Some GA activity numbers appear around here.
We have roughly, annual hours, fixed wing:
UK: 1M
France: 1.4M plus private owners so say 1.5M
Sweden: 250k (or maybe 150k)
Germany: here (needs translating from German PDFs)
Now we need to look at annual infringements.
The UK, with its “recently enhanced” reporting regime which basically scrapes out the bottom of the barrel by various measures including ATC disciplinary action, and adding up the numbers here (Jan-Oct, and adding reasonable numbers for missing months), comes to about 1400.
Are there any numbers for the other countries above?
For Czech Republic, a figure of 4000/year has already been posted just for the Prague CAS.
Peter wrote:
We have roughly, annual hours, fixed wing
…..
Sweden: 250k (or maybe 150k)
Where did you get the 250 k figure? My 150k figure was taken from the Transport Authority website and covers all civil non-scheduled/charter air traffic in Sweden — both fixed wing and helicopter.
Found something from the CAA in Norway that I have never seen before. By the looks of it, they don’t report airspace infringements as such, but loss of separation, where this is defined as:
Loss of separation between two or more aircraft aloft. Includes separation infringement in controlled airspace and insufficient separation between aircraft in non-controlled airspace.
It seems to be updated continuously and can be found here.
No more explanation is given, so I’m not entirely sure how to interpret the statistics.
On the page leading to this and other statistics it is a chapter about the reporting.
It say it has been a tremendous increase in the number of reports. From 248 in 2006 to 7424 in 2017. The last 10 years the number of reports has increased by 10% each year (all kinds of reports). They mean that this is caused by:
They finish this by saying that changes in the number of reports in one specific theme does not necessarily mean changes in the number of occurrences.
Better culture for reporting. Reporting has become the “usual” thing to do
That seems to be the trend 
But what are the authorities doing with these “rapidly incresing infringements”? Anybody sensible must realise the situation is not actually getting worse. And anybody really smart will know that most of them cannot be eliminated, short of banning GA totally.
But if the policy is wrong, what is the right policy?
This has already been well covered in previous discussions, @jasonc.
To start with, probably what the rest of Europe is doing and always has been: not doing a “100% bust” policy. ATC bollocking is generally pretty effective.
The vast majority of infringements are really minor. In the UK, the 5000ft add-on (sometimes stated as being 3000ft) creates a lot of artificial situations where ATC action needs to be taken and this reflects badly on the infringer.
The “punishment” system has far too few increments in it; post-Gasco your license is – per CAP1404 – suspended. Bear in mind that many – especially in the winter – get Gasco on their first offence, so this is a bit like, in the UK system, getting 9 points on your first speeding offence. The subsequent process is undocumented but AIUI you can go back to an ATO for retraining and a re-test. How many of us would want to go back to school, flying with a compass and stopwatch, and do another skills test, this time with a CAA staff examiner?
There is no “Just Culture” process.
With zero discussion of what the pilot actually did, the Gasco course is a wasted opportunity and is basically a money+hassle “fine”, ranging from some £300 to £500+. They love to roll out the same old radar videos showing somebody shutting down Luton for half an hour, but (a) these are very very rare and (b) probably nobody on the course did anything like that (those pilots will go for something stronger right away).
And so on…
Incidentally, the “million hours per year” mentioned in that DfT letter probably comes from this data.
But what are the authorities doing with these “rapidly incresing infringements”
To do anything worth while, you first have to get a view of what the situation is based on fact. Then look at cause effect kind of things. Looking at loss of separation, it is CAT, not GA that has the high numbers. Now, to get that view of the situation, there is no other way than “just culture”. If you don’t, you stand a high chance of barking up the wrong tree, or creating weird side effects when implementing something.
WOW – 2000 posts now
… of which 1000 by you and a couple of your wingmen….
Well, you are still reading it, so it must be very interesting
My “wingmen”? Hardly…
