122.3 transmissions

[rocky14]

Thanks Malcolm, very much appreciated. I take it that Farnborough, eventually, deals with en route IFR traffic prior to making contact with the Bushe's AFIS or A/G.
I presume aircraft>5700kg do not land
When the tower personnel are at lunch or at reduced capacity!

[rocky14]

Aug 19, 2016 11:30:09 GMT rocky14 said:

.....I presume aircraft>5700kg do not land
When the tower personnel are at lunch or at reduced capacity!

Sorry Malcolm, I intended to add....on an unscheduled public transport flight.

[chevvron]

CAP 670 makes provision for the CAA to 'direct' that a certain minimum level of service shall be provided at a particular aerodrome hence the reason ATC rather than AFIS is provided at both Wycombe and Redhill, so if the CAA 'deemed' Blackbushe was busy enough or complex enough to require it, they could 'require' the aerodrome authority to provide ATC.

[chevvron]

Aug 19, 2016 11:30:09 GMT rocky14 said:

Thanks Malcolm, very much appreciated. I take it that Farnborough, eventually, deals with en route IFR traffic prior to making contact with the Bushe's AFIS or A/G.

There are procedures in place, notified in the AIP, whereby Farnborough handles all IFR airways traffic to/from what is known as the 'Farnborough Group' (formerly Farnborough Clutch) airfields, these being Farnborough, Odiham, Fairoaks, Blackbushe, Lasham and Dunsfold.

Having said that, as Odiham has its own Radar Approach Control, they are usually delegated responsibility for their own traffic.  All the other airfields except Lasham are either A/G or AFIS.  I'm not sure of the present situation at Lasham; perhaps malcolm can update us.

[Malcolm]

Aug 19, 2016 12:43:55 GMT chevvron said:

if the CAA 'deemed' Blackbushe was busy enough or complex enough to require it, they could 'require' the aerodrome authority to provide ATC

...which is very different from the 'suggestion' which 'was quite strongly made' to Flyboy.

[Malcolm]

Aug 19, 2016 12:14:25 GMT rocky14 said:

Aug 19, 2016 11:30:09 GMT rocky14 said:

.....I presume aircraft>5700kg do not land
When the tower personnel are at lunch or at reduced capacity!

Sorry Malcolm, I intended to add....on an unscheduled public transport flight.

...which seem to be extremely rare. Commercial, yes, maybe,  but public transport above 5700 Kg and scheduled flights - unlikely. Even operations like the big Falcon 2000 (eg. N542AP) are nearly always private.

In the old days we had P/T movements like Busy Bee F27s full of fare-paying spotters which required AFIS (ie. similar to those community flights in the Scottish Islands and the Wideroes ATRs in the Norwegian Lofoten Islands).

I believe this is how Blackbushe can suspend its AFIS without notice, which begs the question why now have AFIS if no P/T. A/G should be perfectly adequate, for example, 2 Excel Engineering at Lasham services its Boeing jet movements with only A/G. 

[chevvron]

Aug 19, 2016 17:12:52 GMT Malcolm said:

Aug 19, 2016 12:43:55 GMT chevvron said:

if the CAA 'deemed' Blackbushe was busy enough or complex enough to require it, they could 'require' the aerodrome authority to provide ATC

...which is very different from the 'suggestion' which 'was quite strongly made' to Flyboy.

I once witnessed the ATC Inspector (Bert Hayes) 'strongly make' a suggestion to Gerald to 'require' ATC to be provided when he had a moan about proposed airshow procedures.

[rocky14]

Thank you Malcolm and Chevvron for your input, I am much the wiser now. One small point: do military flights fall into the scheme of things e.g. the A330 to The Falklands from Brize Norton on a Sunday and return on Tuesday. It is a scheduled p/t flight but under the wing of the MoD.

Colm

[BrenMac]

I'm not too sure what you mean,specially "p/t" but many military flights operate in "civil" airspace much like commercial flights. I do not know the route from Brise to Ascension but at some space they will operate in civil airspace. Many moons ago when I worked at West Drayton, civil ATC issued slot times for US bombers operating out of the UK to one of the current conflicts!

[exeglkflyer]

p/t = public transport I guess.

The "South Atlantic Air Bridge" flights to the Falklands are not a great example as they are effectively civilian flights these days, operated by AirTanker on their civilian AOC with a couple of G-reg A330's that are part of their Brize-based fleet (the rest, the tankers, being on the Mil reg). One of the civil registered a/c (G-VYGK I believe) is also currently on lease to Thomas Cook and is flying people to the sun in their full colours.

In a former life I spent quite a bit of time flying around in the RAF Transport Fleet, and a lot of it was along standard civilian routings into civilian airports (Manchester, Aberdeen, Manston, Teeside, Edinburgh, Stansted, Belfast, Leeds Bradford, Bergen, Hannover, Verona, Las Vegas, Calgary, Nairobi, Washington (Dulles) - amongst many others - are ones I remember us going to on a regular basis) under an ASCOT callsign. Of course, there were lots of Military Airfields aswell, some of them quite interesting.

Best flying I ever did was with these guys in the Hercs, VC10's and Tristars (I left my days as an RAF Reservist before the C17, A400M and A330 came into service).

Sorry for thread creep!