Class D Sucks

Stefan wrote:
You don't understand what I mean. Airspace classification is an
international thing, an ICAO thing. The worst a country could do is
to
leave that international system. If you don't like airspace D, then
your
approach should be not to apply it in the USA.

First off, we've already done it with Class F airspace - we don't have
any in the US. We don't have to have class D either.

Second, we are already non-compliant with some aspects of ICAO. For
example, in the US, Class C does not require a celarance for VFR.

Third, I don't see what the big deal is about local regulation. Yes,
it makes things more complicated for the huge international operator,
giving the smaller local operator an advantage. IMO this is a feature,
not a bug.

So I understand what you mean perfectly - I just don't agree.

Yes - it allows the controller to limit your ability to separate
yourself without accepting any responsibility for the resulting
loss of
separation. That's a bug.

No. It allows a controller to provide some "big scale separation",
leaving the "fine separation" to the pilots.

I think this is nonsense, considering there IS no big scale in US Class
D - the typical radius is less than 5 nm.

It's only when things are made counterintuitive that problems come
up.

Intuition is a very personal thing. What may be intuitive to you may
not
be so to me and vice versa.

Actually, that's not true. There is a whole science of ergonomics, and
one aspect of it, the design of user interfaces, is all about what is
intuitive. In the modern software world, the more progressive
companies actually have people unfamiliar with the software work with
it. If people keep right-clicking somewhere where such an action has
no effect, the fix is not to train the users - it is to change the
software so that right clicking there does what they expect.

The trained people (software engineers) often complain about this, but
they are wrong. It's really that simple. It's about time some modern
thinking like that was introduced into the national airspace system.
Michael