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

No free tshirt for post #2000?

That post is unfortunately mine and I already have a EuroGA t-shirt

LeSving can have one (post 2001) if he gives me his address

Well, unfortunately, it is still not possible, in „Active Threads“ view (which almost everybody uses) to permanently suppress any threads which are not of any interest…

There are problems with “permanent suppression” features. For example, somebody blocks a thread on fly-ins. Then, no surprise, they complain they didn’t know about some fly-in until too late. Also it would be wrong to be able to suppress posts by admins; these can be made for good reasons connected with running the site. Yeah, I know, I know, here we have an admin who also flies a plane and writes about it, which some really dislike as a basic concept, and the traditional solutions (on a site which cannot afford to employ somebody who takes no interest in the topics) are for the admin to create a second persona, called “Mr Mod”, or to give some pilots covert mod privileges (which tends to go out of control when they do a Col Kurtz)

Simplest thing is to not read a thread which one doesn’t want to read.

I happen to know, off-forum, that a huge number of people are very grateful that these issues are being discussed here. The discussions have been generally shut down elsewhere.

Sure, but these will mostly be UK people.

The impact of the new CAA policy is not just on UK pilots, but also

• non UK pilots flying into the UK
• non UK CAAs who now know exactly how not to approach it

In the context of a European forum, this is a valid topic. If this was say a German (LBA) issue, I am sure some Germans would get pretty unhappy if somebody said it is irrelevant outside Germany because nobody flies to Germany

It is like posting some of this on one of the US forums, which I have done occassionally. The readers there are absolutely horrified, and it makes them grateful for the system they have.

AFAIK, and I don’t have the ICAO wording to hand, the way this works is that if you do something in the airspace of X but land back home in Y, X has the right to request Y to go after you for the alleged offence.

I got a taste of this in 2003 with a French nuclear TRA (posted previously; not notamed, not on the charts, etc, nothing said by ATC, and the DGAC waited 5 months before moving on it, during which time I did various other flights in France and could have had the plane confiscated).

Quite often, Y thinks the accusation from X is bollox (e.g. due to poor conduct by X ATC, as in my case) and they do the minimum, which is a stiff letter saying you have been very naughty, CCd to X. This closes the matter, for practical purposes. Of course the pilot ends up with dirt in the files in both countries’ CAAs…

But it might not be dismissed, if Y is out to get you for something “previous”. CAA prosecution departments are often staffed by ex policemen and these often act as policemen often do… If something blows up, you round up the usual suspects. The UK CAA has historically been quite sensible in this area but not all CAAs will be. So it is not in any pilot’s interest to bust airspace in another country even if they land back home on that occassion.

See this post which is a clear shell fired across the bow of your favourite N-reg (or even D-reg) pilot

A Belgian pilot got busted in a big way some years ago. Fine c. 5k. Details somewhere here. He landed in Belgium but for some reason came back to the UK for the court case. One has to ask why… probably because the alternative was worse?

You have said yourself that visiting pilots will not get such courses, or even license actions, from the UK CAA

I don’t think I said that…