To be honest, I’m not seeing this report as something ridiculous.
Is distraction often a factor? Yes.
Is the airspace structure not OK (pinch-points)? Yes.
Do pilots plan to fly too close to airspace, even when it can be avioded? Yes. In hindsight I realised I’ve done it myself, flying to high under LTMA and then only JUST had a chance to correct it after a very powerful updraught.
What surprised me was the fact only 6% of pilots said that it was a problem with transponder.
Another thing that always surprised me in real life (and was re-iterated in the report) was that instructors quite often fly with SkyDemon in their bag. And I know of cases when the student is uncomfortable about the distance from airspace/ATZ and instructor says “it’s OK” and then student realises later (analysing his own SkyDemon that was in the bag as per instructor’s request) that they actually busted it.
And what really pi$$ed me off was the fact the MAJORITY of pilots were in contact with ATC at the time of the infringment as per report.
Why not warn the pilot?
And the question: should there be a buffer when the pilot is warned but not busted?
Yes; exactly. The report avoids discussion of “the system” e.g. in most cases you are not talking to the owner of the airspace (e.g. the LTMA owners don’t usually provide a radio contact for VFR OCAS), and even if talking to ATC they are under no obligation to call you up.
Instructors keep a satnav “covert” because the PPL syllabus doesn’t (officially) teach GPS. I recall a case some years ago where they flew into a hill on a night navex (both survived, with serious injuries, amazingly) with the GPS intentionally in the bag.
arj1 wrote:
And what really pi$$ed me off was the fact the MAJORITY of pilots were in contact with ATC at the time of the infringment as per report.
Why not warn the pilot?
Because:
(a) a basic service entitles you to nothing and the controller is probably not watching you. It’s a callsign collection service.
(b) the ATSU these aircraft are working (at least in the SE UK) are usually not the airspace ‘owners’.
When someone infringes the LTMA or the London-area CTRs it involves telephone calls between controllers. The controller who’s airspace is being infringed is not talking to the infringing pilot.
Graham wrote:
a basic service entitles you to nothing and the controller is probably not watching you. It’s a callsign collection service.
Exactly what I thought 
Could someone ask for fun CAA to create a “airspace awerenss service” ?
Seriously, if London Info had radar (or an ADS-B screen), it could prevent a lot of busts. Maybe NATS could do this instead of studies and meetings about infringements. This FISO qualification for “surveillance” could be used.
It’s a reasonable report within the narrow parameters they were obviously given – why pilots infringe – rather than why infringements happen. It has been put together by three people who, while not employed by the CAA, are invited in to take part in some of its business. It has already been mentioned that the chance to do this attracts a certain type of person, and that is a relevant and valid point. I notice that they refer to themselves as ‘industry experts’ which tells you quite a lot. It is also quite obvious that they could never produce a report critical of ‘the system’ because they might not be invited back into the room.
One thing jumped out at me which is quite indicative of how good (or not) their critical reasoning skills might be. They express surprise at pilots apparently not knowing that SkyDemon et al give aural alerts based on the responses to the questions. The questions (shown in full in the report) are essentially:
1. Were you using a moving map to navigate?
2. Were you equipped with something that would give you aural alerts?
Now it is fairly obvious to me that people answering yes to Q1 and no to Q2 are not unaware that the moving map apps give aural alerts, but are simply reading the second question as asking whether they carried a device for aural alerting in addition to their moving map.
Obviously the report completely ignores the major issues of airspace design/volume and the lack of a joined-up ATC service.
alioth wrote:
I think the hard truth is Timothy simply says things that most pilots don’t want to hear (but are nonetheless true, however unpalatable these truths are).
With respect I dont think this is the point, rather when you write this type of report you need to address all the issues but infact this report is so biased as to not be worth the paper it is written on. I am afraid for me it demonstrates that Timothy has not shown the integrity I would have expected.
Graham – I crossed with you and you are quite right in your first line. My point about integrity is that i would not write a report if I was given such a narrow brief because this goes to the heart of their integrity that they presumably agreed to do so. It is disgraceful.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
Graham – I crossed with you and you are quite right in your first line. My point about integrity is that i would not write a report if I was given such a narrow brief because this goes to the heart of their integrity that they presumably agreed to do so. It is disgraceful.
Sorry, have to disagree – if you can voice at least some concerns, it’s still better than not voicing any. And especially disagree with “disgraceful”.
I posted this before…
The elephant in the room is whether the UK has excessive infringements.
It’s like the CV19 debate… most bigger countries get about 50k flu deaths per year and this is generally accepted.
As already mentioned, the Czech Republic gets ~4k/year just in the Prague TMA. Do they go around and ship every infringing pilot to the Lubyanka?
The UK gets ~1.3k a year and that is the whole country, and after scraping out the bottom of the barrel to pick up DA busts, ATZ busts, every violation which some jobsworth can be convinced to write out an MOR for. And by making it mandatory for an ATCO to file an MOR i.e. an ATCO letting pilots off will eventually get fired. And the well known ex RAF ATC chap in the CAA is “executing” (that’s the term they actually use in their letter to you) every MOR.
And the UK is way bigger than the CZ.
That is what should be examined, before looking for hammers to beat pilots over the head with.
All the historical evidence suggests that the number of busts pretty well tracks GA activity, and this has been roughly constant, or with a slow underlying decline over many years. All the recent increases in the UK have been generated by the above-mentioned barrel-scraping.
Peter wrote:
The elephant in the room is whether the UK has excessive infringements.
Peter, I’m not talking about the problem in general – obviously, if (list of common sense improvements) was implemented in the UK, it would have been great.
My point is that this report ON ITSELF is disgraseful. If the scope of the request would have been wider, then it would have been better answered.
But, for the SCOPE DEFINED it is actually OK. I did find a few surprising things and a few things that upset me.
Yes, CAA tries to create the atmosphere that you wouldn’t want to touch any AirSpace (AS) with a bargepole.
It would be interesting to see if they actually introduce that ADS-B endorsement for AFISOs.
