Response 535073956

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Introduction

1. Are you responding in an official capacity on behalf of an organisation?

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Yes
No
Rattlesden Gliding club

2. What is your name?

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Kevin Western

4. Are you answering as:

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Resident affected by aviation
Airline passenger
Member of the General Aviation community
Member of the commercial aviation industry
Central or local government body including military
Elected political representative e.g. councillor or MP
National representative organisation e.g. trade association
Local organisation e.g. community action group
Other

5. Where do you live or where is your organisation based?

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East of England
East Midlands
West Midlands
North East
North West
Northern Ireland
Scotland
South East
South West
Wales
Yorkshire and the Humber

6. Is there anything else that you would like us to know in connection with your response?

General
Gliding has been more and more restricted by the proliferation of non class G airspace for the economic benefit of a tiny minority of people. Most of this is granted with little or no proper consultation or oversight and with no relation to the amount or type of traffic that will actually use it.
The recent help in crossing class G are some help but the svfr confusion makes this less than useful.

7. Do you consent to your response being published?

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Yes, with personal identifying information (name, organisation, respondent category, location, additional information – please note your email address will NOT be published if you choose this option)
Yes, anonymised
No

8. CAP 1887 details the proposed criteria to be used to inform whether to accept the Airspace Change Masterplan, which is being created by the Airspace Change Organising Group (ACOG), an impartial team in NERL. Do you have any general comments you would like to share on the proposed criteria for assessing and accepting the Airspace Change Masterplan?

We need to go much further than this review. Most of the airspace already granted is based on archaic Control practices and aircraft performance and could quite safely be reduced. The fact that GA aren't supposed to fly near airspace boundaries in case they trigger collision alerts within it is crackers.
The safety effects on GA of all this has been extremely detrimental with large amounts of traffic forced into very narrow corridors or height bands with the consequent increase in collision risk.
Many of the recently granted and evidently critically important airspaces aren't important enough to staff at all full time or enough to allow transits at many times , if that is the case, then the airspace should be removed.
There is much reference to drones, and many commercial organisations are trying to create a way to use these. While I am sure they will have to avoid major and licenced airfields, there appears to be no such protection for other GA activities and no pressure to produce it. These commercial organisations will have much more legal power than the average flying club. There has to be legislative protection assumed for legitimate GA activity against Drone interference .

9. Are the proposed criteria detailed in CAP 1887 the right criteria to enable acceptance?

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About right
Minor modifications needed
Significant modifications needed
Don’t know

10. Chapter 3 of CAP 1887 details the policy considerations that are relevant to the Airspace Change Masterplan. Are there examples of where further policy may be required to guide trade-off decisions?

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Yes
No
Don't know

11. Chapter 4 of CAP 1887 details the engagement expectations for the Airspace Change Organising Group (ACOG) to undertake. Do you have any comments on the engagement we are asking ACOG to undertake?

There needs to be a mechanism to ensure smaller entities are notified and have a voice particularly if they don't have an overarching national organisation to consult.