Reading the CAA's prosecution data:
The pilot flying N850TV was fined £1,000 for selecting the wrong tower frequency in January 2011. Thinking he had a comms failure, he continued his approach. He reckoned he didn't see an aircraft already lined up on the runway and so landed over the top of it. He also fined another £1,000 because of this. And ordered to pay almost £5,000 in costs.
Fair or harsh?
The decline of the rational, fuelled by the rise of the lawyer influence, continues . . .
A number of people I know are of the view that the AAIB report (which does suggest that the lined-up aircraft may not have been very visible) does not justify the prosecution.
This case also raises the "IFR lost comms" issue. Under IFR (I mean "proper" Eurocontrol IFR, not cloud drilling in UK Class G 
which is just VFR really, or not really but you know what I mean) you have the benefit of the Lost Comms Procedure which, in brief, and following a loss of comms, allows you to fly (in essence, with some national variations like "current heading for 7 minutes" if vectored) the filed route, turn up at the instrument approach at the filed time, fly the approach, and land, and do all this (obviously) without any communications and thus (obviously) without any clearance.
For obvious reasons, the lost-comms option has to be sacrosanct for IFR traffic.
There is no rule saying that if you lose comms halfway through a 500nm flight, the procedure is available, but if you lose comms near the airport, then it is not.
And lost comms is common, with airliners. In virtually all cases it is due to a mis-set frequency or due to flying out of range of the last unit. The latter is actually easily done in a 150kt TB20...
There is also no rule saying that the lost-comms procedure is available if the loss was caused by equipment failure, but is not available if the loss was caused by pilot error.
So I think this prosecution opens a huge can of worms.
I wonder what kind of lawyer this pilot used to defend him, or if perhaps some sort of a deal was done under the threat of him getting done for something entirely different?
I also suspect the powers to be are trying to do away with the lost-comms procedure altogether. 2-3 years ago I went to a presentation at NATS Swanwick. This subject came up, and the presenter said that if you set 7600 (the lost comms code) and fly on, you will get shot down. In utter disbelief I asked him to repeat this, which he did. OK, he was prob99 talking way beyond his rank in the air defence of the United Kingdom 
but who knows what some people are thinking in the post-9/11 climate?
You do wonder if there was another aspect in this prosecution. Maybe the guy was rude in his meeting without coffee and biscuits. There are 4 official safety actions stated, and all of them are directed at the CAA or NATS, and the first one (2011-073) shows that there is a conflict between what the pilot is likely to do in this situation (want to land), and what ATC think the pilot will do (go around). And, their MOR database shows that some pilots do land, so I wonder if all of those were prosecuted (GA or Airliners), and if not, then this prosecution would seem quite unfair.
If I didnt know the comms failure procedure for IFR procedures or this UK airport specifically, I'd like to think I would go around, get into a hold, check the frequency again, try COM2, press some buttons on the audio panel to make sure they were set properly, make sure I set 7600, and failing all that call 121.5 or the previous approach frequency to see if my radio is working. But as I say, I havent been IR trained so if it is OK to land without a clearance, then I dont think he has done much wrong (besides than being fat fingered and careless perhaps), and under marginal conditions maybe he just wanted to be on the ground. I'd be miffed if I had to cough up £5k :-(
I too think most pilots, on a comms failure on final, would go around (because of the overwhelming respect for the need for a landing clearance - think of how often you have gone around from just above an empty runway because somebody was reading out War and peace to ATC at just the wrong time) but that isn't what the lost comms procedure says you should do.
It says you fly the approach and you land.
There is also a pretty good safety case for landing on a runway you can see in front of you, compared to flying a missed approach, hoping that somebody somewhere is watching you on radar and realises what you are doing, etc.
The idea of the lost comms procedure is that the destination airport expects you there at the filed time, and expects you to fly the approach and to land.
Then it seems he was prosecuted, for just selecting the wrong frequency, as per the title of this thread, and possibly perhaps not quickly trying COM2 or flicking back to approach to sort out the comms issue. I'd hope I could get myself off the hook on this one, and would certainly expect a lawyer to put up an even more robust defense.
If this happened to me, I think I would just give up flying altogether :-(
Did he squawk 7600 ?
Did he squawk 7600 ?
No, the report just said he 'considered' it. 7600 would have mitigated everything I suppose.
7600 is your get out of jail card.........
Reading through the report and looking at the position plots it is apparent that the approach was a shambles from start to finish, selecting the wrong frequency was just another hole in the cheese. Had he been a UK pilot he would almost certainly have lost his IR as well so I think he got away very lightly.
