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Official Non Towered airport (can you land regardless?)

The other day I was making a fuel stop at and clearing immigration to go from Hungary (EU and Schengen) to Croatia (EU but not Schengen). The Place has very very little traffic. No Im not stuttering as I type. In any case I had the miss fortune of arriving 10 mins ahead of Air Germania. So the tower told me to hold because of in bound traffic. Ok I thought but for how long? I was maybe 2 miles from midfield for an easy right or left downwind. The winds were insignificant. But as I was doing the merry go round and burning fuel I was getting hotter and hotter under the collar. “Anybody see that guy?” “Tower where is he?” “He is inbound continue to hold.” Finally about 10 mins later he appears. Now My flight to that airport from my airport was only 33 mins so a 10 min hold was a significant portion of the flight. On the return trip we were the only ones. The place was deserted so I felt like I had to stop in to the coffee shop to spend some money. But thats the sucker in me. If I was one of the CEO As*holes that run that airline I would step over the corpse.

But I digress. What I noticed on the return trip that it is a non towered airport with an INFO service kind of like a Unicom. The question is, that in the US a Unicom is only for advisories. They cant tell you to hold or direct traffic isnt it the same here? Could I have said I was landing? I was VFR. By the way the 737 was not even at the IAF.

KHTO, LHTL
Could I have said I was landing?

Yes you could have said so, and could even have done so, within the limits of air law – if the airfield and its airspace are non-controlled then nobody has any authority to tell you about.

You might still be in breach of the “rules of the house” though, so that the aerodrome operator could have prosecuted you, up to and including impounding your plane.

But, btw, it is a pity you did not name the place, we are now up to guessing. Are you sure the field has no PPR, in which case you might have known what was going to happen? IF there is a requirement for prior permission and you did not get it THEN I’m afraid you’ve only yourself to blame.

Last Edited by at 28 Jun 19:26
EBZH Kiewit, Belgium

So whose authority supersedes whom? Rules of the house trumps ICAO regulations? Is this like a poker game where every homeowner decides which cards are wild?

The airport was LHSM and I did contact them ahead of time and I did file an IFR then changed it to VFR flight plan due to CAVU conditions. Usually the Hungarians are pretty accommodating so this was right out of the German play book. By that I mean airport shorts too tight management. Controllers are by and large helpful unless Emperor Ryanair is somewhere in the sky.

KHTO, LHTL

I know nothing specific about Hungary, but normally an AFIS has no say whatsoever in the air. They can provide information, but that’s it. They can not and should not issue any instructions in the air.

An airport owner is not the law. They can’t prosecute you for anything. What they can do is refuse you permission to depart their airfield, or they can report you to the authorities for “endangering an aircraft” and you then have to defend your position, presumably at the same time complaining at that an AFISO is issuing instructions in the air where they don’t have authority or the appropriate training and skills to do so!

Perhaps time to get yourself a pilot aware device and link it to your tablet. Then you can see any ADSB traffic, which I presume an airliner would be The next time you’re told to hold for an airliner, you can query it “What you mean that one that is still 15 minutes away??!!!”

EIWT Weston, Ireland

Whatever flight plan you filed would make little difference. Neither, I fear for @dublinpilot, would carrying some ADSB receiver and associated display.

At this particular airport, that to my understanding has long been struggling for commercial success, I can well imagine everybody and their dog will disrupt any action that has even the slightest chance of even microscopically annoying a commercial flight.

But the house rules are what they are, and no ICAO ruling can nor will go against them. Imagine you turn up with your red Porsche at a club with a big sign on the parking stating “only red Ferraris allowed”. You can say a thousand times there’s no law forbidding you to drive a red Porsche, your car will still be disallowed on that parking lot. Why should aerodromes be different?

EBZH Kiewit, Belgium

Obviously a FISO cannot control airborne traffic but isn’t there a grey area in this, in that the FISO (or an A/G for that matter; not sure if these are UK-only things) does represent the landowner.

Some years ago I was been told by a UK airfield consultant that a FISO can stop you landing there. The procedure is to say, on the air, that on behalf of the landowner you are being denied permission to land.

If you then continue and land, you commit trespass. Yeah, another UK term, but every country must have something similar otherwise you could just walk on or even grab anybody else’s bit of land (without using an AK47, I mean).

I have no idea if this has ever been tested. Most private pilots are utterly petrified of “ATC” (in any form including a FISO) and there have been comical scenarios where a FISO at some airfield (in Essex, IIRC) was able to prevent a landing, citing the non-receipt of a GAR form. Pretty sickening because (a) the reason is bogus; (b) the airfield has no reason to even see a GAR form; (c) the airfield is not registered under the Data Protection Act which would be required to handle GAR forms.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

@Peter, yes, indeed, that is (at least here in BE) a big difference between controlled and non-controlled fields:

  • at a controlled field, the aerodrome operator has to hire the controllers from the state authority – actually we have a standing row over who must pay what at which airport, due to our complex political structure; but the controllers do be from the state authority
  • at a non-controlled field, most radio operators are volunteers, a very few being aerodrome employees (at EBGB Grimbergen, there is, or used to be, one such person, volunteers working the rest of the time). These will – if and when they reply on the frequency, which is far from a certainty, nor an obligation – obviously voice the a/d operator’s interests, and indeed they pay a service to pilots wanting to visit, by reminding them of the rules that be, both the house rules and the rules of the air.

( I must however say I am not at all “petrified” of calling anyone on the radio – all I have called seemed to be aware they were there to render a service, and made the best of it. )

“Trespass” (which is a bit of an exotic word, but its meaning must exist in most land law) would indeed be the correct term for any pilot landing without authorisation – which is quite separate from a “landing clearance”. But I do not really see any grayness.

Last Edited by at 28 Jun 20:44
EBZH Kiewit, Belgium

Absolutely no gray area, even in the UK. CAP 797 refers.

“FISOs are not permitted to issue instructions, except for those circumstances in
paragraph 1.3, or when relaying a clearance from an air traffic control unit. Pilots
therefore are wholly responsible for collision avoidance in conformity with the
Rules of the Air.

1.3 In granting or refusing permission under Rules 12 and 13 of the Rules of the Air,
AFISOs are permitted to pass instructions to vehicles and personnel operating
on the manoeuvring area, as well as:
a) departing aircraft about to move or moving on the apron and manoeuvring
area up to and including the holding point of the runway to be used for
departure;
b) departing aircraft required to utilise the runway for the purposes of taxiing,
who will not subsequently vacate the runway prior to departure
c) arriving aircraft moving on the manoeuvring area and apron, following the
completion of the landing roll;
d) all other taxiing aircraft intending to move or moving on the apron and
manoeuvring area, including the crossing of runways;
e) to helicopters engaged in air taxiing for departure, up to and including the
holding point of the runway to be used for departure or up to and including
such other location on the aerodrome from which the helicopter will depart;
and
f) to helicopters engaging in air taxiing on completion of landing or that have
reached the hover prior to air taxiing.
Elsewhere on the ground and at all times in the air, information shall be passed.

1.4 In providing advice to aircraft, FISOs should carefully consider whether such
advice could be misconstrued as an instruction and should phrase that advice
accordingly. The provision of advice by a FISO should be limited to those
occasions where they consider that it is essential for the safe conduct of flight;
for example the provision of advice on local joining procedures to arriving aircraft
approaching the circuit."

Looks pretty clear to me.

It is clear, yes, but there is a “small detail”: somebody owns the land the runway is on.

And the UK (along with most of the world outside the USA) has no concept of a “public airport” – in the US meaning i.e. the airport must accept traffic as a condition of getting FAA (= US taxpayer) funding.

It’s all great to list the privileges of a FISO (or whoever holds the microphone) but there is no right to land anywhere.

Denning once said “there are no rights, only privileges” but let’s not go there

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

@Peter, excuse me again for only talking about the BE that I more or less know – at least I passed some exam on the matter :) – but we do have public airports here – EBBR, EBAW, EBOS, EBLG, EBCI and they are mentioned as such in the AIP. They do have an obligation to accept traffic, within the limits of their published terms of operation (such as hours of operation – EBAW and EBCI have a published night curfew). Without being very sure, I believe the same applies to the German Verkehrslandeplätze and to the great majority of fields in France labelled ouvert à la CAP

But yes, we all have to comply both with the rules of the air AND with the rules of the house of any aerodrome we choose to use.
In the extreme, we can always call a MayDay and we will be legally entitled to land at any field – but the rules of the house might make it expensive. Lawyers would say the one is civil offense, the other is, errrm, what was the other :blush:

Last Edited by at 28 Jun 20:57
EBZH Kiewit, Belgium
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