| NATS infringement talk |
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| Written by Webmaster | |
| Sunday, 01 July 2007 | |
 Airspace infringement was the subject of a fascinating talk given to club members recently by Mike Turner from NATS (National Air Traffic Services).Mike, who described himself as ‘institutionalised in air traffic’, joined Air Traffic Control as an assistant after leaving school and worked his way up, becoming an on-the-job training instructor and examiner. He worked at Heathrow for many years before moving to the London Terminal Control Centre in the 1990’s. He has been there ever since and currently holds validation on the Heathrow Approach sectors and previously held a validation for Gatwick Approach. In his spare time he has done a bit of gliding and has held a PPL since the mid 90’s, owning a share in a Cub and a Chipmunk. The Terminal Control lead person on infringements, he sits on the NATS Infringement Group. Mike (pictured above) played some live radar during his talk, showing some interesting if rather scary infringements – notably a student pilot on a crosscountry talking to Cambridge while calling down-wind at Stansted. The controllers very swiftly vectored what seemed like a fleet of Ryanair planes out of his way. Mike encouraged members, if they do accidentally infringe, to keep Mode C transponding so that their height is transmitted so enabling TCAS (proximity warning system) to work effectively. As an example he showed a small aircraft calling 1,500 feet which was actually at 3,000 feet and on replay we discovered just how close he came to a descending commercial airliner in Heathrow. He also showed some statistics that proved that less than 5% of infringers are prosecuted and stressed the importance of remaining in contact, with the transponder turned on. |
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 30 January 2008 ) |
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