Clearence to enter controlled airspace

Actually, if you wait long enough, you will see an option to request clearance into the local controlled airspace if is Charlie or Bravo in the US. I haven’t flown in Europe and I don’t know what their airspace types are.

The problem is, the option doesn’t come up until you are 1 or 2 mi or less from the airspace, which is ridiculous. Seems to me, the option should be active for any airspace that is 8 mi or less from you. Which might mean, for instance in an area like Washington DC, you might get the choice for multiple airspaces. But, even with flight following active, the option will come up.

One issue I’ve found with it is that once you accept the clearance, sometimes flight following doesn’t continue after you’ve exited the airspace.

If we are in the US we do not even need a clearance to fly in Class C or Class D, if we are in (most of? all of?) Europe we do. If we are in Japan, Australia, Argentina or Madagascar I honestly have no idea what the requirements are for Class C or Class D. If we are in the US Class A only starts at 18000 ft so it is no issue for our C172, if we are in parts of Europe we encounter Class A at low altitude; in those parts we should not even be allowed to fly VFR so should the sim enforce that? Oh and while in (parts of? all of?) Europe the airspace might technically be Class B or C or D it is not referred to as such, we are really supposed to ask for clearance through the TMA or CTR (which could be Class B or C or D or E or A…)

There are warning areas where we can fly but probably shouldn’t, there are restricted areas where we sometimes cannot fly but sometimes we can, there are prohibited areas where we usually cannot. To figure those out we are supposed to call FSS, no wait that is only in the US, we call the local ATC? No we have to check the charts or charts supplements or whatever they have renamed those to to see who, if anyone, to call (where do we get the local charts from?).

By the way, if I am flying in Peru, should I really be able to ask for “flight following”, Peru is not a part of the US last I looked? In the UK, why are basic service, deconfliction service and (whatever the third service is called?) not implemented in the sim?

If we are in the US, we call ground to request taxi. But we were really supposed to call ramp for push back first - sometimes. If we are in parts of France, we call who knows who at our TSAT unless our AOBT is too far past our ASAT in which case PDS puts something on the CDM to say our flight is blocked so our ground handler has to file a new TOBT and we start over (ok I barely know what I just said but the acronyms are right…) Except we really call nobody because that is all on data link or some web page we have to get to on our Ipad.

This is an area where, IMHO, it is futile for the sim to try to be fully realistic. There are way too many variants of real life procedures to implement them all, and even implementing one variant means it is only accurate in (parts of) a region (sometimes).

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Traffic Service is the third UK one.

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The way it is implemented in the sim it doesn’t implement any of the region specific regulations correctly not even US. Especially regarding temporary restricted areas, they are basically just virtual suggar, like they were all disabled.

Also i have tested yesterday flying into class B airspace without any flight plan with flight following, nothing happens. There is no clearence required at all and there is also no option to get the clearence when you have flight following established. Its like with flight following you don’t have to care about any airspaces at all. You are cleared to go anywhere.

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I have a lot of gripes with the default ATC but in fairness, airspace control is a rather tricky thing for MFS to get right ( considering that every country has it’s own distinct airspace classifications and rules ).

This is dated (tiny image, i know - sorry!), but it gives you an idea of how much airspace classifications vary in Europe, for example.
airspace_klein

Let’s fix the ATC clearing us to land in a 20kt tailwind first. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: Then we can move onto more complex stuff like this.

Why not both?

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