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:
“You can always tell a Midwestern couple in Europe because they will be standing in the middle of a busy intersection looking at a wind-blown map and arguing over which way is west. European cities, with their wandering streets and undisciplined alleys, drive Midwesterners practically insane.”
—Bill Bryson (b. 1951)
“That land is like an Eagle, whose young gaze
Feeds on the noontide beam, whose golden plume
Floats moveless on the storm, and in the blaze
Of sunrise gleams when Earth is wrapped in gloom;
An epitaph of glory for the tomb
Of murdered Europe may thy fame be made,
Great People! as the sands shalt thou become;
Thy growth is swift as morn, when night must fade;
The multitudinous Earth shall sleep beneath thy shade.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“Should the German people lay down their arms, the Soviets ... would occupy all eastern and south-eastern Europe together with the greater part of the Reich. Over all this territory, which with the Soviet Union included, would be of enormous extent, an iron curtain would at once descend.”
—Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945)