Given the UK has about 30k pilots, most of them in the SE, 1,3k infringements mean that about 1 out of 20 twenty infringes once a year.
I don’t think it’s bad at all !
Yes; I agree (both above).
However, IMHO, the narrow scope makes it fairly worthless. These reports have been done before several times, in years past. They pick a load of infringements and summarise what happened.
However, good research is hard:
Since the researchers in this case “are the CAA” for all practical purposes, any interviews they will have done will be of little value, because any pilot interviewed knows perfectly well that if he is frank his name will end up on some “incorrect attitude” sh*itlist. Timothy “is CAA” because he serves there part-time. Mike Evans, who knows, but his posting style here was “fully CAA” (all CAA/NATS/UK-ATC people have the same posting style and subject profile: sanctimonious, zero interest in flying, interested only in pilot criminality). A great pity because this is social media self-selection; I know most ATCOs are completely normal nice people. And doing “higher degrees” in an aviation regulatory topic is a bog standard CAA career progression move. The 3rd chap would be assumed by anyone to be fully Stockholm syndromed or, IOW, about as independent as a gun shop owner doing a consultancy job for the local police. EDIT: it’s been suggested on UK social media that MikeE is also serving on the AIWG.
I suspect the report is based on the responses which infringers sent to NATS/CAA, and those are going to be carefully written to not show them in a bad light. Anecdotally, it appears that if you write lots and lots and are suitably humble, you get a warning letter, whereas if you write little you get Gasco right away (like I did, when I told them it was a distraction while talking to a passenger and I will simply stop flying under the 2500ft LTMA especially with passengers).
I think the UK is doing very well to dig out just 1.3k, and it should focus on improving ATC services. I would start with transit coordination, because a fair chunk of Gasco business came from people who busted while trying to get CAS access and left the rapid dogleg/dive too late.
Peter wrote:
I would start with transit coordination
You mean, like, they’d need to talk each other?! How could you?! (Sorry for sarcasm)
The funny bit is that while a lot of people on this forum know about the SLAs/OLAs, there is no such things between the ATC and a pilot.
What are the requirements for a pilot to receive a service/transit from an ATC? There are no penalties for them for NOT providing you with the service.
What is the percentage of the GA transit requests have NOT been fulfilled? I mean GA and not business aviation.
In all fairness, I think it is worth mentioning the very first words in that airspace infringement document:
The Causal Factors Working Group is a sub-group of the Civil Aviation Authority’s Airspace
Infringement Working Group (AIWG).
One group of several, in other words, and the group focusing on the pilot. In that context the exclusive focus on the pilot is not odd or strange in any way, quite the opposite. I would be more interested in what the other sub groups are doing, and the final document by the entire working group.
“GPS in PPL training” moved here.
What are the requirements for a pilot to receive a service/transit from an ATC? There are no penalties for them for NOT providing you with the service.
Transits should be based ATC workload only, in theory.
What is the percentage of the GA transit requests have NOT been fulfilled? I mean GA and not business aviation.
That data should exist. If not, an FOIA request should work.
Bizjets tend to get into CAS fairly fast and stay there. In the UK, you have Class C at FL200+ everywhere so that’s not hard.
arj1 wrote:
What is the percentage of the GA transit requests have NOT been fulfilled?
It’s not clear, but a lot of GA do not ask for transits because most controlled airspace in UK lower airspace is Class A airspace, and most GA do not have an IR.
Peter wrote:
whether the UK has excessive infringements.
So nobody is complaining about this issue to the same degree in the USA or in many other countries abroad.
Which means either the UK airspace and FIS regulatory system is flawed, or the UK pilot training system is flawed.
But if UK pilots have been trained badly, then British/G-reg pilots would show up disproportionately in many infringement records across the globe.
So far I do not gather this to be the case.
So then it comes back to the UK/FIS system: As foreign trained pilots have the same issues as UK trained pilots – I prove my point.
It is almost impossible to get ad hoc transits of UK’s Class A TMAs.
You can get transits of little stuff like the Exeter “airway”, most of the time, if you press for long enough and start pressing far enough back. N of Exeter it is owned by Cardiff (FL065-165) and S of Exeter it is owned by London Control (FL065+) who usually flatly refuse regardless of traffic.
I think the answer is very variable according to who you ask and which location you pick. This has come up on forums countless times over many years and you always get one camp saying they get 100% and another camp saying they get say 50%. Then you get one camp saying it depends on how competent the requesting pilot sounds (which I concur with, generally, with IFR traffic more likely to get it, especially if presenting a fait accompli in the form of being at FL100 or so) and you get a well known poster saying this is rubbish because he famously tried this in his Aztec and always got a transit even if sounding deliberately incompetent. Also I think some units have improved while others (e.g. Solent) have gone backwards. It has often struck me as amazing how Bournemouth get an absolute total refusal from Solent, as one example.
Which means either the UK airspace and FIS regulatory system is flawed, or the UK pilot training system is flawed.
Both, nowadays 
But foreign pilots probably tend to not be pursued by the CAA man for minor stuff, because they are not the low hanging fruit and the foreign CAA would just laugh at the UK making the request to bust the pilot for 100-200ft or 1 minute in CAS.
BTW, has there been any recent change in CAA infringement department staffing?
James_Chan wrote:
but a lot of GA do not ask for transits because most controlled airspace in UK lower airspace is Class A airspace
Most of it at typical light GA altitudes (< 3000 ft) is class D.
On the other hand, I tried to get a transit across Liverpool on Saturday, and no one answered, although the airspace wasn’t in it’s NOTAMed inactive-due-to-COVID time, so I ended up going via the Manchester LLR (I only heard 2 aircraft on the Manchester frequency so I’m sure I could have transited their airspace instead). Having a look at FR24 right now, despite the weather being rather uninspiring, there’s more GA traffic showing up than airlines.
Peter wrote:
That data should exist. If not, an FOIA request should work.
Yes but it it will be based only on the not-well-known FCS1521 (although, for balance, it is now on the front page of the Airspace safety initiative website). I haven’t seen any stat on that publish so if someone really care, indeed, FOIA request.
alioth wrote:
no one answered, although the airspace wasn’t in it’s NOTAMed inactive-due-to-COVID
I think it is worth a phone call to Liverpool ATSU or a MOR or FCS1521
