19 August 2025
FLYER office conversation this week, prompted by a CAA email telling pilots off for infringing restricted areas:
Ed: I wonder if controllers are becoming much less tolerant of pilots?
Dave: I think they have to declare an infringement as an MOR these days.
Ed: But I wonder if controllers are just looking for every opportunity to get pilots now. It’s easy to see how controllers may just see GA pilots as an annoyance, and zero tolerance.
Dave: I remember 20 years ago (like yesterday!) trying to find Fairoaks and talking to Farnborough – they told me I’d dipped a wing into the Heathrow airspace – but they’d sorted it out with a quiet word.
Ed: Exactly that. I think there might be less than zero tolerance now – airspace can be so complex now, it’s like there are a myriad of traps.
And we’re probably two generations on from “good old boys” like the above who would have sought to resolve things like your issue, Dave.
There was a time (less than 20 years, but probably not much) when the CAA were making a fuss about how we didn’t really know the scale of the ‘problem’ because things were sorted out quietly.
Mandatory reporting then became a thing, and an MOR has to be raised for any infringement now. I don’t think controllers are over keen (well, not all of them), because an MOR means extra work, but nothing in comparison to the consequences if there’s a loss of separation.
We have some super complex airspace, and an ATC system that is both understaffed and not very joined up. Units like Bristol, which has chosen not to participate in the Lower Airspace Radar Service, result in service gaps while the proliferation of listening squawks, although (probably) well meant, has further eroded a national flight information service.
Add to that the growth of controlled airspace (Norwich, Farnborough and Southend are HUGE given their numbers and activity levels), things like RMZs, TMZs, Reserved airspace for drone trials and of course RA(T)s and we have a right bugger’s muddle.
Overlaying all of that are two British habits:
1 We love to invent things because we believe that we can do better than anyone else. As an example we have Basic, Traffic and Deconfliction services.
We treat our danger areas like prohibited areas and we have a mix of transition levels and altitudes that vary widely, sometimes with the time of day. Oh, I nearly forgot, in our small island that’s sinking under the weight of overcrowded complex airspace we layer three different pressure settings. QNH, QFE and RPS.
2 Sorting this lot out is a mammoth task, so what do our regulators do when they see a problem? Yup, they come up with incredibly stupid ideas like strongly suggesting we use the least appropriate website to check NOTAM (one where you actually have to plot and log longitude and latitude on a chart, FFS), or that you act in a way around ATZs that can be positively dangerous.
The vast majority of pilots want to do things right. Fear of getting something wrong in a world that is increasingly complex is one of the reasons why people fly less, or in some cases not at all.
