Primarily for general aviation discussion, but other aviation topics are also welcome.
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#1893215
.. given that LARS has been decaying ove the years, I really don't see why ANSPs would choose to upgrade the service without some sort of financial incentive.

And if we GA owner/operators are going to have to re-equip for a future common standard of EC, we'll need a bit more than a couple of hundred quid.... :)
Sooty25, flybymike liked this
#1894614
I can't see how that fits in with gliding in any way...
If I take off and decide it's good enough for a short xc I'm stuffed, if I declare a long xc, it's highly unlikely I'll go by any direct route, and for instructing, I might do 15-20 flights in a day of varying length and distance from the airfield...
Do I have to flight plan all of them?
The explanation is unclear and while it may remove some current airspace, the stultifying hand of reporting everything is a huge negative if not actually impossible
Filing a flight plan by skydemon is lovely... But why do we have to have a plan.
And who is going to read them all....
flybymike liked this
#1894639
insink wrote:I can't see how that fits in with gliding in any way...
If I take off and decide it's good enough for a short xc I'm stuffed, if I declare a long xc, it's highly unlikely I'll go by any direct route, and for instructing, I might do 15-20 flights in a day of varying length and distance from the airfield...
Do I have to flight plan all of them?
The explanation is unclear and while it may remove some current airspace, the stultifying hand of reporting everything is a huge negative if not actually impossible
Filing a flight plan by skydemon is lovely... But why do we have to have a plan.
And who is going to read them all....


The concept does not require all flights to file a flight plan but rather offer a range of enhanced facilities on the basis that the planned intention of flight has been shared, voluntarily.

The submission of a flight plan for a flight intending to transit controlled airspace would ensure the the controlling agency of the airspace is prenoted (warned) about the planned flight and would have the basic details and intention of that flight available prior to it contacting the agency concerned. The submitted data would also be available to the FIS provider, should a service be required outside of CAS during the flight.

I agree the applicability of this concept to localised glider operations may be limited however the submission of the intent to conduct a local bimble is equally valuable when shared with other airspace users (military, BVLOS drones, emergency services etc) and, as you describe, is a very simple click of a button if you have already planned and briefed your flight using an app such as SkyDemon.

While there may be specific areas that require flight plan data as a requirement for entry in the future, this will be the exception rather than the norm and the submission of a VFR flight plan will remain a voluntary action for the majority of VFR flights.

Other features of the AMS consultation directly applicable to GA and gliding are the tactical switching of some airspace volumes; the use of electronic marker beacons to reaffirm and warn tactically about activities such as winch launching, large model ops and hang-gliding areas etc., and also the opportunity to include digitised met products as part of a digitised FIS-B broadcast, might be of interest?

A key enabler to many of the concepts mentioned in the consultation will be the EC Task Force work which will hopefully provide a definitive recommendation to the protocols and frequencies to achieve many of the electronic functions and interoperability described. This work is underway and should report by the summer.

In the meantime, please do take the time to respond to the consultation with your thoughts.
#1894648
If prior notice is needed for airspace transit that makes it a barrier for gliding xc. Its very difficult to predict an accurate start time (as that depends on local weather, when it gets soarable and when you can get a launch) or time to a zone boundary (speed achieved varies depending on conditions and pilot skill), let alone your exact track, height or entry point..... I was hoping that equipping with required EC would ease entry and reduce the requirements for radio calls.

The description of GA flight shows a pretty significant lack of understanding and the reliance on radio calls will place capacity restrictions... no ATC units will be able to cope with even a small gaggle of gliders operating in close proximity, let alone when there are a few paragliders mixed in as well...

I will be making my comments in due course.
terryws, flybymike liked this
#1894653
ls8pilot wrote:If prior notice is needed for airspace transit that makes it a barrier for gliding xc. Its very difficult to predict an accurate start time (as that depends on local weather, when it gets soarable and when you can get a launch) or time to a zone boundary (speed achieved varies depending on conditions and pilot skill), let alone your exact track, height or entry point..... I was hoping that equipping with required EC would ease entry and reduce the requirements for radio calls.

The description of GA flight shows a pretty significant lack of understanding and the reliance on radio calls will place capacity restrictions... no ATC units will be able to cope with even a small gaggle of gliders operating in close proximity, let alone when there are a few paragliders mixed in as well...

I will be making my comments in due course.


Before you make those comments, please understand the airspace access to temporarily deactivated volumes, as proposed, is based upon concepts such as conspicuity and switching via NOTAM, backed up with broadcast via voice and/or FIS-B. It is not envisaged that prior permission is required via comms or flight plan to gain access to a deactivated volume of airspace allowing the sort of tactical access you describe. Perhaps easiest to relate to the sort of temporary deactivation of volumes of Class D we saw during lockdown but with some additional electronic safety nets?

All of the concepts included in the consultation came from pre-consultation engagement conducted with many GA representatives including contributions from the gliding community.
#1894661
I believe @ls8pilot is referring to currenly active controlled airspace.
There is a lot of good things in the proposed AMS but as always the devil is in the details and we're thinking aloud in advance of making our reply.

So it is clear that if ATC process VFR flight plan (or whatever is their future form) instead of ignoring them it will help.
Is it still helping ATC if instead of having a fairly accurate estimate time at boundary (say within 10 min), the estimate now is a 3 hour window ? (i.e. no flight plan activation and loose speed estimate)
Is it still helping ATC if instead of a say southerly track as per the flight plan, it is now a South-westerly track?
What we don't want to see is flight plan becoming mandatory via the back door for transiting control airspace. Cardiff did it last year.
flybymike, ls8pilot liked this
#1894672
Cub wrote:
The submission of a flight plan for a flight intending to transit controlled airspace would ensure the the controlling agency of the airspace is prenoted (warned) about the planned flight and would have the basic details and intention of that flight available prior to it contacting the agency concerned. The submitted data would also be available to the FIS provider, should a service be required outside of CAS during the flight.

These recommended flight plan submissions have been trialled before within certain designated volumes of CAS both on the grounds of how helpful pre notification might be to ATC and others, and not least of all when controllers were grappling with getting their heads around new electronic flight strips and the like which were supposed to expedite matters and not to impede them. As far as I recall these schemes were ultimately discontinued.

Like others I am concerned about pre-notification of flight plans, particularly for CAS transits which as far as I can see will effectively preclude “opportunistic” transits, done on the spur of the moment.
When I take off I frequently have no firm idea of where I’m going or what I intend to do, or what any passenger might like to do when airborne on the spur of the moment. Even if I had such information to hand I can’t see that I could provide any reasonably accurate detail on timings or routing which might depend on any number of indeterminate factors such as what time the wife thinks she might finish the washing. I foresee the possibility that a “recommendation” for flight plan submissions might ultimately simply prevent ad hoc access to large swathes of CAS, and of course my natural cynicism sees this as the potential thin edge of a very thick wedge of compulsory new regulation.
Boxkite, Nick liked this
#1894678
Just as the nature of a VFR flight is currently regarded as unpredictable and subject to alteration in track, level and timing, by virtue of the necessity to maintain VMC, then planned intention of flight will also be regarded as completely flexible.

The voluntary sharing of a possible bimble anywhere within 25 miles of a departure aerodrome with the possibility of transitting or not transitting a volume of airspace in a time window of a few hours is still valuable information to enhance ground based services particularly if the planned data can be associated with electronic flight identity of the aircraft. Reduces R/T time, helps manage workload and mutual understanding, and improves service provision.

It is this voluntary sharing of information to improve a range of services and provisions, including airspace access, which is what was asked for in the pre-consultation engagement and is now being proposed in the AMS consultation.
#1894715
I no longer have 'skin in the game', and will almost certainly be gaga or dead before anything arising from this Consultation is implemented, but my gist of all the above is:

Several Forumites: "This could be done badly, costing us in light GA both money and freedoms, because the implementers won't understand what we do and want to do" :(

Cub: ".. but it could be done well, with modern technology, centrally organised and interconnected, replacing services which have disappeared because they were too expensive when provided by humans, which could be very useful for light GA. So respond to the Consultation" :)
Cub, James Chan, Nick liked this
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