at Manston shuts down Distress and Diversion aircraft safety system over South East of England.

Within the UK system there is a distress and diversion capability. This consists of some civilian but mostly RAF/Military controllers and is known as Centre. Their job is to answer distress calls and assist pilots who are lost, unsure of position, or under threat. They are contactable at any time, on the international aeronautical distress frequency at 121.5 MHz for civilian aircraft and 243.0 MHz for military ones. However now that Operation Stack is planning on parking lorries on the Manston Airport , this has caused a shut down the capability of this cell in the South East of England - A senior Aircrew member of the Save Manston Airport association has brought this to the attention of the SMA Committee :

Q) EGTT/QCALT/IV/B/E/000/999/5120N00121E030 B) FROM: 15/08/06 10:46C) TO: 15/11/05 23:59 E) IN ACCORDANCE WITH OPR MERULA (THIS IS REFERENCE TO OPERATION STACK) MANSTON SHARED HRDF (HIGH RESOLUTION DF) SITE FOR UHF/VHF AUTO­TRIANGULATION IS NOT AVBL. AS A RESULT THERE WILL BE A REDUCTION IN COVERAGE IN THE MANSTON AREA.

Interestingly this Notice to Aviators (NOTAM) is currently only valid until 5th November. Radio Direction Finding (HRDF) is an important technique used to find aircraft position: the three orange lines around the West Country on the adjacent map show how three stations are used to fix the position of an aircraft. For an aircraft flying at 5000 feet, the theoretical range at which the Manston station could pick up their distress signal is about 85 nautical miles - about as far as Junction 5 on the M25 (M26 interchange) In the map of the RAF DF sites in the UK, the large hole in the coverage of the South East of England and across the Channel that is left by Manston’s removal, can be seen. Their webpage is at : http://airspacesafety.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/d_d_presentation_shawbury.pdf Locations of DF facilities in England.

Question! This senior Aircrew member of SMA asks “How can this have been allowed? How can the CAA and the RAF allow this to happen ? How can they have accepted this reduction in their D&D coverage without question? In short, how can this Operation Stack be allowed, without question, to shut down the distress and diversion capability of air traffic control in the south-east of England ?

Another SMA member was, in the past, one of the RAF Officers in Charge of the Distress and Diversion Cell in ​ London (now in Swanwick). She says : “One of the tools that they use to locate and identify aircraft is High Resolution Direction Finding (HRDF). Clearly, what is happening here is that the 'authorities' have determined that the presence of many HGV's on the runway will interfere with the capability of the DF (direction finding ) equipment on the airfield, thereby putting aircrew and passengers at risk.” The question is, Why have the CAA and the RAF accepted this without so much a whisper. Part of the answer is “that such outages do happen frequently nationwide so there will not be anything particularly unusual about it.”

However SMA do ask if it is generally known that just the possibility of having lorries on the Manston runway (which will only happen if Operation Stack goes to a Stage 3 condition, at Dover), is thereby putting aircrew and passengers at risk ?

Further, this SMA ex-RAF ATC controller goes on to say : “The South East of England has long had a paucity of coverage and I have always felt this was a bad thing as it covers the shortest route across water to France where a lot of civilian pilots (quite often very inexperienced pilots) like to try and cross for their first flight abroad. I have had to talk to Manston controllers in the past to help me try and locate a missing pilot and if one gets disorientated and lost in this area then the lack of DF auto triangulation is a real problem.” “As you can see, for the moment it is a temporary outage but it will add power to the argument that emergency coverage in this area is affected by the loss of Manston. “

Another SMA member (ex-Manston Air Traffic Controller) says : “I do not understand why they are NOTAMing this when there aren't even any lorries there! Do it if/when they turn up. It is a straight-forward thing to do a NOTAM for someone with any brains and there is no reason for this NOTAM at the moment and no reason why the DRDF should not be functioning.” He adds : “ I'd make a complaint to the CAA .....” Currently if one actually phones London Centre, they will state that the system is still up and working, however we worry that the existence of the published NOTAM, saying that the system is NOT working, will dissuade aviators in need from attempting to even use the system. So SMA say to TDC, and KCC, that we feel that there are questions that need to be asked – “Is it generally realised that the provisional designation of Manston for Lorry parking is potentially putting Private and Commercial aircraft in the South of England at risk, and what should be done about this ?

A photo of the relevant installation at Manston, and a better image of one located elsewhere.

Site of Manston Airport’s HRDF facility.