NATS Consultation on North London Airspace - Deadline 22 May

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John Brady
Posts: 284
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2008 8:39 pm

NATS Consultation on North London Airspace - Deadline 22 May

Post by John Brady » Sun May 04, 2008 12:50 pm

This post is to draw your attention to the proposal by NATS to extend the London TMA significantly to the north. Whilst the LAA supports the underlying reason and plan, NATS is proposing to take more airspace than they need and most importantly have declined to release airspace which will no longer be essential once the routes are moved.

Please could you take a look at the notes on this through the consultation link on the homepage and consider responding. Unless there is a substantial number of responses, The CAA is likely to approve this as requested. Any comments on the draft LAA response would be welcome. The deadline is 22 May.

John

John Brady
Posts: 284
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2008 8:39 pm

TCN ACP

Post by John Brady » Wed May 07, 2008 9:52 pm

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Paul Jackson has kindly drawn attention to some problems with our response on the TCN conultation by NATS..

First, he notes that for the on-line response we are required to tick if we prefer Direct flightpaths or Specified routes. This is a trick question! If we prefer Specified routes we will be accused of being ungreen. If we prefer direct routes, there is a risk NATS will use this to take more lower level airspace to allow direct routing. However, although direct routing tends to be available at night when traffic is quiet, government regulations demand long straight-in approaches overnight so direct routing gains little. I know having been there. So we would lose airspace for no great gain.

I recommend you select Specified Routes and explain why in your narrative

Secondly, Paul notes that the narrative limit is not 2500 words but 2500 characters. I have raised this with the CAA as a very serious issue as NATS are actively preventing proper consultation response to what NATS themselves say is the "biggest ever consutation on airspace change" The CAA say they will decide if NATS has conducted a proper consultation once they have all the responses. Meanwhile they recommend we send our responses by post to the NATS freepost address:

TCN Consultation
NATS
Freepost NAT22750
Reading
RG1 4BR

If you do complete the online response I suggest you mention the limitation imposed on you.

If you have further problems properly responding to this, please email us at [email protected]

Thanks for your help,

John

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