Southend Controlled Airspace

[Alan Kilbride]

Ok, .......lets guess at 150 pax per movement, that runs at less than 11 flights a day, or 6 in and 5 out. 1 an hour?

How many GA aircraft travel south in the area? My guess is more than 11 a day in the area London Southend want to steal.

Let's guess at the amount Sarfend is going to compensate GA at No pounds and No pence, but will be charging the commercial geezers a lot more than no pounds and no pence.

What's the width of the bottleneck if transits aren't approved or indeed what are the provisions for the build up of traffic waiting for a transit?

It's time GA was compensated by investment in Mode s and 8.33, because if it wasn't for the Airlines and Airports grabbing airspace, we wouldn't blooming well need them.
Germany and France seem to be perfectly capable of running their Skies without making it almost impossible to navigate. Ask them why they don't fly to the UK. I did and it wasn't language problems. Go on James....have a guess.

[James Chan]

Several overpriced aerodromes, being outside Schengen, the price of fuel at some places, the weather, and huge volumes of complex Class A ("VFR? Keep Out!") airspace grabs?

Regarding Mode-S or 8.33khz, this shows the sad state of affairs in Europe where you have several countries in a relatively small amount of space allocating radio frequencies and transponder codes very inefficiently.

The USA doesn't need Mode-S or 8.33 at the moment as it functions under one huge geopolitical landmass.

[Nigel Hitchman]

My first question is, why does Southend need more controlled airspace than Gatwick!!?? and also more than it had during the Olympics.
The SFC-3500 CTA goes out 12 miles to the NE, 10.75 to the SW, whereas LGW goes 8 miles to the west, 9 to the east. The LGW airspace down to the surface is also considerably narrower!
Surely if they really need controlled airspace, they could make do with it 8nm at each end and narrower. Their airspace design is based on going to the NDB overhead the airfield and doing a procedural join to the ILS at 1500ft. When was the last time an airliner did that in the UK?? It should be based on radar vectors to the ILS not below 2500ft and then a straight in approach from 8 miles. Southend do have a radar and it should have a back up so that radar vectors is mandatory, no procedural approaches should be considered.

Southend seem to accept the presence of the Danger areas to the east and consider nothing can be done about them. I don't know what goes on there, but why cant it be closed and this airspace at least be given back, this should be part of the exchange for the controlled airspace, this would then relieve some of the choke points created. Even if it cant be closed, Im sure that whatever they do doesn't go on 24hrs a day, every day, if they are blowing things up, or whatever, then schedule it for after dark, when the majority of GA is not flying and notam it accordingly.

For me the problem is transiting the area around Stoke, when going to Kent and abroad, I usually go from Stapleford direct to Dover, which crosses this area, I would be happy to transit at 1500ft, which could easily be outside the class D airspace, if it was minimised to what is really necessary for operating 4 or 5 A319s a day.

As some people would tell you, its only Class D airspace and you can call up and get transit clearance. All very well in theory, but based on my current experience elsewhere, you only manage to get transit clearance half the time you want to, the rest of the time, you end up having to divert around or under controlled airspace. This is not always due to being refused, sometimes its just because you cant get a word in because of ATC talking to so many other aircraft they don't really need to.
This problem is particularly prevalent with Doncaster. Despite never having seen a commercial aircraft anywhere near there, I have ended up having to divert to the east several times rather than transiting, because ATC are so busy talking to other aircraft, none of which they would have needed to talk to if their massive class D airspace wasn't there! Many of which were infact even outside this, but felt the need to talk to them for some reason.

I am a little confused by the consultation, is this the real consultation, where the CAA will make a decision, or is this a pre-consultation done by Southend after which the CAA consultation will happen?

[James Chan]

My first question is, why does Southend need more controlled airspace than Gatwick!!??

Hmmm.... if I am reading this right, I see most of Gatwick's airspace is actually inside the London TMA and Worthing CTA, which is inaccessible to VFR flights?

That said I do question whether Southend actually needs a hold from 3500ft+ and the airspace protecting that hold. The runway is far from being congested and I thought we were going to remove all this fuel-inefficient holding completely by introducing speed restrictions much further out (AMAN/XMAN?) and performing point merge operations instead under the FAS/SES package? The London TMA has grabbed Class A airspace from 5500ft to FL195. I'm surprised this wasn't good enough.

[Nigel Hitchman]

James,
Yes, Gatwick uses lots of airspace in the London TMA, but the point is, that at low level, which is what is of interest to most of us, this bit of airspace going down to the surface is considerably larger at Southend than at Gatwick. I cant see any justification for this.
I cant see any justification for low level holds, that may appear on charts, but no one uses, they should all be at higher level and further out on the approach, but part of the problem is interaction with inbound routes for other airfields. There are too many commercial airfields in the area already!

It is amazing that approaches and go arounds are drawn according to old procedural approach techniques and then airspace is required to protect these areas. But when the airport is actually operational, none of this stuff is used! I used to fly into London City quite a lot, we mostly landed westerly, we never descended to the ILS platform altitude of 2000ft, we always intercepted the ILS at 3000ft. We never held where the hold was drawn on the approaches from the South, always further away, or on a higher ad hoc hold with radar vectors. The go around showed returning to overhead the airfield and hold at 2000 or 3000 ft, ATC said there was no way they would ever want us to do that!
We would get radar vectors for another approach or sent to a hold further away.

Why aren't real air Traffic controllers involved in airspace design, rather than theoretical people working on old PAns Ops standards designed for the Avro York!

[John Price]

Hi Guys,

The problem of airspace design is that it goes back to performance figures circa 1970's. Back then most aircraft couldn't sustain a 500FPM rate of climb, because the engines were not up to it. If you think about it, a modern Boeing or Airbus can sustain quite high rates of climb and they down rate the thrust required so as to save fuel. There is the clue, the airspace is large because CAT is always looking for the best efficiency. For a laugh, if you want to know what is possible in a Airbus fly into and out of Innsbruck, Austria. Nobody gives a stuff about efficiency or economy. Every one in IFR climbs like homesick angels and descends like dead ducks. Now if you apply that criteria to Southend the CTR/CTA would only need to be about 4miles from the end of each runway. At that point the average CAT on performance climb would be passing 5,000'. Well inside the LTMA.

The whole issue is about Southend giving their customers what they want and sod the rest of us.

Andrew Haines ( Chief Exec. CAA) has stated that in response to airspace 'compromises will have to be made'. Well Andrew here's a good compromise. Make the CAT flying to and from Southend use performance techniques that way the CTR/CTA can be very small. Everybody looses some class g and CAT uses more fuel.


John.

PS Just for reference I fly out of Rochester and this controlled airspace proposal will be, for us, a bad thing.


John.

[Alan Kilbride]

I fly out of Full Sutton near York and also think it's a bad thing. Once we are squeezed into that thin gap between Southend and London City, who knows what may happen?
A short trip to the near continent will stop all but the brave from oop norf. Routing may have to change as will fuel calculations.

[James Chan]

Well I guess it isn't just CAT that's going to need to climb out, other GA light aircraft operate IFR and VFR in and out of Southend as well?

However I do agree that the CTR is a bit large - going out to about 11nm from the centreline. On closer inspection it would appear it's to protect NDB or DME procedures. But these things are really old fashioned and everyone's moving over to RNAV? Hence I don't think it'll be needed that much more in several years time and it'll be expensive for another consultation to be launched to push back the boundaries when they are retired.

If it's any airspace that might be worth trimming to facilitate the non-radio/non-transit crowd better, I'd possibly suggest trying for:
1) Resize CTR to about 6nm from the centreline (NDB / DME arc procedures are old!)
2) Reject CTA 5 and CTA 6 (Use AMAN better and/or hold higher and further out) and if this is successful, raise the CTA 8 base to 5,500ft and reject CTA 7 to keep the airspace bases simple. If CTA 5,6,7 cannot be made Class G and CTA 8 cannot be raised to 5,500ft then use Class E instead, similar to what is being proposed at Aberdeen.
3) Raise the base of CTA 1 and CTA 2 to 2500ft (Mainly to prevent vertical infringements - just look at Stansted!).

And although probably out of scope for this consultation, push for:
4) Return the surrounding Class A to Class C or D to permit VFR overflights. I don't like being constrained to flying low. Phase 1 of London Airspace consultation is due to come out in the next week or so and I'm keen to see what is being proposed.

However I must add I'm no airspace designer and I'm merely just wondering......

[James Chan]

I visited Southend recently on a quest to discover more about their proposed controlled airspace.
I was greeted by some very friendly controllers who have pledged to facilitate access to all transit traffic. They will also be adding an additional controlling position in future.

I think I have discovered the cause of the seemingly large footprint of Class D airspace:

The Class A London TMA sits above it and therefore Southend’s aircraft cannot optimally climb/descend without coming into conflict with adjacent airport IFR departures and arrivals.

Therefore I’m guessing if we were to press for something smaller at the < 3000ft level, pressure may be needed on the LTMA redesign/reclassification.

Any thoughts?

[Alan Kilbride]

Yes...... Tell 'em someone is fibbing.
The big boys won't let them play in their back yard and now they are trying to bully us into giving them ours.
Sheffield Robbing Hood springs to mind and no amount of verbal promises or anecdotes are worth the paper they aren't written on.
That dirty great chunk of airspace is disproportionate and will restrict the movement of thousands of private flights in the name of profits and not of safety.
I would tell them to go away and stop paying huge chunks of cash to consultants who may or may not charge by the amount of airspace stolen fron GA.
Take my vote as a no.

[James Chan]

Alan - in order to tell someone is fibbing I suspect you'll need experienced controllers and airspace designers who also love GA and fly themselves, and could also present alternative proposals and designs? One or or two of the controllers at Southend claim to have that background and have made their input into the design already. However I gather much less so in the London TMA....

However I still believe the real battle is Class A where you can't get VFR transits. Just look at the London TMA, Worthing CTA and Clacton CTAs which go up all the way to FL195. And the ATS-route network. Class D is somewhere that you're supposed to get them, or if not fly over the top - which you often can't in the UK because you're blocked by Class A.

GA does not own the airspace but neither does the airlines, airports, or the ANSPs.

I think you should really write to the CAA if you continue to have un-justified refusals of transit and have your cases investigated. I would do exactly the same!

[Alan Kilbride]

You battle about class A James. It's not on table at the moment. By the time you have lost that battle Southend may have got their wish. I don't ....repeat ....don't want Southend to get the rest of South East England as their very own airspace for what I and many other pilots believe to be massive overkill which will have a detrimental effect on GA.
Nats is the organisation to contact with reference to unjustified transit refusals, and I have.

[John Price]

Hi Guys,

Access to the airspace for transiting GA is only a part of the problem.

There are 3 training areas used by GA from Biggin, Rochester & Stapleford. These are at Hanningfield, St Marys Marsh & Isle of Sheppy. All of these will be inside the proposed CAS. Where does this activity now take place? There will be an increased transit time for training flights to clear the area, who pays?

There will be a 6NM wide transit lane created just to the West of the CAS this goes over the top of Daymns, and Thurrock. If you then turn East, towards Europe, the transit route takes you right over or very near to Rochester and its Circuit and joining/departing traffic. This will create a collision hotspot at or about Rochester.

The new CTR/CTA will only be approx. 2NM north of the Rochester ATZ so you will get the inevitable zone infringements for departing or arriving traffic( bearing in mind that the Rochester circuit and the CTA base are at or about the same altitude). Then there is the issue that as you leave the Rochester ATZ(heading North) you will have about 1min to change frequency and get a clearance to cross the new CAS. Any delays in this or if you have to orbit and you will be in the way of the next departing aircraft.

Rochester has plans for a new Hard runway and also would like a GPS approach, most of which will now be in someone else's CAS.

We haven't even got into the size of the CAS, holding points, aircraft performance techniques etc.

No its not all about transit traffic, its far more complicated than that.

John.

[Alan Kilbride]

Quite right John. I only hope this gets stopped. As I said in an earlier post. " Someone has been fibbing "
I don't think all affected parties were consulted, yet the consultants claim they were.
I can only imagine the detrimental effect this will have on General and Light Aviation in the area.
We are so lucky up here that we have so much class G and don't appreciate it until this comes up.
The supposed 600,000 passenger movements only add up to 3 days worth at Heathrow, yet they try to justify all that airspace. It seems that the Stobart empire is trying to do in Aviation what it did in Transport. Not that it was a bad thing, but it sure as heck upset an awful lot of the Haulage industry. Especially the little guy.(GA)?

[Nigel Hitchman]

James,

yes there is at least one Southend controller I know who regularly flies microlights and group A aircraft. But however friendly and helpful they are, it wont help if they get the airspace and then corporate policy dictates that they not be so helpful and are also too busy. Donaster controllers are often helpful, but also often so busy talking with other people that you cant get a word in to get a transit and they people they are talking to often aren't even in their airspace!

Correct that the London TMA will prevent ideal climb and descent profiles for Southend aircraft. Heathrow departures might still be at 6000ft going past the LAM area and London City are initially at 3000ft, then climbing to 4000ft getting closer to Southend. My memory of flights into Southend some years ago was London descending you to 4000ft or below and saying radar service terminates, contact Southend from around the Rochester area.
However I cant see any reason why any aircraft would be below 3000ft except when on approach and pretty sure we were cleared to at least 3000ft on departure.
So no airliner is going to be stooging around at 2000ft or below, beyond 6 miles or so from the airfield. So I still don't see why the airspace from SFC-1500ft has to be so large. For me this is the important bit. If you want to transit the area
you can easily do this at 1500ft you don't need to go any higher, or if you want to, then call them up.
With a much smaller SFC-1500ft footprint, this would then resolve the problem of transit aircraft getting too close to Rochester, or Rochest aircraft going north having to call straight away.
More of a solution needed for the Club aircraft doing general handling though.
The only problem I see with the Class A is that its too low in some places, particularly to the "sides" of the airfields it is "protecting". For example over White Waltham LHR arrivals are at 3000ft, however, no one is over Denham area anywhere near that low, or Fairoaks. Im sure it is the same to the east. but London city makes it more complicated.