Having to go to a nav-aid when out of radar contact

cmill

cmill

Cold Ass Honky
This happened to my buddy the other night. He was at 5000 and i was at 7000, both of us on IFR flight plans. We fly this route every single night, and at 5000ft center loses radar for about 15 miles. Its never a problem, they just inform us when they pick us back up.

Well, the other night the controller told my buddy that since he was out of radar contact he would have to make him go to the nearest vor, something about how he had to be within so many miles of a nav aid since he was out of radar contact. My buddy asked the controller about, and after going back and forth a couple times, the controller got huffy and basically said that all the other controllers were wrong for letting us go direct out of radar contact and that he didnt have time to argue about it. Fair enough, but i really doubt that controllers have been busting regs on a nightly basis.

Any insight on this? It seems to me at worse he coulda just made a position report. Something like on the 123 radial 13 DME. I dont see how flying direct to the nav aid really helps anything.
 
Well, you can go radar vector direct when you're in radar contact. You can go VFR GPS direct while in radar contact. But if you're IFR, and not in radar contact, I don't see how ATC could apply seperation.

Maybe you ran into a controller new to the sector and he didn't know how you guys make this work night in and night out (making his job easier), and decided to actually apply the most strict interpretation of the rules.
 
I never thought about the problem being with separation, theres lots of times when you could be IFR and not in radar contact. Even if that were the case I dont see the point of going direct to a VOR instead of direct to destination.

Whatever the case may be, my money was on new controller.
 
cmill said:
I never thought about the problem being with separation, theres lots of times when you could be IFR and not in radar contact. Even if that were the case I dont see the point of going direct to a VOR instead of direct to destination.

Whatever the case may be, my money was on new controller.
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Been a while since I've dug into the regs, but I'm pretty sure there's a part in the AIM that states that random RNAV routings (i.e, GPS direct) will not be approved outside of a radar environment.
 
Much of it boils down to safety and separation. There is normally a procedure with the receiving facility, or intra-facility, that indicates how a non-radar aircraft will be handled within their airspace. Whether it is on an airway or direct to some fix, handling of this situation will be spelled out. With additional facilities, it will include a distance, or time, from the boundary.

It may not be a new controller, but one implementing what is already there. Could have been a supervisor getting currency. It may have been noticed in a random audit. Who knows? The next time you fly, you may be back to the old way. If so, and they aren't too busy, ask again.
 
Isn't there somewhere that designates the fixes that define your route as compulsory reporting points when flying direct? Seems to me that this would imply that you are ok to do GPS direct when not in radar contact, but I may be way off base.
 
cmill said:
This happened to my buddy the other night. He was at 5000 and i was at 7000, both of us on IFR flight plans. We fly this route every single night, and at 5000ft center loses radar for about 15 miles. Its never a problem, they just inform us when they pick us back up.
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Not specific enough here. Were you on a cleared route, such as an airway, vor radial, or other navigable route?..or just being radar vectored direct?

If you are on radar vectors only, then being out of radar contact would 'normaly' require some other route clearance during the time period of being out of radar contact. However, local atc policies can deviate from the norm in these types of situations where the coverage blackout is minimal the operation is otherwise safe.
 
So if you can't do RNAV Direct outside of radar contact, care to explain how planes fly hundreds of miles between waypoints in Oceanic airspace?
 
canadian_atc said:
So if you can't do RNAV Direct outside of radar contact, care to explain how planes fly hundreds of miles between waypoints in Oceanic airspace?
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For the most part, the majority of air traffic going across the oceans are on specific routes. Very few random routes and the flight that are , they stay away from the NATS/PACOTS
 
nosehair said:
Not specific enough here. Were you on a cleared route, such as an airway, vor radial, or other navigable route?..or just being radar vectored direct?

If you are on radar vectors only, then being out of radar contact would 'normaly' require some other route clearance during the time period of being out of radar contact. However, local atc policies can deviate from the norm in these types of situations where the coverage blackout is minimal the operation is otherwise safe.
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we were gps direct under our own navigation, then he lost radar contact and cleared him direct to the vor.
 
for anyone wondering, my buddy got an aswer to this from houston center. While he couldnt get a straight answer as he wasnt talking to the same controller, the guy he was talking to basically said theres nothing in the book about it being REQUIRED, but it comes down to the number one rule. A controller can do anything he deems necessary to maintain separation, and its what the controller thought was necessary in this case.

On a side note, a similar situation happend yesterday. Therre were icing conditions 3000 and above, and he was told by center he could fly the entire route out of radar contact so long as he was on an airway. Cool, so he flies the airway to the VOR (about half the total trip) and then he gets cleared GPS direct, still out of radar contact.

So morale of the story: Who the hell really knows?
 
Basically it comes down to protecting airspace for where you might be. If you're on a direct route the controller has to block a huge amount of airspace since he doesn't know where you really are or exactly where your route may take you. If some of that airspace is near other sectors or near other airspace he might need, a clearance to a known point or fix greatly reduces this area.

Think about it this way: I am calling ATC for a clearance off an uncontrolled airport. If ATC clears me to my destination 100 miles away and gives me a void time and a release, they must ensure ALL airspace between me and my destination is clear all the way up to my requested altitude. That could involve a whole bunch of facilities and lots of controllers. Now what if I get a clearance only to a VOR that isn't exactly on my route, but close... Now ATC just has to ensure that the first few miles are clear until establishing RADAR contact, then only that the 3 (or 5) miles immediaely around me is clear.

Now, does all ATC do this all of the time? No. ATC is just as lazy as anyone else, however, they will try to make things easier on everybody if given the chance.
 
tykrtr said:
Basically it comes down to protecting airspace for where you might be. If you're on a direct route the controller has to block a huge amount of airspace since he doesn't know where you really are or exactly where your route may take you. If some of that airspace is near other sectors or near other airspace he might need, a clearance to a known point or fix greatly reduces this area.
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Yep.

Maybe there were other IFR aircraft in the area too.
Maybe the next sector wouldn't go for it.
 
cmill, well that was an incorrect answer. I used to do non-radar a lot at my last facility "out west," especially on the mid shift when they would take a radar down, and also more practically on all the IR routes we had out there. (And I went through when the academy was the non-radar screen and we also had more practical non-radar training in the D-side course, so unfortunately I remember all this....).

The reason he had to have a navaid in there somewhere was because the controller has to protect both the 10 minute push and the lateral confines of the route. If the pilot's not on an airway or flight tested radial, section 6-5-4 of the 7110 applies and technically the only provision for lateral confines (other than military) is via a NAVAID.

Now in practice, nobody going GPS direct is going to drift more than a few miles off, so almost certainly you could "get away" with it if the whole non-radar portion is within your sector, and say more than 10 miles lateral from all adjacent airspace. But the trouble is if you have to involve adjacent positions and there's no standard LOA, they may or may not be as casual as you and will probably have you put them on an airway anyway. Also hope your tape doesn't get randomly pulled for a QA review.

That controller friend of yours probably answered that way because if you're unsure of something (or, say, they don't use non-radar ever and he just forgot) you're usually okay using common sense and good judgement and they won't ding your record. But technically that's not correct, and if they routinely use non-radar there he should read up on the procedures.

Somebody mentioned oceanic tracks, they're different because there's required navigational performance that has lateral error maximums. The tracks then are separated by more than that laterally so they're protected from each other.

Hope that answers it...
 
F9DXER said:
For the most part, the majority of air traffic going across the oceans are on specific routes. Very few random routes and the flight that are , they stay away from the NATS/PACOTS
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i was on a random route 2 days ago, 60 miles south of the southern most track. random routes are very frequently, especially with corporate aircraft.
 
cmill said:
I never thought about the problem being with separation, theres lots of times when you could be IFR and not in radar contact. Even if that were the case I dont see the point of going direct to a VOR instead of direct to destination.

Whatever the case may be, my money was on new controller.
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nope, the answer is separation. the controller was right. if you go "radar contact lost" then you should be on a non-radar route. the controller sending you "direct ABC VOR" is just his way of establishing you on a non-radar routing. it is the correct thing to do. anyone on a random/GPS direct routing to destination without being radar monitored is on an illegal route. it's okay if the radar loss is unforeseen or VERY temporary.

the controller could've been new, but regardless...it's a controller that knew the rules and applied them. even when most of us would've just overlooked that "silly" rule and moved on.
 
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