I doubt the policy on busting pilots who as much as touch CAS is decided by a majority shareholders’ vote 
NATS is subordinate to the CAA and the CAA is subordinate to the DfT (Dept for Transport).
The reality is they mostly work together.
There is a revolving door which joins the RAF and NATS and the CAA, reserved for ex RAF ex ATC staff and this is the cause of the current problems
The DfT is now run by Grant Shapps who is a GA pilot so I would expect some changes to happen, though obviously he will be ultra sensitive to allegations of bias by the media which is always very fast to do that.
Who established the current policy I have no idea but it was for sure somebody totally clueless on human factors and certainly not a pilot who actually flies.
I think the idea that it’s mostly commercial pressure from NATS satisfies Occam’s razor.
Money usually talks. Various other factors like staff/skill shortage at the CAA and a lack of will to resist commercial pressure, plus the revolving door (they’re all really on the same team) will contribute.
Peter wrote:
NATS is subordinate to the CAA
Well, the point is that they are not! According to skydriller the UK government has a minority share. Being licensed by the CAA doesn’t mean that they are “subordinate”.
Of course the majority shareholders’ vote doesn’t affect details like infringement policy, but it does decide who sits on the board and through that the overall policy of the company.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Well, the point is that they are not!
Yes agreed, they are not subordinate to them in theory. On some things the CAA will wield power over NATS, but on others where NATS is able to take the moral high ground and define the issue as black and white (say, infringements) they can probably exert considerable pressure.
Really NATS are just a company like any other. The reality is quite murky, if not entirely unpredictable.
I don’t believe that minor infringements (the vast majority of Gasco sentences) cost airlines or NATS anything significant or objectively quantifiable. An airliner might get vectored all over the place due traffic, or will do lots of wx avoidance. The occassional avoidance instruction from ATC will be way down in the noise.
This new CAA policy is something else but I don’t know what.
Stuff like a Gatwick shutdown for days due to (possibly nonexistent) drones costs massive amounts of money. A 30 min airport shutdown due to a non-GPS bimbler overhead also costs a lot, but those are very rare and anyway don’t appear to be dealt with in the current “sentencing” system.
The CAA is in overall charge of aviation safety (under delegation from the DfT) and thus in these matters it outranks NATS, IMHO.
Yep, but like any other company NATS will be full of people trying to make a name for themselves and look like a powerful person who gets stuff done.
Their privatised nature means that they can sit across the table from the CAA and, with a straight face, say:
“The rules are that they stay outside unless they have a clearance, but they keep coming in. You must do something about this, otherwise you’re not fulfilling your side of the deal. The only acceptable situation for us is zero infringements, ever, and you must take measures to achieve this.”
It’s a dramatisation but you get the point. If they were not privatised and were officially part of the system, the CAA could tell them to shut up and deal with it.
like any other company NATS will be full of people trying to make a name for themselves and look like a powerful person who gets stuff done.
I agree 100% and that is the case in the CAA too. I’ve been in business since 1978 and my take on this policy is that it is the product of somebody trying to look strong.
Usually it is somebody not particularly bright, but a good corporate ladder manipulator.
Before the Flyer forum shut down further discussions on the subject, it was stated (either rightly or wrongly) that the original idea of an awareness course was first mooted on that forum, and that some high profile posters on that forum were instrumental in developing the scheme.
Graham wrote:
Their privatised nature means that they can sit across the table from the CAA and, with a straight face, say:
“The rules are that they stay outside unless they have a clearance, but they keep coming in. You must do something about this, otherwise you’re not fulfilling your side of the deal. The only acceptable situation for us is zero infringements, ever, and you must take measures to achieve this.”
It’s a dramatisation but you get the point. If they were not privatised and were officially part of the system, the CAA could tell them to shut up and deal with it.
I think that this kind of thing has indeed happened. And then there were then conversations about “proof” which led to the “any infringement however minor is an MOR” in order for the problem to be made to look worse than it really was in operational practice.
Its not any kind of conspiracy, its just a natural progression which, as others have pointed out, has come about because there are certain people who probably havent actually flown themselves, in positions able to implement this policy, which if you think about it as a non-pilot, does actually make sense.
Regards, SD..
I doubt if it’s to do with not having flown themselves. Being a pilot doesn’t give you a monopoly on understanding aviation matters, no matter what some might say, and we don’t know whether those who are really driving this are pilots or not.
It’s probably more to do with not having the critical reasoning skills to understand the bigger picture, or understanding it but disregarding it because to do so helps advance one’s career.
