The FPL and safety discussion is none sense to this MAC (no ATS, no active FPL, no SAR), so just states want just to police their border and the judge to hit you hard (even when there is no accident)
Sebastian_G wrote:
Regarding the radio if the pilot was really afraid to send his call sign all over the place why not do it like the Americans and simply announce the type of aircraft? “Low wing on short final”. Should be good enough to provide safety and also avoid legal trouble.
Or why not announce “position only” like most ULMs/Gliders/Paragliders, some don’t even have RT papers but still safety conscious
why not do it like the Americans and simply announce the type of aircraft? “Low wing on short final”
American RT is often more practical than ours. Knowing the type of aircraft announcing its position at an untowered field is much more useful than knowing its nationality.
However, on a glacier (or indeed a sandbank or a lake), position calls are somewhat less helpful than at a landing site which has a defined “runway”.
Jacko wrote:
Well, I’m not so sure whether such an alleged requirement – or border – exists between the French and Italian FIRs.
You do know your SERA, don’t you?
SERA.4001 Submission of a flight plan
…
(b) A flight plan shall be submitted prior to operating:
…
(5) any flight across international borders, unless otherwise prescribed by the States concerned
So the question is if there is such an agreement between France and Italy. The default position is that there is not.
In the context of citizens of the European Union exercising our treaty rights to move freely within what the European Commission calls a Europe without borders=, what is the purpose of such a requirement to file a flight plan?
I agree that between France and Italy it can serve no useful purpose, but try approaching Sweden from the Baltic Sea without a flight plan and you are very likely to be intercepted by fighters. This, of course, is due to the high intensity of military flights from many different countries over international waters.
Silvaire wrote:
Negligence by whom? The government for making it 100% legal to omit making blind calls?
There is a difference in philosophy regarding expectations towards rational behaviour in healthy adults between different legal systems. There might be legal systems that say it is the fault of the manufacturer of the microwave if they do not write “not suitable for drying cats” on it and therefore making it “100% legal” to put living cats in microwaves. European legal systems, however, would assume that every mentally healthy adult does know that a cat should not be dried in a microwave and acts accordingly. Therefore over here it is the fault of the user, not the manufecturer if the cat dies in a microwave.
Same with blind calls: Even without a definite law that mandates someone to make such calls, the legal System expects that airman apply common sense and stick to the common procedures.
There is that funny Story that in a German Military Code of Conduct you can find the rule: “If water depth exceeds 1,5m, the soldier has to start performing swimming movements by itself, even if not explicitely ordered to do so. Commanding officers can not be held responsible if soldier drowns even if they did not explizitely order swimming movements”
We’ve had many discussions on topics like this.
For example, in France, for a CAS transit you announce your route and the controller says “radar contact”. Maybe he might add “proceed”. The magic (and legally required) words “cleared to” are not used. This is great and people point to how relaxed France is and everybody loves it (and really easy transits are necessary since some of their airspace is practically unreadable) but if something went badly wrong, the pilot could get busted as badly as this one. The “previous custom” defence may work or may not; presumably in Italy it didn’t work, possibly because a foreign pilot was involved, and the political angle present.
Freedom to do things informally is great until something goes wrong and then the sky caves in. This is increasingly how things run the more south you go in Europe. People living there generally like it, but there is a price to pay. And probably it is bigger if you are a foreigner.
BTW I don’t think the US presumes it is feasible to microwave a cat. It’s just easier to get a lawyer to work on a percentage, and it’s easier to get a huge jury award (which one then haggles about for years, but the final figure is boring and doesn’t make social media). And juries are pretty stupid everywhere, on average, because smarter people tend to get off them.
Peter wrote:
Freedom to do things informally is great until something goes wrong and then the sky caves in.
Air2Air communication by pilots w/o need for ATC is the informal way of doing things. Not communicating at all is just the stupid way!
Yes, in some cases pilots got busted because they did things the informal (but safe) way – and it might well be, that domestic pilots get away easier with that than foreign ones.
This case, however, is different: The pilot (assuming that it was actually a training flight and therefore the FI was PIC) did noch choose the informal but safe but the stupid and unsafe way. He got fined for stupid and unsafe not for informal.
Therefore: In principle I agree to your Point but this case imho is not a good example to illustrate it!
it was actually a training flight and therefore the FI was PIC
That’s a rather European concept, too. But it isn’t necessarily valid. It may be always valid for logging purposes, but legally?
Do we know the LHS didn’t have valid papers for the flight?
If I had “mountain flying instruction”, I am surely legally capable of being PIC. I can jump in my plane right now, fly to the Alps, and fly all around them (subject to prohibited areas, CAS, etc). It is only for a landing on an aerodrome which needs a mountain signoff that I cannot be PIC.
This case does seem quite unusual, but I would hazard a guess that the prosecution and judge would not really understand the operational details of that environment.
There is obviously what is practical and what is required by law and ideally they would be closely alligned. As Peter points out. It’s all well and good being in an environment that the official rules are ignored en mass and everyone gets on with things perfectly happily with a blind eye turned. However, in that case when something goes wrong the authorites can change their position and suddenly come down on you like a ton of bricks and you are totally out of luck.
Again, I’ve no experience in that area or with their practices but it seems a bit excessive to me to call their actions stupid and unsafe.
Peter wrote:
For example, in France, for a CAS transit you announce your route and the controller says “radar contact”. Maybe he might add “proceed”. The magic (and legally required) words “cleared to” are not used.
Then comes the German landing at Colmar where they do call themselves “tower” insisting on the “cleared to land” words making the controller complain to the French guys on the radio about the German annoying him ;-) In my opinion in such situations the best strategy is to at least somehow try to do it right. So if the controller issues an informal clearance I read it back like a proper clearance. It is on the tape, he/she did not complain so should be safe. Same for the flight plan and the radio calls. At least do something. Then the position in front of the judge will be much better. Maybe you did not get it 100% right whhich is human but at least you did do something.
Malibuflyer wrote:
Same with blind calls: Even without a definite law that mandates someone to make such calls, the legal System expects that airman apply common sense and stick to the common procedures.
When accusing somebody of “gross negligence” in support of a criminal prosecution, I think the standard should be rational rule of law, not customary behavior on the radio plus ridiculous laws customarily ignored by many, with occasional arbitrary application. This is not the ebbs and flows of daily life, this is sending somebody to jail for years and marking them as a ex-felon for the rest of their life – when fundamentally they’ve done little or nothing wrong. It is a completely brainless criminal prosecution.
In my view, European legal and regulatory systems are (as in this case) often unable to distinguish between law and custom or criminal and civil, have difficulty understanding the proper function of government and implementing it via reasonable regulation, and then as a result swing wildly too far in both directions with no apparent compass to guide them. I think this case is in reality a civil matter with virtually no justifiable criminal content.
