Sir - In a recent weekday attempt to recover an unpressurised jet transport from the Mediterranean area to the UK, France's Paris Control objected to the flight plan because the route did not conform to the traffic-orientation scheme (TOS-17). It was explained that the flightplan route was selected to avoid terrain above a certain elevation, for obvious reasons, but it was only after strenuous protest that the authority allowed the flight to proceed as planned.
The TOS was designed to facilitate traffic flow on airways at normal cruising levels. What, then, had it to do with our trip at 10,000ft (3,300m)?What sort of rigid and solidified system has been created in Europe? Are we expected to avoid legitimate routes because of individual interpretations of a scheme which was intended to improve the flow of air traffic?
Some radical improvement of the concept, including the integrated flight-planning system, is required urgently to prevent further examples of this nonsense, for which I have invented the word "beurocracy".
Norman Foster
Duxford, Cambridgeshire, UK
Source: Flight International
