Airspace and Notams
Since the new terminal at Madrid airport came into being some years back the airports authority has snatched a large section of airspace to the north of the mountains to the east of Avila. This makes for problems for those 200km flights, though for us we are not so affected as the sailplane club of Fuentemilanos and the flying site of Arcones (which sits right under the normal approach). The sailplane clubs have negociated a NOTAM running through the summer which allows less retrictive flying in that area. Without it they would certainly go out of business as they would have few pilots interested in flying to only some 500m about the aerodrome rather than the 1000km yo yo flights they regularly do in summertime.
There had been some doubt as to whether they would get the Notam this year due to certain political problems. However, luckily that has now been resloved and the Notam given is a larger area and less complex in its design than last year. The Notam comes into vigour on the 20th of June. Paul Russell is helping me with a map for the competiton events which will have the new airspace clearly marked. When finished it will be downloadable from this website along with the turnpoints for the Pre and World Championship.
It is hoped that the routing of aircraft to Madrid will be changed in the future. The current approach over the mountains is not favoured by airline pilots as they are crossing high ground on their finals and also if there are storms they are likely to be on those mountains and in their way. A favoured route for them would be to approach the airport from the east. This would leave us without airpace problems and the ability to fly unimpeded once again.