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Notes -
Quick follow up to this (I'm a licensed pilot though I don't fly that frequently).
Class B is the really important one in the usual course of business (but all bets are off when TFRs come into play). Class C and D are pretty small and used for regional airports. If you accidentally fly through one, tower won't be happy but you won't get in serious trouble for it. And they're so small that accidentally flying through them is pretty hard anyway (the only real reason to enter them is to land at the airport in the center). And if you do want to fly through them, you just need tower to acknowledge your presence somehow. Easy.
Class B is special. It's used for the major international airports. The upper section measures sixty miles across (i.e. typically the entire city the airport is a part of). It has huge amounts of jumbo jets with hundreds of passengers each. And the government has absolutely no tolerance at all for any shenanigans in there. Students are mostly not allowed in without explicit permission from their instructor. Any plane entering needs explicit permission from ATC before entering and always has an assigned altitude and vector while there that they are not allowed to deviate from (barring genuine emergencies). And violating any of these rules has severe penalties.
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