Talk:Controlled airspace

I'm not sure why you added 'in the United States'. Those five classes are the five ICAO classes of controlled airspace and the United States now uses those five classes to conform with the international standard. Are there still countries that have controlled airspace that isn't class A, B, C, D, or E?

The most recent change, saying that radar is not required for class B and C is incorrect. There must be radar coverage or class B/C services will be terminated. See, for example, http://www.faa.gov/atpubs/ATC/Chp7/atc0708.html However, the change still makes the text clearer, so it should not be reverted.

Rationale for 22 March 2005 edits:

-Radar coverage is not always available in controlled airspace. The example of Class D areas without radar coverage, cited later, is the most obvious example, but there are others, especially in the western U.S.

-The statement that most airspace above 1,200 agl is controlled airspace is probably not true outside the U.S.

-The previous language could have been interpreted as saying that IFR flight is not safe in uncontrolled airspace, which is a matter of opinion and pilot judgement.

-One could argue that the clearance of IFR aircraft into class B is implicit, not explicit.

-Most readers will not know what "altitude-encoding" means.

-I believe that the Cessna 172 has been built in greater numbers than any other aircraft, so the statement that most small planes are not capable of flying above 12,500 msl is probably not true.

-Class C does not require a clearance of any kind, neither explicit nor implicit, only radio communications.

-The criterion for classes B and C is how busy the airport is, not how big it is.

-The previous language left open the possibility that class F might be used in the U.S. for purposes other than special use airspace.

-Neither IFR nor VFR flights are required to be in radio contact with ATC in Class G airspace. (Note that 14 CFR 91.183 only applies to controlled airspace.)

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I reverted the names of the airspace classes to letter form (A, B, C, etc.) because that is the way they are defined in the regulations. See 14CFR Part 71, for example. http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&sid=9be71c36700767b16411b91386a78d2d&rgn=div5&view=text&node=14:2.0.1.2.6&idno=14

Phonetics are not necessary in print unless you are writing a tutorial on radio usage. Palmpilot900 23:02, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Re-write

This article is US centric, and also appears to have strayed into describing airspace classification and uncontrolled airspace.

Since there is a seperate article on ICAO Airspace Classification, does anyone have any problems with me re-writing it to be based upon the ICAO definitions of Controlled Airspace?BaseTurnComplete 12:00, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Class F airspace in the UK requires some sort of separation and is uncontrolled airspace.

Expanded

I expanded this article quite a bit. It's still very US-centric, since I know little of airspace outside the US. If someone can fix that, it would be great. It also might be worth looking into merging this with Airspace class (United States), since the two are very similar. anonymous6494 04:33, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry anonymous6494 and anyone else who has edited this recently. By expanding this article you've made it much more US-centric than it was before. I'm minded to RV it to the older more concise version. I know you edited in good faith, however I think it demonstrates the danger of going into too much detail in the subject of aviation rules: it's all too easy to become very country specific and lose the global context of wikipedia. Also, there's already a wikipedia article that describes all the airspace classes, both controlled and uncontrolled, and one that describes how the US structures its airspace. They're better places for the sort of stuff that you've written.BaseTurnComplete 16:43, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

If it's too US-centric, why can't information for other countries be added, instead of removing good information? I think that something which is rated as 'top importance' in importance scale should have more content than what's presented. I think we took a step backwards here. anonymous6494 00:33, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

As I said, because there are already articles that do that here, and more pertinently in a US-specific context here. What you wrote is basically subset of this latter article and better wikilinked to if necessary rather than rehashed in detail here.

In any case, if this article is too short to be 'top importance' then IMHO either the tag should be removed, or this article be merged with airspace class, along with uncontrolled airspace, rather than duplicate information added to pad it out. BaseTurnComplete 09:58, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

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Merge proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was merge. . GeorgeHav (talk) 13:53, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

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Proposing to merge both Control area (aviation) and Control zone into this article. Both seem to have been quiet for quite a while & are stubs. Given that this is also a stub, might be worth putting the three together and just listening them under "types" GeorgeHav (talk) 23:05, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

ATC Clearance for airspace classes

I am speaking from the US perspective, so I am unsure if everything I say applies elsewhere in the world.

C, D, and E class airspaces do not need ATC clearance to enter. Two way radio communications must be established for Charlies and Deltas, but clearance to enter is not required. Class E does not need clearance, and its quite common to never talk to ATC when flying in echo (if VFR).

FAA Airspace Guidelines

Class C - 2.4

Class D - 2.5

Class E - 2.6

New to editing Wikipedia, sorry if any formatting or procedures are incorrect, please correct me if so! Jeremiah Kunz (talk) 16:38, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

Are you stating this as information to future users, or are you pointing out errors in the article? Seasider53 (talk) 17:09, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

This information is incorrect as it pertains to US airspace, but I am not sure how it would apply to other countries. Jeremiah Kunz (talk) 17:14, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

US indeed has an exception and this is in the list of deviations from ICAO in the AIP of the US, in chapter GEN 1.7.

The table in the Classes chapter lists ICAO rules. Robijn (talk) 19:52, 19 February 2026 (UTC)