Standby wrote:
The one think that surprises me is the lack of trust over the statistics; surely it will take time to get a true picture and probably only at the end of each year when the totals are published;
You must be correct so far as the analyisis is concerned, but lest we forget, has this process not been in place over a year already?
and we would be a lot happier if the stats. had been published each month, as they now are, and indeed should have been.
and then you could catch up all those months missed – couldnt you?
and then we might have an idea of what is going on.
i think with age comes a suspicion when things dont feel right – this doenst feel right. Of course, i hope I am wrong, but the longer we are kept in the dark, the more you feel there is some good reason, as there is nothing difficult here.
This matter concerns aviation safety and I almost feel like serving a MOR. 
There is also the financial aspect to the whole of this.
The claim is that infringments costs the industry over £6 million pounds a year. The current policy has increased the number of infrigments it would seem (if you believe the stats., I dont), but anyway I doubt the numbers are falling. That is a good sum of money to spend in some other way. Providing London Info with radar would help, a few more controllers would help (how often do we hear "due to controller work load etc, so I know many who dont bother), and there could even be some for running some courses for the instructors as I mentioned earlier.
Why does this have to be about dealing with the horse after it has bolted as well.
The answer is to educate (re-educate) the potential infringers, before they infringe – not after. Introducing some mandatory infrigment avoidance content every two years would be a whole lot more proactive and wouldnt be of any inconvenience as part of the content.
The belief is that they are being proportional. Infringement means an automatic computer record, the relevant controller has to be taken off duty, debriefed, with knock on effect to controller duty times – this is for a minor infringement in the TMA or CAS (eg Stansted).
This is before more serious events with flights being diverted, held on the ground, etc. or TCAS loss of separation events.
It might be helpful to compare notes with other jurisdictions where relatively swift five figure fines might be the order of the day.
Getting more transparency on the statistics and how the system is being administered seems worthwhile – but I would suggest the intention is to maintain proportionality.
Robert – see previous posts in this long thread.
For example, the UK is the only country in Europe which applies the 5000ft/5nm add-on. This number was confirmed at a recent Gasco course too. This add-on ensures lots of “loss of separation” incidents, which elsewhere would be trivial busts with no effect. See e.g. this.
The problem is that this thread is now so long that almost nobody is going to read it
And the Europeans just read it with total bewilderment at how the UK is managing to screw itself.
Various more European posts e.g. here. Europe doesn’t impose the high max fines for “normal” busts. You can find more with suitable search expressions.
RobertL18C wrote:
The belief is that they are being proportional.
I dont think proportionately is important IF you are really seeking to address the issue. Education is the way to do this, and once someone has infringed, the education has (in one sense) already failed.
RobertL18C wrote:
Getting more transparency on the statistics
It would very much help give us a proper understadning as to whether there is any evidence this is effective.
I wonder how much support there would be on here (and elsewhere) for a group FREEDOM OF INFORMATION request. There is not reason forum members could not sign up to such a request if there was a n appetite to do so. It is harder to deny the information when there is a ground swell of pilots behind the request.
What do we think?
I don’t think other jurisdictions are handing out swift five-figure fines for run-of-the-mill short duration edge-of-airspace busts are they?
Most will be quite tough on the idiot who bumbles straight across an international airport, and the UK is no different in this regard. I think we all agree the guy who stops Heathrow departures for half an hour needs the book thrown at him unless he’s got a very good excuse.
My sole concern is whether the question of “how easy is it to identify the pilot and prove the case” has found its way into the process, which I believe it may have done.
I agree it could be worse elsewhere, but accepting that as a measure of success has never been the British way.
I was thinking of infringing a P-nuclear power station, for example.
Commercial Ops can get fined for relatively minor noise abatement infringements.
Impossible to find credible evidence of the French ZIT €10k fine / aircraft confiscation having ever been imposed. Only the usual rumours. Various previous threads but zero reports.
I would like to have been a fly on the wall when the CAA came up with this completely mad change of policy. One possibility (reported by someone who spoke to someone in the CAA recently) is that they were just “told” to do it, but by who? Or it may have been the misguided end point of looking at their options, and when they realised there was no way they were going to provide ATS services OCAS (other than the current rubbish system, which in any case doesn’t “protect” you from doing what amounts to a bust; you get exactly the same processing if you nipped CAS while under a Farnborough Radar service) they probably just thought “let’s hit them really hard until the infringers drop out of the system”. Unfortunately almost nobody in the CAA flies a GA plane (a few are low time renters or group members) so they don’t understand how it works and the “solution” via Gasco is hitting the highest-hour pilots. All the reports I have seen from the Gasco sessions are reporting mostly experienced pilots.
I am glad I got my PPL in 2001 and have done some great trips. Anyone new to this, on their first brief mistake, is going to get a huge shock. Most will probably give up flying there and then. I still remember my first speeding; on a 200cc Yamaha. 40mph in a 30 limit. I got surrounded by several policemen, standing very close, and thought they were going to beat me up. It was a “maximum intimidation” approach. That’s the current CAA approach, too.
Fortunately the best flying is to be had outside the UK and that has not changed much
While it’s a bit of a shambles, surely it’s not as black as all that?
Even if we extrapolate our theories (that a CAIT/Mode S bust goes straight to Gasco) then that’s only about 250 per year which accounts for perhaps 20-25% of all kinds of bust. The rest are too hard to identify/prove for the CAA to take any action.
And if it’s mainly getting the experienced high-hour pilots, then it won’t decimate the newbies and drive them away from flying? If one wants to drive change in the CAA attitude, then I think the line of “you’re getting the wrong audience at the courses” is a strong argument.
I still think it’s the wrong approach and there’s an arrogant attitude coupled with some disingenuous use of statistics coming out of the CAA*, but I don’t think it’s the end of flying as we know it. We’ll just have to concentrate really hard on staying out of Class A when on a VFR bimble, and taking great care over this is surely something we should be doing anyway?
Always look on the bright side of life…..
*I am currently re-reading R V Jones’s excellent memoir ‘Most Secret War’. It is impossible to ignore the parallel between the institutional arrogance and incompetence that Jones encountered in the upper echelons of the RAF and the impression that the modern-day CAA manages to give.
Peter wrote:
Fortunately the best flying is to be had outside the UK and that has not changed much
If you think that, clearly you don’t fly north of the Watford Gap very often :-) :-)
