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Swiss ATC with reduced capacity (and VFR suspension ZRH and BSL) due to irresponsible convictions of ATCOs.

In my question, I meant to compare a (criminal) prosecution of an ATCO with a (criminal) prosecution of a pilot – assuming in both cases it was an error and not one of the purple things on this excellent diagram posted earlier by Balliol

Neither prosecution is right, and neither will achieve its apparent aim which is to prevent errors/mistakes/etc. It just seems to me that over many years ATC has got used to not getting prosecuted for errors while private pilots have got used to getting prosecuted for errors. The big difference is that ATC, and commercial pilots, have strong representation, while private pilots in Europe have effectively no representation at all.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Mooney_Driver wrote:

If you are convicted of a crime a ATCO will loose his qualification as a controller, you will end up in the register of criminals which will cause other problems and so on.

The last sentence of Skyguide’s press release suggests that the controller in the recent case would not lose his/her qualification.

Last Edited by Airborne_Again at 07 Jul 09:32
ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

As the leading state prosecutor of the canton where the largest airport in this country plus many small ones are located he is indeed in quite a maciavellian position. He has the discretion to prosecute or not based on his own judgement whether something was worthy of prosecution or not.

For many years in Switzerland the unwritten rule was that only criminal negligence or intent was going to be prosecuted in court and particularly when human lifes were lost. In recent years, this has changed and particularly ATCO’s have been the target of investigations which would never have happened before. In part this came after the Ueberlingen air disaster but also started stealthy and only became known after the ATCO’s trade union and their employer went vocal about it.

It is not the only one however as I said before, also pilots find themselfs prosecuted more and more often for relatively small misdemeanours which before would have if at all resulted in a fine from the FOCA but were mostly not prosecuted on the basis of Just Culture, particularly since this concept came to life.

The main problem is that the Minister of Transport a few years back (not the same now in power) has issued an executive order to the STSB to lay open ALL of their investigation material to the state attorneys, something which EASA and ICAO have criticized as being in violation of Annex 13. But neither has the jurisdiction to stop this.

So what you get is a bunch of state prosecutors who obviously feel that any and all mistake must end with a court procedure and conviction which is helped by a very controversial executive order which remains in force despite international protest.

What is equally unfortunate is that Skyguide and their Union saw it fit to restrict the weakest links first while generally reducing their capacity by between 10 and 25% instead of either going the legal and political way about this. None of the events for which these ATCO’s are now being punished for involves GA to my knowledge, but GA gets punished first. To me, that is a farce. If they want to make a statement, closing the airport down over a weekend for lack of staff would have done it much more effectively. I bet that with such an action, the EO in question would be lifted within days and quite possibly the overzealous prosecutors taken onto a leach by their superiors. Like this, some hidden agenda wishing to abolish light aviation at ZRH will just use this as a pretext to finally reach that goal. In the mean time btw I also hear that Light IFR are denied slots as well. So Zurich is closed for light GA effectively.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Airborne_Again wrote:

The last sentence of Skyguide’s press release suggests that the controller in the recent case would not lose his/her qualification.

No.

The continued employment of the air traffic controller is not called into question by this conviction.

That is what it sais. He will continue to be employed by Skyguide but he will no longer be able to work as an ATCO. So he will most probably have to work in administration or something like this. At least that is what was communicated earlier on, that the moment they are under investigation they can no longer be active as ATCO’s and if they are convicted they loose their license. Whether that has been changed I don’t know but the way it’s formulated would go in that direction.

Last Edited by Mooney_Driver at 08 Jul 05:46
LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Mooney_Driver wrote:

As the leading state prosecutor of the canton where the largest airport in this country plus many small ones are located he is indeed in quite a maciavellian position. He has the discretion to prosecute or not based on his own judgement whether something was worthy of prosecution or not.

But in the end it is not the prosecutors who pass verdict — it is the courts. The courts have found that these incidents were indeed cases of criminal negligence, so the problem is ultimately how the law is written (or applied).

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Airborne,

yes that is the case, however obviously the prosecutors are those who hold the key deciding what is going to be prosecuted and what not and that is where the big change occurred. The laws have been the same all along, the thing which changed is that the threshold for prosecution has gone down massively.

The courts won’t get involved unless a prosecutor presents a case.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Given the international shortage of ATCOs, why wouldn’t any Swiss ATCO not simply move to Germany, France or UK, rather than strike or work to rule, if there is such a risk of imprisonment?

EGKB Biggin Hill

However, I consider it very unlucky that the only operating restriction so far are VFR planes

Did earlier incidents involve planes flying VFR?
If not, then what does VFR have to do with this at all?

I’m not sure what the court has to do with all this and, from what I’ve read so far, seems pretty unfair on the controllers.
After all, nobody has died.

Last Edited by James_Chan at 08 Jul 10:24

Mooney_Driver wrote:

The laws have been the same all along, the thing which changed is that the threshold for prosecution has gone down massively.

It’s a bit hard to understand this. It’s one thing to do a mistake, something very different to do a criminal act. How can the threshold for what is considered a criminal act be lowered without changing the laws?

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

If the law says “who endangers….will be punished”, it does not matter if deliberate or accidental.

Biggin Hill
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