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Is a low pass / low approach / fly-by illegal?

If ever I’m feeling a bit low, I always watch that Spitfire pass, it never fails to immensely brighten my day :-)

The FAA in the US was rumoured once for prosecuting someone for a low pass, but I’ve never seen evidence of this. The pilot after all could always said “a deer ran out onto the runway”, although that might not be very plausible if you’re in a Bonanza, doing 180 knots over the runway at 10 feet with the gear and flaps up and the guy from the FSDO is watching…

Last Edited by alioth at 14 Jan 09:10
Andreas IOM

I would think that legal base is you can go-around at any moment over a runway as soon as you have been cleared to the option. I am often doing this in LFMN and landing is expensive also. Btw we are sometimes propose to do a low pass over the runway as ATC is bored…
Over land it’s different. On an instruction flight, I’ve been told by instructors (not only one) that you can go as low as 50ft if you are not over cities and as soon as you don’t bother people. We are doing precautionary landing simulation in SEP around Fayence where there are many trees area, and we go at least this low.

LFMD, France

huv wrote:


popular to fly sight-seeing over our capital, … This is entertaining for us pilots and our pax,

It is a bit of a gray area concerning minimum altitudes

We pilots tend to sugar coat regulations we don’t like by calling them “gray areas” even if they are obviously not! Let’s be frank:
- Low approaches for entertainment purposes are not at all any “gray area” they are simply a break of SERA. Not saying they are unsafe but just they are not allowed.
- Low approaches for training purposes are actually a bit more of a grey area. Technically they are not allowed either, but even EASA says that training should be allowed. It is actually quite a miracle why there is no general clause in SERA for training if (really ?!?) everyone is in so wild agreement that this should be allowed.

And btw. the second point actually has practical implications as at least in Germany some CAAs and ATC organizations in the debate around “SID after missed approach” argue exactly like “as a planned missed approach is against the law in general, if we allow it at all we can mandate a SID after this procedure…”.

Germany

LeSving wrote:

A runway is obviously not a densely populated area

I don’t think that’s how “densely populated areas” are defined. If the airport is located in a town (e.g. ENKJ) , you can’t avoid the 1000 feet rule on an overflight simply because there is a runway beneath you.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

We have been discussing this a lot (not here on this board, but other places). There have been lots of accidents with low passes in the past, fatal mostly. Almost every single one of them has nothing to do with the speed or the altitude of the pass itself, from a technical point of view. What happens is that people pull up in the end of the runway and misjudge the energy when levelling off, or levelling off too late. The airspeed is too low, and the aircraft stalls/spins into the ground, too low to recover. A typical GA aircraft has low energy and high drag and low engine power, and doesn’t get very high before loosing speed after a pull up. An aircraft like a Spitfire is probably one of the safest aircraft you can do a low pass with, lots and lots of energy. A Cub kind of aircraft is the worst, then there is everything in between.

Anyone can do a low pass. It’s probably one of the simplest things one can do in an aircraft. But the pull-up in the end, can and often will, go wrong if you don’t know what you are doing. It’s the handling of the aircraft after the pull-up that you have to train. You have to get a feeling for how fast the airspeed drops off, and maneuver accordingly, or simply don’t do a pull-up, just continue with a slow slope. It’s just that the typical pilot has seen low passes on YouTube/air shows where they do this pull up, then do the same in a C-172 and stalls and spins into the ground after the pullup.

We actually train “low passes”, sort of. What we do is to do a normal approach and final, then continue a couple of feet above the centerline with full flaps. The idea is to keep the aircraft centered, at constant alt. A very good exercise of coordinated flight due to the visual cues. At the end we don’t do the pullup

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

Doing a runway clearance / inspection carrying excess energy to convert to altitude if required?

Airborne_Again wrote:

I don’t think that’s how “densely populated areas” are defined

What SERA say is:

d) Minstehøyden kan fravikes når det er påkrevd for innflyging for treningsformål såfremt innflygingen ikke foretas over tettbebyggelse eller folkeansamling i friluft.

To me this means (but I guess some interpretation slack exists in the wording) we can train approaches (and flying lower than 500 feet) also when not at an airport, but only as long as it is not done over densely populated areas or over a crowd of people. An airport is not densely populated area or a crowd of people.

Last Edited by LeSving at 14 Jan 10:02
The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

Surely any Spitfire pilot in UK has a CAA Display Autorisation , usually down to 500ft in aeorbatics and 50ft in formation/non-aeros…
It has more to do with exemption vs general public in airshows rather than ground surface !

Last Edited by Ibra at 14 Jan 10:18
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

What SERA say is:
d) Minstehøyden kan fravikes når det er påkrevd for innflyging for treningsformål såfremt innflygingen ikke foretas over tettbebyggelse eller folkeansamling i friluft
@LeSving
Where does it say that? It is not in my SERA document (I do read Norwegian very well)
Do you have references for this and the “additions” you mention in post #07?

Last Edited by huv at 14 Jan 10:36
huv
EKRK, Denmark

Malibuflyer wrote:

We pilots tend to sugar coat regulations we don’t like

I may be guilty here, but I think the problem is that SERA does not specifically allow what everybody is doing, and should be doing – to practise aborted landings. Not being precise about this allows for the slippery slope.

huv
EKRK, Denmark
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