Class F Special-Use Airspace and Flight Restrictions

Why it matters

Some sky is set aside: artillery ranges, prison overflight bans, parachute drop zones, aerobatic practice boxes, water-bomber circuits over a burning ridge. Class F is how the system marks it, and the forest-fire rules are how the system reacts when a hazard appears overnight. These areas are small on the chart and easy to clip with a lazy course line — and unlike most airspace rules, some of them protect people who never agreed to be under an aeroplane at all.

Class F: restricted and advisory

Class F Special Use airspace comes in two flavours, and it can be carved out of controlled or uncontrolled airspace alike (CAR 601.02):

• Special Use Restricted — shown on charts as CYR followed by a number. No person may operate inside without an authorization from the user agency specified in the Designated Airspace Handbook (CAR 601.04). Military ranges, sensitive sites and prisons live here. The person specified in the DAH may authorize entry when the activity is not hazardous and national security is not jeopardized — but the default is closed.
• Special Use Advisory — shown as CYA, with a suffix letter for the activity: (A) aerobatics, (F) aircraft testing, (H) hang gliding, (M) military, (P) parachuting, (S) soaring, (T) training. VFR flight may enter an active CYA without permission — it is advisory — but a prudent pilot avoids it or crosses with maximum vigilance while the activity is active. The DAH and the chart give the active hours.
• Over water you may also see CYD, danger areas — the same idea as restricted airspace, established over international waters where Canada cannot legally forbid entry, only warn.

A useful habit: whenever your planned track passes near a Class F area, note its designator, altitudes and hours in your flight log, and decide on the ground whether you will detour.

Forest fires: 5 miles, 3,000 feet — NOTAM or not

Water bombers and bird-dog aircraft work low, heavy and half-blind in smoke; the law clears the sky around them without waiting for paperwork. Under CAR 601.15, no aircraft may operate:

• below 3,000 feet AGL over a forest fire area, or over any area within 5 nautical miles of it — this applies automatically, the moment a fire exists, whether or not anything has been published; and
• in any airspace described in a NOTAM issued for that fire (CAR 601.16) — the NOTAM can enlarge the protected volume well beyond the default cylinder.

So the default keep-out is a cylinder of radius 5 NM around the fire area up to 3,000 feet AGL, and a NOTAM can supersede it with something bigger. Smoke on the horizon is your cue to climb or divert before the details are knowable.

Lasers and bright lights

Two short provisions round out the restrictions. No person may project a directed bright light source — a laser — at an aircraft in a manner that creates a hazard or is likely to interfere with the crew (CAR 601.20), and the carriage or use of hand-held lasers in the vicinity of aerodromes is itself restricted (CAR 601.19). As a pilot your side of the rule is procedural: if you take a laser strike, look away, engage the autopilot or hand over control if able, and report it to ATC — the report starts the enforcement machinery.