It was alluded to in the discussion about the very limited utility of the new GPS approaches at Sywell, but there is a mechanism at play which I believe is probably widespread in UK aviation.
When getting approval to do something the airport asks and the CAA says “no, but…..” and steers them in a certain direction. A game of ‘getting warmer’ then plays out where the airport eventually arrives at the (highly restricted) scenario that the CAA is happy to approve but without the CAA actually suggesting it.
It allows the CAA, when challenged over red tape and gold plate, to say that these restrictions were the airport’s idea and nothing to do with them.
It also accounts for the frustrated airport manager telling his/her customers “the CAA have said it has to be like this”.
Unlicensed airports have nothing to do with CAA & EASA but still have those personality problems (Avoidant Personality Disorder 
)
Indeed. Another massive problem (not just in aviation) is an incredible degree of ignorance among not-very-bright managers concerning the concept of liability.
The typical conversation involves asking why something cannot be done and being given the ignorant reply “insurance”. The speaker is generally imagining liability where none exists, or has this weird idea that no activity can ever take place unless it has been specifically insured.
Peter wrote:
PCL is illegal for licensed airports. That one is 100% CAA CYA stupidity. It is not illegal for unlicensed airports but this was openly discovered only a few years ago.
Indeed not. Lots of Swedish licensed airports have PCL.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Indeed not. Lots of Swedish licensed airports have PCL.
Indeed not. Lots of Polish licensed airports have PCL. :-) EPKP included.
Graham wrote:
concerning the concept of liability.
One thing I’ve noticed:
In the USA, the risk of being sued in the event of an incident is very much higher, but airports stay open regardless and don’t fear being sued.
In the UK, the actual risk of being sued is much lower, but the FEAR of being sued is many orders of magnitude higher.
Graham wrote:
The typical conversation involves asking why something cannot be done and being given the ignorant reply “insurance”
Very typical
alioth wrote:
In the USA, the risk of being sued in the event of an incident is very much higher, but airports stay open regardless and don’t fear being sued.In the UK, the actual risk of being sued is much lower, but the FEAR of being sued is many orders of magnitude higher.
In other hand min cover in USA is 75k$ vs UK at 5m$
I am not actually sure litigation in the US is as prevalent as the media has always reported. Europe loves to slag off the “morally corrupt” US. What tends to happen, from some cases I’ve seen, is that you get some judgement and then the parties haggle for years and in the end nobody pays out very much. Search EuroGA for Sandel and fluxgate etc (the famous SR22 crash where the pilot flew an ILS with the CDI off scale, and the lawyer convinced the stupid jury that there is no reg which says this is illegal).
The 5M figure is a pan-EU directive, AFAIK.
The PCL story, to the extent that i’ve been told by one CAA old-timer, is that there was an old guy in the CAA who decided that the voice frequencies are for voice and not for anything else. Many years later, with him dead and stuffed and on display at CAA House reception, the policy was continued because everybody is too scared to change anything, and almost no “CAA client” (read: pilot or airfield) has the balls to argue hard with the CAA.
More generally, aviation businesses attract the most inept people in society because the magic word “safety” deflects any criticism instantly.
arj1 wrote:
Does anyone know why airports do that in general?
What is the real reason?
I guess all of the positions you mentioned in one way or the other.
Planning permissions, curtailed number of movements, curtailed hours of operations, all this is very much a problem. Airports attract the local NIMBY brigades like nothing else, who then threaten law suits and will try every move they can in politics and law to get the airport to shut down. Airport operators and aviation organisations for many years have tried to appease those people, be civil, find gentlemen’s agreements; albeit, you need good will on both sides to do that. On one only, it won’t work. So in the end, airports get restricted in their use and will accept almost everything thrown at them by local councils and anti noise / climate / whatever associations throw at them just to be allowed to stay open without harassment for a while, until the NIMBYs think up new strategies.
Altenrhein has been mentioned in Switzerland, as my former homebase I know this sordid story more than I care for. It is a typical example how a bunch of NIMBY residents can fight infrastructure to the point where you get mid day closures and daily “noise point” restrictions which has in the past caused much grief and has delayed a very necessary IFR approach long enough for 17 people to loose their lifes over the delay. Stories like those are omnipresent in Europe, but also in the US in increasing numbers. See the Chicago Meighs saga, see the current Santa Monica story, see what AOPA has to put up with over there as well.
CYA has become a big problem as well, it has a lot to do with the infestation of our CAA’s by lawyers rather than aviators. Lawyers in such positions often act like insurance sales people, scaring the heck out of those who actually have to take responsibility for something until they finally give in and just stop doing anything at all or take up stamp collecting instead of flying. CYA has caused lots of totally unnecessary restrictions at airports and in all of our lives in and outside aviation these days. Sometimes I wish there was a way to legally challenge all this, but that would only produce more legal haggling over details until even going to the loo will require planning permission for waste disposal 3 times a day.
At certain airfields mostly however, what I call the “Fawlty Towers Syndrome” is a major pain in the rear. It is unbelievable what kind of folks run airfields trying to keep their exposal to work at an absolute minimum and running by the principle, “I can run this place just fine if it wasn’t for those cumbersome customers”. You don’t see these Basil Fawlty characters not only there, but everywhere else too, but in airfields these guys often assume positions which give them the possibility to wreck real damage. In hotels, in restaurants, no problem, go elsewhere, but if one of those guys occupies the one airfield you desperately need, well…
Sometimes I am starting to think that Europe simply is too overcrowded to allow people sufficient personal freedom without getting at each other’s throat… Maybe that is why many dream of living someplace where the next neighbour can only be reached by airplane…
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Maybe that is why many dream of living someplace where the next neighbour can only be reached by airplane…
You got me there
I wonder what Europe’s “Green Deal” has in its sleeve for us damned private pilots…
