LeSving wrote:
You can. You can write all kinds of things in the /RMK under point 18. For instance TOUCH AND GO ON GLACIERS xxxx and yyyy, SIGHTSEEING AROUND THE ISLAND, AEROBATICS AT zzzz 6000 FT AND BELOW and so on. The requirement is only to actually file a plan when crossing an international border.
You’re correct in principle, but the proper way to do it is to include in item 15 (route) something like STAY1/0100 and then in item 18 something like STAYINFO1/SIGHTSEEING AROUND THE ISLAND, meaning that you will spend one hour on sightseeing around the island.
A “STAYn/hhmm” is a route segment just like a DCT but it means that you won’t fly in a straight line between the points before or after the STAY but do something that involves manoeuvring and can take time.
PS. A STAY does not necessarily mean that you stay over one place, although of course you can.
Lionel, the cross-Europe enforcement situation is considerably more complicated. Google has lots of info – example. This kind of dubious judgement would never stand up in the UK, assuming you got yourself a lawyer costing more than £0.02/hr.
Regarding the STAY on the flight plan, can that be used for random wandering across an international border? How do you comply with the requirement (which is also somewhat dubious) to make a new radio contact as the border is crossed?
The EU has a system of EU-wide execution of sentences. If I get a sentence against your business in any EU country, the UK legal system will enforce the sentence (e.g. by forced payment out of your business’ bank account). Similarly, a criminal sentence is carried out. While France doesn’t extradite its nationals, it executes the sentence in its own prison system. Meaning, if Italy sentences the club president to a fine, France will take it out of his/her bank account / wages / pension / other assets / …; in case of a prison sentence, he/she will serve it in a French prison. And if he/she ever leaves France for any other country, that country can extradite him to Italy.
It’s not so simple and easy and it often doesn’t work in practice. I’m aware of case of Hungarian oil company manager convicted at Croatian court together with Croatian ex-prime-minister who walks freely around EU.
lionel wrote:
thought VHF transmissions needed line-of-sight, and thus one wouldn’t get the transmissions of people beyond the “next bend”?
In the near field (10-20km) ground reflection works quite good as well. You can’t call the destination airfield from far down the valley but for local A2A traffic info I never had problems…
I may have missed a post but, given almost everyone in the crash died except a passenger and the jailed FI, who do we know if anyone made radio calls ? Did another pilot flying in the crash area testify ?
@lionel I think you will find it is more difficult than you think. Under the French constitution (yes despite what others think even as a member state of the EU, we are still a sovereign state) which has precedence over EU law in the matters included, an Italian judge would have to put the case for the possible arrest and charge of a French citizen in France to a French court.
So in this case the Italian judge would have to show that the President of the aeroclub was guilty of a criminal act or in conspiring with others to commit a criminal act.
If the pilot of the Jodel signed the aircraft out as PIC and if he/she was properly qualified to land on a glacier in France (from the posts on this site) and the aircraft was properly equipped and maintained then what conspiracy or criminal act has the club president carried out?
If this was a training flight, then the FI would have been PIC and as long as the FI and aircraft fulfilled all the prementioned conditions then what CRIMINAL offence has the club President committed?
So the Jodel takes off for a flight with the pilot flying is PIC and the FI is along for the ride ( he might have less experience of landing on this glacier than the pilot flying I have seen no reports yet that this was not the case).
Either way a collision occurred with an Italian sight seeing helicopter. The wreckage of both aircraft was found on Italian territory.
Was the collision the result of an error, a transgression or a felony? Where actually did it take place?
From what I have read so far the Italian court judge has ruled on this and decided that it was a felony and that the FI was PIC, committed the crime and has been sentenced to 6 years in prison plus a multi million euro fine.
Those seem to me to be all the facts that have been released other than by third parties such as journalists and at present I for one have a very low regard for most of the current crop of so called journalists around the world.
In these posts we have seen that the Jodel was not making radio calls. Is that true? If the pilot of the Jodel was making radio calls and through an ERROR in navigation was under the impression he was in French airspace he would most likely have been calling in French.
I ask similar questions of the helicopter pilot and was he perhaps calling in Italian?
If the pilot of the Jodel had no intention of straying into Italian airspace why would he have filed a FPL.?
Was there an FPL for the helicopter? Did he enter French airspace?
Were there witnesses apart from the accused?
I hope all the answers to these questions were brought up in court, and that the judge gave specifics into what neglicence or criminal act led to his decision. If not this might have serious consequences for ga as a whole especially vfr, non radio, in the alps but also for other areas where airfields are found in close proximity to another country’s airspace. Alderney, Geneva, Basle for instance.
There was a message at the very beginning of the thread which stated those allegations (no radio, often no flight plan) by a former member of one of those clubs and as far as I remember there was further posts elsewhere about this. One of the articles reporting about the trial stated that both of these items were discussed at lenght. If I am not mistaken, that article is linked here as well, but can’t find it right now as I am just in a short break.
@gallois I understand that you may find this verdict not to your taste and quite harsh. It may also well be that Italian justice has decided to focus on this one guy out of frustration about this kind of behaviour experienced by others as well as the now sentenced pilot.
You are right,there is a lot of stuff we don’t know. Also Italian justice has a nasty rep of trying to blame things on others. The next step in this whole affair will hopefully be the release of the report by the Italien TSB.
As for the president of the aeroclub, the way I understand it is that the judge instructed the prosecution to evaluate if claims can be brought against him. The way it was written they are talking of liability claims. This could happen if the law decides that the president of the club knew or promoted the illegal border crossing and radio hiding procedures which were reported.
Clearly the procedures in place are not optimum and cumbersome, particularly for mountain flyers or gliders who often have no idea where they are flying to at the outset of a flight, but that does not change the legal situation. In the end, we have to wait for both the written verdict and the report by the italian TSB in order to figure out what the real motivation was.
gallois wrote:
this might have serious consequences for ga as a whole especially vfr, non radio, in the alps but also for other areas where airfields are found in close proximity to another country’s airspace. Alderney, Geneva, Basle for instance.
Well, as for the mentioned airfileds… at least Geneva requires a flight plan for EVERY flight in and out of it, so does Zurich and quite possibly Basle as well. As for the status of Alderney, I suppose it is a foreign country for planning purposes and neither Schengen and now not even EU, so therefore it needs a flight plan for sure. There are quite a few countries which demand a flight plan for every movement anyone does.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
There are quite a few countries which demand a flight plan for every movement anyone does.
If they have resources to get something useful out of them (e.g. SAR, safety, planning, national security…) it is just bureaucracy !
The concept was invented in 50s so probably not well though of as of today with everybody carrying a Tablet & ADSB 
The concept was invented in 50s so probably not well though of as of today with everybody carrying a Tablet & ADSB
True, but it still reduces the amount of unknowns. This is important when something happens.
gallois wrote:
If this was a training flight, then the FI would have been PIC and as long as the FI and aircraft fulfilled all the prementioned conditions then what CRIMINAL offence has the club President committed?
From public information this is extremely hard to say – but there are possible situations in that the president would be liable and even subject to criminal prosecution.
If e.g. the president knew that the FI would fly illegally he could indeed be charged for not taking actions to prevent this. Even more so btw. if it would have been an actual training flight under an ATO in which this president had a role.
We don’t know and obviously neither did the judge – therefore it is exactly the right thing that this is investigated…
