Classic one: zone ATC give a heading out of their zone straight into nearby airports ATZ or nearby CAS that they don’t own, that does not mean you are yet welcome in the next place but sometimes they may give you a last minute reminder, do a handover or leave you for free call/nav on their side of airspace airspace…
The interesting case is when heading/altitude may takes you shortly out of their CAS and back to it due to lack of nav precision or due to vmc weather that gets in grey side but I never had to request a 2nd clearance and I just left ATC make that judgement, but I understand you do need a second one if controllers explicitly tells you are outside?
But it would be interesting to see the subsequent actions if you infringed having been instructed by ATC to do so
The problem is that AFAICT those who decide which type of “processing” you will be sent for are not reading the explanations on the MOR forms which you had by then been asked to complete, twice, once by NATS and then again by the CAA, and in both cases with a request like “NATS makes available this information for flight safety purposes only; specifically to enable the completion of an airspace infringement questionnaire”. IOW, mitigating circumstances are disregarded. So in circumstances such as this your best option might be to ignore it all, end up in a court (virtually certain if you ignore it all) and only then you would get the option to defend yourself. This was outlined earlier in this thread. You cannot appeal anything the CAA does, short of going to court.
Not a clearance so it is still on you.
True, but it would not look good with a half decent defence lawyer 
Classic one: zone ATC give a heading out of their zone straight into nearby airports ATZ or nearby CAS that they don’t own, that does not mean you are welcome in the next place but sometimes they may give you a last minute reminder or leave you for free call/nav on their side of airspace airspace…
I have had that loads of times, on VFR flights. I got a great one in Italy many years ago, and a last moment discovery that a handover to the next piece of CAS is not going to happen is not uncommon in the UK, notably between Bournemouth and Southampton.
This is why one does the IR Except an IR is often not much good in UK airspace, because if you are not properly in CAS, you can get dumped out, your IFR clearance silently dumped, and then when you re-enter CAS further down, you will be done for a bust. A foreign pilot would do this naturally… As has been pointed out earlier, the main problem in the UK is that the controller in CAS does not usually provide any service outside it, so when you bust, it hits him suddenly.
AFAICT those who decide which type of “processing” you will be sent for are not reading the explanations on the MOR forms which you had by then been asked to complete, twice, once by NATS and then again by the CAA
I keep telling you, as someone who has been involved in the process as an observer, that this is complete rubbish.
Are you just going to keep repeating it until I bore of correcting you, or is there any chance that you might accept that you are wrong?
Timothy, I am in contact with loads of people. Sure it is a small sample of the total, but I am not inventing it.
If you sit on some committee, of course the correct procedure will be followed. For example, have you checked out the bogus questions in the infringement exam? The CAA denies this completely.
And, as posted above by others, the numbers you gave earlier do not add up with the numbers which must be processed by the £200 hotel sessions. You said they are under a nondisclosure rule… that doesn’t make it look good, does it? I cannot think of any reason for that, whatsoever.
I spoke to one guy “close to this stuff” today and his view is that, currently, and probably particularly on the LTMA, no prisoners are being taken.
Peter wrote:
I am in contact with loads of people
I spend a lot of my professional life “in contact with loads of people” who want to persuade me of their innocence and lack of culpability. Anything except accepting responsibility.
Rather than sitting at your desk writing your suppositions and guesswork, why don’t you write to [name removed on CAA request], pointing him to this thread, and ask if you could attend a “Tuesday meeting”? I don’t know how he would feel about that, but it’s worth asking.
Of course, you would have, like me, to agree not to disclose, but maybe that would make you one of the “enemy”. Equally, you might feel that the pilots about whom decisions are being taken don’t deserve your discretion. I don’t know how your mind works.
[ personal attack removed ]
I can’t comment on mitigating circumstances or anything like that. I’ve not busted yet and I hope to keep it that way, but the more I fly the more statistically likely it becomes.
The Monday event just reinforces for me the need to keep decision making in the cockpit. Even if issued a direct instruction by ATC, check for yourself that it’s a sensible thing to do before you comply.
And that’s before we even get into the issue of heading instructions being issued on a basic service in Class G. A bolshie pilot might reply “confirm class of airspace and type of service?”
But it would be interesting to see the subsequent actions if you infringed having been instructed by ATC to do so…
One basic rule of ATC is that they should never send you into someone else’s airspace without coordination. Which basically means them having checked with the next controller either by telephone conversation, electronically, or through standing agreements on what part of their airspace this controller can use.
How ATC divides up or “sectorises” the airspace is down to them. It is subject to change, and it is not really down to pilots to have to expect how it should all work and hang together.
Sure mistakes may happen, but for the most part of my flying, say if Thames sends me into Biggin’s airspace, or Gatwick into Redhill, I’m not going to complain nor query (unless I’m suspicious), who I really should be talking to at any given point in space, and who’s responsibly it is to provide me that clearance.
I just get on with flying.
James_Chan wrote:
if Thames sends me into Biggin’s airspace, I’m not going to complain nor query, unless I’m suspicious, if I should be talking to Thames or to Biggin and who’s responsibly it is to provide me that clearance
Funnily enough, I had precisely this situation on Monday (with those very units).
Thames (Heathrow Radar actually) held on to me inbound to Biggin because they had a medevac helicopter in conflict. As I neared the Biggin ATZ, I called them on box two and they told me to remain with Heathrow. When I was finally released, I was on short final to Biggin. Everything seemed to be well co-ordinated.
the main problem in the UK is that the controller in CAS does not usually provide any service outside it, so when you bust, it hits him suddenly.
This is the most fundamental design flaw with UK airspace in my opinion. There’s also lots of Class G sitting next to Class A. I have mentioned this issue many times in the past.
If it was say Class C and radar services were offered by “London” as standard, as in many other parts of the world, then pilots may have received some FIS and clearance if there was no traffic within.
The introduction of Farnborough was an unconventional, partial solution to the problem.
Controllers there would assume controlled airspace is for the most part inaccessible, and were left there to warn pilots who were about to hit airspace boundaries on a chart, even if there was no traffic inside, over and above being able to warn pilots about actual traffic, which is what really matters more, and swiftly clear pilots through airspace where requested, thus making most efficient use of it.
Graham wrote:
And that’s before we even get into the issue of heading instructions being issued on a basic service in Class G. A bolshie pilot might reply “confirm class of airspace and type of service?”
And this is my point really. You were in class G, the controller is essentially just making a suggestion. If that takes you into CAS, that will be your problem no his. He will argue that he hadn’t identified you so did not know you were that close to the LTMA.
