Europe
In Europe, airways are corridors 10 nautical miles (19 km) wide of controlled airspace with a defined lower base, usually FL070-FL100, extending to FL195. They link the major airports giving protection to IFR flights during the climb and descent phases, and often for non-jet aircraft, cruise phases of flight. Historically they were laid out between VORs; however, advances in navigational technology mean that nowadays this is not always the case. Like European roads, each airway has a designator containing one letter and one to three numbers. All airspace above FL195 is class C controlled airspace, the equivalent to airways being called Upper Air Routes and having designators prefixed with the letter "U". If an upper air route follows the same track as an airway its designator will be identical to the airway, prefixed with the letter "U".
In the UK, airways are all Class A below FL195 and therefore VFR flights are prohibited.
Read more about this topic: Airway (aviation)
Famous quotes containing the word europe:
“We are participants, whether we would or not, in the life of the world.... We are partners with the rest. What affects mankind is inevitably our affair as well as the nations of Europe and Asia.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Can we never extract this tape-worm of Europe from the brain of our countrymen?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The confrontation between America and Europe reveals not so much a rapprochement as a distortion, an unbridgeable rift. There isn’t just a gap between us, but a whole chasm of modernity.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)