It is here too – for those with money.
And I hear reports (which will never appear on a forum) that the CAA drop the cases where the evidence is thin and the defendant gets a lawyer. Historically the CAA has always settled such cases “on the court steps” (or dropped them) because they really do not want case law to be created. This was also the case under Ian Weston who ran their prosecutions for many years and who was way more selective about it than the present incumbent.
I am 100% certain that a German pilot with €10k in the bank and a family to feed is not going to engage a lawyer against the LBA. With €100k, maybe.
Malibuflyer wrote:
that would for any German be a reason to take the case in front of a court – up to the European Court of Justice if necessary.
Would an aircraft owning german do this if they had their license suspended until after the outcome of the trial? This is a real risk facing an aircraft owner who fights against this sort of behaviour. They could have their aircraft sat for quite some time corroding the engine, damaging etc, whilst fighting this.
Don’t underestimate Germans – not only that such cases are quite inexpensive to bring in front of a court, one should also keep in mind that more than half of German households have a legal expense insurance – and I would assume that the percentage amongst “pilot-households” is even higher (not because pilots need such an insurance but because pilot households on average have an above average disposable income).
So if you want to suspend a pilot’s license in the UK all you have to do is transmit a rogue Mode-S signal with his/her aircraft callsign?
Any idiot with a SkyEcho 2 can do that.
Hmm…
Dimme wrote:
Any idiot with a SkyEcho 2 can do that.
Well I know one who was flying with two callsigns while being scared of himself all the time 
Luckily did not bust CAS but appeared in FR24 with both TXP & EC device
~50 years ago, before they had radar, the police set a speed trap in Elgin, two officers with stop watches at a measured distance apart. They caught a motorist way over 50 mph in a 30 mph zone.
He conducted his own defence. After a trial over several days, he was convicted of driving at 30.# mph, and given the max fine.
He was a physicist employed by the NPL, at that time the UK Government measuring standards institution
Peter wrote:
I am 100% certain that a German pilot with €10k in the bank and a family to feed is not going to engage a lawyer against the LBA. With €100k, maybe.
I have made the point before, but I will make it again, GA pilots are treated as a bunch of amateurs.
The process in the commercial world, is, as we know, totally different.
The process in the professional world, for just about every other professional, is also totally different. This would effectively be dealt with by peer review.
Part of the reason for this is to prevent a professional who has devoted potentially his life and a lot of money to a fair hearing in which he is not immediately at a disadvantage because of the costs or the consequences. A private pilot is arguably no different. He should be given the respect of a professional, and he will most certainly have devoted a small, and possibly a large fortune, to aviation. He may well have devoted more of a fortune than a commercial pilot.
.. and yet we have a system where the veracity of the charge cannot be tested by most because of the prohibitive costs, and then, by the potentially disasterous consequences. My guess is on conviction for a first offence with a good barrister, the consequences would not be disasterous, but the costs would be substantial. In the UK I am guessing £10K plus some of the CAA’s cost, compared with £400 and a day at GASCo, which inevitably makes GASCo somewhere more attractive as between a mauling by an Alastian or a St Bernard which fell asleep over its brandy barrel, although I suspect the St Bernard would be more interesting to listen to than the fellas they have running GASCo.
Maoraigh wrote:
~50 years ago, before they had radar, the police set a speed trap in Elgin, two officers with stop watches at a measured distance apart. They caught a motorist way over 50 mph in a 30 mph zone.
Which is a perfectly fine way to measure speed and to convict motorists of speeding if (and only if) you respect the error tolerance of such measurement. As the cops have a reaction time and visual errors (as they can’t stand at the beginning and the end of the distance at the same time) they might not be able to measure the time more accurately than +-0.3 sec. If the Distance is let’s say 100m, that means that at an expected speed of 30mk/h (8.3 m/s) they have an error of about 1.2km/h – therefore if they measure the driver at 31km/h they can’t convict them of speeding. If they measure him at 32km/h they can…
Off_Field wrote:
Would an aircraft owning german do this if they had their license suspended until after the outcome of the trial?
That seems to be a major difference in the system: To suspend the license until the outcome of the trial, the LBA in Germany needed to give evidence to the court, that not suspending the license would pose a substantial and immediate threat to air safety. To do that, they needed to present facts that show a high likelihood that you are about to do the same transgression again immediately – very unlikely that they are able to do this for a pilot that has flown without any incidence for 5 years and now is accused of having violated a rule once…
This is an interesting one. 100ft into CAS, was MORd, but then somebody decided that the system is not accurate enough for this, so no action was taken. But action was taken on other similar ones…
There are loads of 100ft and 200ft cases with “CAA action taken” at the end – too many to read. There is no way the CAA can deny this is happening, and I don’t see how they ever had the brass balls to do so when so many people have access to the MOR listings.
This is a good one. Infringement of an empty (no traffic) ATZ, and to top it off nicely they refer to the ATZ as “CAS”
Peter wrote:
This is an interesting one. 100ft into CAS, was MORd, but then somebody decided that the system is not accurate enough for this, so no action was taken. But action was taken on other similar ones…
The MOR stated that he “touched the CAS boundary” so I assume the inaccuracy was lateral and not in the reported altitude.
