National CAA policies around Europe on busting pilots who bust controlled airspace (and danger areas)

Peter wrote:

But they want to be seen as doing “something”, but they have no idea what to do,

This is what most of the bureaucrates from governmental organisations of this type, do or aim to to, want to be seen as doing something very important and if someone try to stop their activity, then the whole world will collapse without them.
If fact what they are doing is: they are changing the forms every year, trying write as doggy as they can, to let people confuse, and go into the endless meetings where they are figuring out the eventually “risks” and writing plans and measures to mitigate those risks. If you try to put their names on the public domain to show how “capable” they are, they will threaten you with court actions and invoke the right to privacy. This is why they do not want to put their names on the resolution or decisions.

Not sure about all that.

The data I’d like to see is a breakdown of actions/sanctions for a particular subset of airspace busts, namely Mode S-identified busts of NATS airspace.

My hypothesis is that these generally go straight to GASCO, except in the summer months when GASCO doesn’t have the capacity, or when it is politically expedient to be seen to take a light touch.

There is often much comment about ‘ex RAF’ this and that – so just to set the record straight – the comments and perceptions are a million miles away from the modern day RAF Air Safety culture and systems. Only last week I’ve just done my mandated recurrent Human Factors and Error Management Training (which everyone does) and our reporting and investigation culture is very different to what may be seen elsewhere. I would observe the culpability line is very difficult to cross into recklessness / negligence from what is a human error or mistake, and our reporting is very much now third age – ie people are readily reporting their own mistakes, incidents and near misses. This allows proper open investigation and action into the systemic and organisational issues that are the actual buttons to press to avoid future events. You will never get anywhere near a third age reporting culture with perceptions of widespread ‘punishments’ and ‘enforcement’ and training after the event.

Balliol wrote:

mandated recurrent Human Factors and Error Management Training

Can you invite he-who-must-not-be-named-on-the-internet to one of those?

What do we know?

1. No other Aviation Authority has followed the same course as ours, with regard to infringement of controlled airspace – as far as I am aware, that includes all the other member states of EASA, the FAA and CASA,
2. No other EASA member state’s airspace is contracted to an essentially private operator that is able to lean on the Sate Aviation Authority. This is also not the arrangement in either the United States of America, Australia, South Africa, or the West Indies (being the countries I know about),
3. There was no regulatory impact assessment in respect of the current infringement policy,
4. The policy is discriminatory in that “level busts” made by commercial pilots in CAS are dealt with in a wholly different way to pilots in Open FIR,
5. No valid evidence has been produced that more infringements were occurring,
6. It was denied that the policy includes allocating infringers to GASCo based NOT on the circumstances of the infringement, but on the capacity of GASCo. It has now been admitted that this was dishonest denial,
7. IT has taken numerous FofI applications to obtain any useful data to enable any reasonable assessment of the consequences of the policy, necessary because the Authority refused the requests made, refusals which were wholly unjustified,
8. GASCo is a registered charity. Their principal source of profit is now the fees from the CAA infringement course. By no stretch of most people’s understanding of the proper work of a charity, is this a charitable occupation,
9. GASCo do not disclose who they employ as course tutors, and there is evidence that the tutors are inadequately qualified,
10. There are numerous accounts that GASCo does not permit attendees to engage with other attendees, or tutors during the GASCo course in any meaningful way. We have heard from people experienced in this field that this is contrary to accepted wisdom.
11. We have heard from a number of people highly experience with the Law and Legal process that it is doubtful whether the current process meets any of the criteria of proportionate and open justice,
12. The CAA has made numerous public statements that are patently inaccurate at best, and, at worst dishonest,
13. The Head of the Department within the CAA who is responsible, refuses to permit his name to be published in the public domain and has engaged on numerous occasions with pilots with the apparent intent of suppressing discussion,
14. The CAA does not require pilots to demonstrate competence in the use of a moving map GPS during either their ab initio training or renewals, but insist its use is necessary to mitigate the risk of infringements,
15. There was no public tender process for the GASCo course, only one other party tendered, and it has not been disclosed either for how long or on what terms the contract was awarded.

I can’t be bothered to list further points. Unfortunately there are many more, which include what `I believe to be of even more serious regulatory concern, which I simply cannot be bothered to pursue.

How anyone can defend the CAA’s policy is totally beyond me?

Timothy (and I would say I address this to you because you are the main protagonists of the CAA’s policy, and are open about your involvement with the judiciary and the Infringment Working Group) it does genuinely escape me how you could support or defend this policy NOT because there may be some merit in the use of some form of awareness course BUT because its construction, operation and administration is so tarnished that it is not fit for purpose, and cannot be defended by any reasonable measure.

Of course all the points I and others have made could be publically addressed and perhaps the allegations disproved BUT there have now been so many requests that they are, it is an entirely reasonable assumption that they cannot, and, to the extent some of the allegations have been addressed, (places on GASCo are in part based on capacity) the original denials have had to be withdrawn because they were dishonest.

In may other walks of life those involved would have resigned or been dismissed.

This business of making private complaints to Peter (and others) is reprehensible beyond belief.

I suspect that he-who-must-not-be-named has somewhat belatedly educated himself in Corporate PR 101.

Thus he has realised that running round the internet willy-nilly on a self-directed mission to ‘educate’ the public on the actions of his employer is not a route to career success.

Balliol,

I think perhaps the comments made about ex RAF etc, show an attitude of treating GA differently to their own.

It’s something I’ve noticed with Airline pilots occasionally, they seem to think by having an ATPL it makes them a far superior in GA to any lowly PPL pilot.