Air Traffic Control in Europe Is It Applicable to Australia

Considering the Australian system, European divisions of airspace and Air Traffic Control systems make interesting comparisons, wherein some notable differences would be beneficial to air transport in the Australian environment if applied here; an analysis, from the operator’s viewpoint – “how it looks to the pilot” – based on this writer’s personal experiences is thus presented in this article.

The United Kingdom

The division of airspace is fundamentally different from that in the Australian FIR insofar as there is no ‘area’ controlled airspace (CTA) in the UK, apart from terminal manoeuvring areas (TMA) and control zones (CTZ). By ‘area’ I mean non-directionally orientated large volumes (of airspace). The CTA emanates from primary airport zones in Australia and extending circumferentially through 360° of azimuth, stepping out radially is area CTA. In the UK the only en route controlled airspace is ‘airways’ – corridors of airspace (10nm wide) embracing particular air routes, low or upper levels (extending from a specified upper level to the appropriate lower level or ISALT; by clearing to a minimum of 1,000ft above the LL of the airway, a terrain clearance of at least 2,000ft is maintained).

Clearly, to/from London, there are many ‘spokes’ into/out of the TMA-it is indeed congested airspace, but over much of the UK the frequency of airways is not dense. VFR flights in CTA are not permitted, although VFR crossing (at right angles) of airways is allowed on clearance. Apart from CTA, the UK has other regulated airspace-most typical are special rules zones (SRZ), special rules airspace (SRA) and military air traffic zones (MATZ). Given VMC weather a pilot can fly into/out of SRZs VFR and there are some big ‘uns: for example, although Heathrow has a control zone and . will therefore only take IFR traffic, Gatwick Airport has a SRZ (not a CTZ) and so will take VFR or IFR traffic, subject to procurement of a runway occupancy slot and from my experience, Gatwick is quite amenable to business aircraft traffic treating it expeditiously.

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