A very experienced friend of mine was reported for an Infringement whilst receiving a Radar Control Service. I wonder if ATCO’s have to go on the same Course for an Infringement.
The pilot received a letter telling him to be more careful and that they would not take any further action against him.
That should be impossible because you get an RCS upon entering CAS, and it is terminated immediately upon leaving CAS.
Because this thread is now around 2500 posts (the post numbering got reset because of some post merging) I have summarised the UK situation as best as I can here. I am told that link was posted on one UK site from which it was predictably and rapidly removed 
It’s going to be really interesting if the numbers “sentenced” to gasco fall to these low levels because it won’t be worth it financially for gasco to be running that “course”, whose content was a waste of time anyway for most people.
I also notice there are 2x “Insufficient evidence” listed. I wonder if perhaps there is now the possibility to argue the case using a GPS trace.
Regarding numbers it must be remembered it the wintertime and GA flying activity is at its lowest.
Regards, SD..
Activity is down in the winter, but compare with January 2019:
The key aspect here is that gasco is not going to even recover the hotel room rental, let alone the food bill, on the current numbers. Unless they increase the “fine” to £500 or so.
And the other key aspect is that gasco is the principal route to getting your license suspended IAW CAP1404. The only other way you will get suspended is by doing something pretty serious.
So this looks interesting. Maybe there is a change of policy. Grant Shapps did say in one presentation (details posted earlier) that there would be a move to decriminalise infringements.
Time will tell.
And publicity is good
This just popped up on an IAOPA newsletter
There are some past posts in this very long thread which mention EASA work in this area. All those initiatives appear to have run into the ground.
Googled airspace Infringement and EASA and came up with this. The link to Norway is merely a link to the well known “VFR Norway” web site. The Finnish video is simply a “how-to” FP thing, as are the other, more or less. But, the UK video is a bit interesting. It shows how you very easily can fly in the UK airspace without infringements and staying safe at the same time. Just use “listening squawks”, and all will be good. How exactly does listening squawks work?
I can see the UK video has only been viewed 1624 times (of which 2 by me ), so I guess not many in the UK have seen this video.
Well found!
That video is hilarious.
Produced by 5 year olds for 2 year olds. No pilots involved. A good plug for Skydemon, too
You set a specific published txp code and a specific published frequency, and silently listen on it. Works best with Mode S because they can see your callsign.
Yes a listening squawk does allow an ATCO to warn traffic approaching CAS and if that happens, that’s great, but the ATCO has no duty to do that and anyway can’t if he’s busy. You get busted if you infringe, regardless.
Funny thing they show a link to https://airspacesafety.com but I don’t think they ever saw https://airspacesafety.com/facts-stats-and-incidents which came out only after a number of FOIA applications and which shows the true scale of pilots getting busted in the UK.
If I could not so conveniently fly abroad, or to Alderney etc, or Scilly Isles, I would chuck it in now. Flying anywhere north of Shoreham is really dodgy if you have only one life left. I can still do it but go a very long way around.
“it is quite shocking to hear that in the past, before this projest, that the main reason for infringments was believed to be just the stupid VFR pilots .. .. ..”
which made me think that to be fair, one does wonder whether many of those who work for NATS and the CAA have any idea on the reality of navigating a light aircraft around some parts of the UK.
Perhaps it would be as well for these employees of both organisations to attend a suitably constructed course along the style of GASCo by way of an appreciation of the other side of part of their customer base? This would keep GASCo in the style to which they have become accustom as well, and reduce the pressure on GASCo and the CAA to course fill, so all round there would be solid benefits. Just a thought.
FWIW, I have seen evidence that the CAA counts the 2 years from the date of the committee decision, not from the date of the offence.
So this is like the serious traffic offences – those that always go to a court. The speeding ones and such like count the period from the date of the offence.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
Perhaps it would be as well for these employees of both organisations to attend a suitably constructed course along the style of GASCo by way of an appreciation of the other side of part of their customer base?
Perhaps Peter could organise a rota of Euroga members to give the front line staff some experiences!
