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

boscomantico wrote:

What they say is:
Only 2% of VFR flights contacting FIS has filed a flight plan, sonit wouldn‘t be of much benefit.

No doubt — but maybe so few people file flight plans just because it doesn’t give any benefit with FIS? (Except for SAR.)

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Malibuflyer wrote:

How do you file a FP for a “controlled flight”?

I wonder myself actually. But, there are two ways of filing a VFR FP. In the “cruising level” you can insert A F etc for flight level, alt and so on, but also “VFR”. Whenever I actually insert “A” and an altitude (and waypoints) it get’s controlled, at least in the TMA (airspace C/D). Useful in nice weather if you want to climb direct to 7k feet for instance, instead of staying below the TMA for ages. Sometimes the ATC ask if I’m flying IFR, I say no, and they say OK, cleared to 7k feet or cleared initially to 5k feet or whatever.

But, when I am supposed to change frequency, and the ATC don’t say anything, and when I ask, they don’t know which frequency I shall change to, it starts to get confusing, especially when entering straight into the TMA, and I have no intentions of becoming part of some statistics

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

Not sure if that has something to do with the plan.

In Airspace C/D VFR-Flights are always “controlled” (in a sense that you need clearance for altitude and flightpath) independent of if you have filed a flight plan. You need a clearance which is valid as long as you stay in this airspace (or up to the mentioned clearance limit).

It get’s a little bit tricky when you leave the airspace C/D and need to reenter it. Some believe you need a new clearance, others believe the old clearance is still valid.

Germany

France follows ICAO with respect to flight plans. You file one for all IFR, Night VFR outside of a certain distance from your airfield, any flight that crosses an international boundary, or flights over hostile terrain or water.
For VFR entry or transit of controlled airspace you call and request clearance on the appropriate frequency. Sometimes this can be facilitated by the FIS or via an ACC( of which there are 5 in France). Often when talking to an APP, tower, fis or ACC you can be talking to the same person, To cross military (R) zones, depending on status,you either talk to the military controller or the FIS will give approval. The wording or the "clearance/authorization or approval/no problem " makes all the difference.
You request to leave a frequency as you see fit. Eg If you take off at LFBH to go to LFRI or LFFK, you will start off in La Rochelle TMA either with LFBH tower or APP( tends to be the same person) If you are going to LFFK you might request leave their frequency on exiting the TMA on the other hand you could leave the change until you are almost on top of LFFK and you will usually continue to get traffic information. If you were going LFBH -LFRI you might want to change to Nantes (you are on the border of both) or direct to LFRI AFIS. Its not as complicated as I appear to have made it sound and on top of all this ATS services do sometimes pass you over to another frequency.

France

gallois wrote:

France follows ICAO with respect to flight plans. You file one for all IFR, Night VFR outside of a certain distance from your airfield, any flight that crosses an international boundary, or flights over hostile terrain or water.

That’s actually not what ICAO says. According to ICAO Annex 2, you should file a flight plan “prior to operating”

(1) any flight or portion thereof to be provided with air traffic control service;
(2) any IFR flight within advisory airspace;
(3) any flight within or into areas, or along routes designated by the competent authority, to facilitate the provision of flight information, alerting and search and rescue services;
(4) any flight within or into areas or along routes designated by the competent authority, to facilitate coordination with appropriate military units or with air traffic services units in adjacent States in order to avoid the possible need for interception for the purpose of identification;
(5) any flight across international borders, unless otherwise prescribed by the States concerned;

SERA has the exact same wording but adds a sixth case:

(6) any flight planned to operate at night, if leaving the vicinity of an aerodrome.

So both ICAO Annex 2 and SERA are clear that a flight plan is required for controlled VFR. But — according to both ICAO Annex 2 and SERA — when a flight plan is required only for a short part of a flight, the necessary details can be passed over radio, which is what usually happens for VFR traffic briefly passing class B, C, D airspace.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Ahh @Airborne_Again, that’s where language differences play a part. In French if you fill out a flight plan form and send it off you ‘depose’ a flight plan. But as you wrote in the second part of your post a flight plan can be simply a matter of requesting transit from point A to point B across a control zone along with where you are coming from and your destination , altitude etc.over the radio.
I got the impression from the previous posts that Norway and Germany required flight plans be “deposed” for any VFR flight in classes B, C, and D.

France

There seems to be no consequence of me touching class D of Bremen EDDW two weeks ago, as described on page 235
at least I haven’t heard anything yet.

Low-hours pilot
EDVM Hildesheim, Germany

Peter wrote:

guess an interesting angle is that in a group of say 10 people, there is a 10x bigger chance of getting busted, so the insurance policy is 10x more vulnerable. Not many people think of th

Not necessarily: chance of an airspace infringement is function of flight time and behavior – not of no. of pilots. If plane is in the air for 200hrs a year odds that this plane is involved in an infringement is the same if one pilot flew the 200hrs or 10 pilots flew 20 hrs. each.

Germany

I think one pilot who flies 200 hrs a year is less likely to infringe than 10 pilots who fly 20 hours a year, since the 200 hour/yr pilot will be a lot more current, up to date with current issues/airspace changes, and less likely to make errors than the 20 hr/year pilots.

Andreas IOM

If insurance companies really think that infringement probability is a reason to increase premiums then they should charge more for those based under a TMA… Then what about those based at say… Barton…? or those that are based next to a CAA infringement hotspot…?

How s this all being worked out? Seems a little odd to me…

Regards, SD..

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