SkyHog said:
No person may operate an ultralight vehicle within Class A, Class B, Class C, or Class D airspace or within the lateral boundaries of the surface area of Class E airspace designated for an airport unless that person has prior authorization from the ATC facility having jurisdiction over that airspace.
Does this mean that flying under a Class C shelf is out of the question? If so, can I contact ATC for clearance into Class C, or only into Class E?
I can sort of see how you could read it so that the authorization applies only to Class E, but it applies to all of the airspaces listed.
One clue is looking elsewhere. For example, part of 103.23, which talks about cloud clearances and visibility requirements, reminds us that
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All operations in Class A, Class B, Class C and Class D airspace or Class E airspace designated for an airport must receive prior ATC authorization as required in § 103.17 of this part.
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Now, one of my CFIs mentioned in the past that anything marked yellow on a sectional is "congested area". Is that true?
I don't think so. The yellow areas are cities and large towns (see NACO Chart Users' Guide). If cities and large towns were automatically congested areas, the regulation
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No person may operate an ultralight vehicle over any
congested area of a city, town, or settlement, or over any open air assembly of persons.
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means
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No person may operate an ultralight vehicle over any
congested area of a congested area, or settlement, or over any open air assembly of persons.
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I think it's more likely that the reg recognizes that there may be varying degrees of congestion within a city or town's limits than that it's redundant.
Of course, "congested area" itself is one of those terms that can be interpreted narrowly or broadly. From a 1979 FAA Legal opinion:
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1. What is the interpretation of the term "congested area of a city, town or settlement" as that term is used in Section 91.79(b) of the FARs?
The meaning of the term "congested area" is determined on a case-by-case basis. It first appeared in the Air Commerce Regulations of 1926. No abstract regulatory definition has yet been developed. However, the following guidelines indicate the interpretations of the Civil Aeronautics board (now National Transportation Safety Board) in attempting to give meaning to the term.
a. The purpose of the rule is to provide minimum safe altitudes for flight and to provide adequate protection to persons on the ground. Thus, it distinguishes flight over sparsely settled areas as well as large metropolitan areas from low flying aircraft. Thus, size of the area is not controlling, and violations of the rule have been sustained for operation of aircraft: (i) over a small congested area consisting of approximately 10 houses and a school (Allman, 5 C.A.B. 8 (1940)); (ii) over campus of a university (Tobin, 5 C.A.B. 162, 164(1941); (iii) over a beach area along a highway, and (iv) over a boy's camp where there were numerous people on the docks and children at play on shore.
b. The presence of people is important to the determination of whether a particular area is "congested." Thus, no violation was found in the case of a flight over a large shop building and four one-family dwellings because, in the words of the CAB examiner, "it is not known (to the court) whether the dwellings were occupied." In that case, the area surrounding the buildings was open, flat and semiarid.
c. The term has been interpreted to prohibit overflights that cut the corners of large, heavily congested residential areas.
As made clear in FAR 91.79, the congested area must be an area of a city, town, or settlement.
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