in handy for traffic management if they were class D that especially where these bits are higher this would be acceptable to larger parts of the GA community.

If this was further extended to provide some approach services to interested parties who wanted to develop GPS approaches some may actually fall in love with NATS altogether.

That may mean TMZs for the whole of the airspace under the TMA.

No doubt that will give some resistance from people who can (or claim they can not) fit transponders.

There are obvious ways of working around that too.

The way the airspace is currently cut up in slivers here and there does nothing to make for easy navigating and in my view increases the chances of infringements, the last thing we want, n'est ce pas.

I am sure that not everybody will agree with my point of view!