I think most intelligent pilots read back any RPS (as they are required to) and ignore it. Same for QFE. Both are useless.
This would be a nice one to prosecute somebody over. You are coming off an IFR flight, entering the UK from Belgium, heading for Shoreham. Descending from FL150. London Control clears you to descend below controlled airspace, regional pressure 1018. You set 1018 and end up flying say 500ft too high. And then as you continue the descent, now below CAS, you clip one of the steps of the LTMA.
I think a prosecution for that would be awfully interesting even if you had the right altimeter setting and, having narrowly avoided his trap myself a number of times, I would most definitely take that to a court, totally regardless of cost, because LC never said “and once OCAS do not re-enter it”. In fact I asked them this very Q on a recent flight and the guy replied it is probably best to not re-enter CAS but added it would have been ok with him if I had. Best to record the cockpit audio, I reckon, because ATC audio is stored only for so long.
If you retained the LC squawk on the way down then CAIT would not detect the brief “infringement”, so this is a good lesson for this scenario. Setting 7000 on your own initiative is always a really bad idea. If CAIT detects you then it is a disciplinary offence on the LC ATCO to not report it and these last quite a long time on his employment record.
It is this disciplinary-ATC thing which has been the really big recent change on the UK CAS bust scene; it removes discretion from ATCOs and does wonders for inflating the numbers against a background of a general GA activity decline, but nobody in the establishment will discuss this because rising numbers are good for everybody in the system.
Peter wrote:
Same for QFE. Both are useless.
Probably a different thread, but loads of airfields give QFE as you approach and you then have to ask for QNH. It would be great to get GA embracing QNH.
RPS and QFE need to be consigned to the dustbin. As do variable transition levels.
Is there a correlation between infringers and ‘hard to reach’ pilots?
I’d be wary of stuff like ‘not even a member of a club’ being considered an inherently bad thing, as though one is supposed to fly only through a club with the ultimate oversight of instructors.
I am a member of two ‘clubs’ (neither are genuine clubs, they are businesses) but only because it is required in order to base an aircraft there and it gets you unlimited landings. If it were not required, I’d do the maths and probably elect to pay landing fees rather than the subscription.
It’s a strange area because there are definitely some holding the view that these clubs in some way oversee or control my flying, that their staff and instructors hold a position of authority over me in matters of aviation. I am very clear that they do not, and they are simply businesses whose services I purchase because I need to in order to park the aircraft and use the runway.
I’ve heard the view expressed before now that no private pilot should be flying anywhere without the ultimate oversight of some club, training company, school or instructor.
If you own your own aircraft (or a share) and park or hangar it at some airport where any schools/clubs are separate businesses (i.e you are paying the airport separately for parking/hangarage and runway rights) then there is little incentive to join a club. Same if you fly from a private strip – why would you?
It’s a strange area because there are definitely some holding the view that these clubs in some way oversee or control my flying, that their staff and instructors hold a position of authority over me in matters of aviation.
Some probably do hold that view. They have missed the point. The point is to be a part of a community. Share knowledge and experience etc.
The “club” business is a load of patronising nonsense. But I can see this coming out of some organisations, because they are so top-heavy with people of a certain background.
We did this previously and there was a “variety of views” according to national/cultural preferences.
In the UK, most clubs are just schools. And fortunately (in the UK) you don’t get much of the “club President” concept where he puts his hand on your shoulder (or your thing or bottom if you are a female pilot) and tells you that you may not be experienced enough to do “such a difficult trip” (Shoreham to Le Touquet). France suffers heavily from this, based on much I hear repeatedly.
I very much doubt there is the slightest correlation between where people hang out and the profile which gets sent to Gasco (where most seemed to have done little cockups, often with an ATC-complicit component, and got done because they had Mode S).
What I would well believe is a correlation between the really major (airport-shutdown type) busts and people operating outside the system, including not using any IT technology. I think most of the compass/stopwatch brigade are probably out of reach. Almost everyone at the Gasco thing I did was using a GPS (see my report previously posted).
But there is another problem: the compass/stopwatch brigade is what is produced by the PPL training system! The only thing which prevents utter mayhem is that nowadays most of the “victims” of that system are smart enough to realise that GPS is the only way to fly. 10 years ago I would not have said this; a lot of pilots were quite proud of traditional methods.
While I agree with you 100% that the CAA’s approach is proportionate (80% warning letters, the rest GASCo, and hardly any prosecutions)…
Timothy wrote:
If you don’t think that the victim has a place in the process, you are out of step with the Zeitgeist.
The thing is, the infringer is often as much of a victim as the airline who got a plane sent around. But no one sees that, because there seems to be little to nothing being done about the system that is setting people up to fail, which includes:
In other industries like the roads or railways, then the system would be examined and changed. For example, if there is a place on the railways where SPADs are occurring frequently (signal passed at danger), they won’t simply throw the drivers to the lions and say “case closed”, they will actually try to find out what systemic problems are behind it all and will often spend large amounts of money redesigning junctions and changing signalling. But for GA, it’s all about beating up on the pilots and anything to treat the systemic issues (e.g. the apparent dropping of changing the transistion level to FL180) gets given an extremely low priority – and of course, we can completely forget the preposterous idea of joined up airspace or London Information being able to look at a radar screen (despite paying huge amounts of fuel taxes into the system…) The rather lukewarm attempts there are are merely to treat the symptoms (e.g. FMC – while a fine idea, it’s merely treating the symptoms and not the cause). At the end of the day, the CAA doesn’t even have the power to fix airspace issues which is completely barmy. An airspace regulator who can’t actually regulate airspace.
Sligthly off-topic but
alioth wrote:
the perceived or actual inability for owners of controlled airspace to provide a good and timely service for crossing controlled airspace, and almost certainly no handoffs between two close by pieces of CAS for VFR
We have been speaking a lot about stats and transparency in this topic. We’re told that ANSP collect number of transit refusal and I guess also transit approval and send their stats to the CAA.
I think publishing these stats could go a long way in addressing the perception we have. Could be published by the CAA or the ANSPs.
Also as we discussed devil is in the details. So on top of the simple approval/refusal, it would need to capture the intermediate case like “told to orbit for 5 min so went for plan B”, repeatly told to stand by, …
I recall some statistics published by the Swedish CAA in the 90s that showed non-club PPLs to have a significantly higher accident rate than club PPLs. (I seem to recall it was twice the rate.)
That could well apply to infringements also.
That is very possible but the causal mechanism could be unrelated.
For example, in the CAA Safety Evenings (a notoriously patronising presentation; the G-P-S word absolutely banned back then) it was stated that the attendees were (IIRC) 10x less likely to have an accident. However this could well be due to the attendees being
Personally I think they were mostly the last category. They queued up afterwards to have their logbooks stamped that they attended the safety evening!!
I would expect club PPLs to have fewer accidents simply because they are largely unable to go to more distant places, due to aircraft non availability for multi-day trips. One pilot told me a few days ago that there are difficulties even with taking a plane away for a whole day.
And yes same will go for infringements. One NATS presentation I went to slagged off the bizjet community, saying that they produce 2.5x more level busts than the “professional pilots” (the airlines). The irony of the foregoing needs to be fully absorbed 
Well, this is to be expected, since bizjets fly where their clients want to go, and often at short notice. Yesterday someone flew a bizjet from New York to Brac LDSB.
The best way to cut infringements is to stop flying.
So on top of the simple approval/refusal, it would need to capture the intermediate case like “told to orbit for 5 min so went for plan B”, repeatly told to stand by, …
That’s a huge factor in CAS busts, so I doubt anybody in the system wants to dig that one up
Peter wrote:
But there is another problem: the compass/stopwatch brigade is what is produced by the PPL training system! The only thing which prevents utter mayhem is that nowadays most of the “victims” of that system are smart enough to realise that GPS is the only way to fly. 10 years ago I would not have said this; a lot of pilots were quite proud of traditional methods.
I made this exact point to [name removed on CAA request] after one of his infringement lectures. It seems a change to the training syllabus is way outside his remit. In any case, Peter’s experience of GPS use at GASCO doesn’t sit well with the CAA claim that “most infringements could be avoided by moving map”. Or at least I used to think so…
The other day I met a chap who’d just re-validated (if that’s what you do?) his licence after a 10 year break. He was all set to take his wife to IOW the following weekend, which would have meant going near Solent, and proudly showed me his map where he had assiduously ticked off 5 min intervals along his route. He’d never seen Skydemon and no-one in the FTO that had checked him out had thought to mention it. It was amazing, exactly like a time warp, and while I was able to give him a quick SD primer, I was also glad when the weather turned bad that w/e and hopefully he didn’t go. I really hope and pray that he listened to my advice!
