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

Cub wrote:

I repeat, I am a fellow GA pilot, very content with the application of a Just Culture in this case and have no requirement to take any notice of your view other than to share my counter view and relevant experience with other GA pilots.

I agree, and I thank you for every contribution you have made. I respect your opinion, I agree with some of your opinions, and I strongly disagree with other opinions you have expressed. Thats debate. It would be boring if we didnt. I am delighted you share your counter view.

I am very much less delighted when it is made personal. I dont know you and that is a good thing because i read jsut what you write. If you tell me you are a GA pilot, then I am grateful that we might share some similiar experiences. You may fly a few hours a year in a microlight for all that it matters. If you tell me you are a barrister, I would expect you to understand the law. If you didnt, again it wouldnt matter to me.

I think it is obvious that no one has any obligation to take any account of anyone’s opinion. As I said earlier, policy is driven by public opinion, and at your peril (I dont mean you personally) public opinion is ignored. I may well be out of step with opinion, but that doesnt matter either.

Peter wrote:

An “interesting” strategy indeed. I have had no less than three fairly forceful “invitations”, one made openly on FB but later deleted. I won’t say which CAA person was at it and nobody else should either. It is wrong to personalise this very good debate, especially bearing in mind that the person in question is holding your license in one hand and a lit match in the other.

I have had a similar ‘invitation’.

I am also intrigued at this approach to ‘dissent management’. Normally one has to be very, very careful when speaking on behalf of one’s employer.

@Cub I nearly spat my tea out when I saw you accuse Fuji of playing the man rather than the ball. Perhaps you’re unclear as to the meaning of this phrase? He just makes his points, and yet only a few posts ago you personalised the debate enormously by calling him a barrack room lawyer and exposing his identity. We all welcome you here, but you will find that the standards are a bit different to Flyer. I’m afraid you’ve played the man here, and he’s playing the ball.

Skydriller I am equally passionate about a Just Culture and am lucky enough to have worked in a sector of aviation that I feel achieves it reasonably well.

I do believe whole heartedly in the system approach to addressing the overbearing issue of infringements and indeed the establishment of causal factors often greatly contributed to by the pilot infringement questionnaires is essential in identifying all the other contributory factors such as airspace design and complexity, service provision and the multiplicity of those services etc.
This thread by title has featured heavily on the application of process to the pilot but has not touched on how the gathering of this data is extremely and correctly influential in identifying other system failures and indeed successes. One good example in the UK would be the current campaign to emphasise the safety mitigation benefits of using a moving map GPS with airspace warning. The effectiveness of that measure probably would not have been as quickly and emphatically established without the gathering of open and honest feedback from pilots via the Pilot Infringement Questionnaire under a Just Culture.

Finally, however this is a just culture and not a no blame culture and if it is possible to mitigate demonstrable risk in an individual following an event then this should be achieved via education and awareness directed towards that individual. I feel that that is a ‘just’ approach unless gross negligence is suspected when this should additionally be tested via legal proceedings.

Cub wrote:

One good example in the UK would be the current campaign to emphasise the safety mitigation benefits of using a moving map GPS with airspace warning. The effectiveness of that measure probably would not have been as quickly and emphatically established without the gathering of open and honest feedback from pilots via the Pilot Infringement Questionnaire under a Just Culture.

Well, I feel that anyone who knows what they are doing and is capable of independent thought has been using and advocating the use of GPS moving maps for many, many years. Even when such action brought them into direct conflict with the recommendations of the CAA and the training establishment.

‘The system’ (as usual) is rather late to this party.

Perhaps it has taken this questionnaire feedback for the CAA to work out what’s going on, but for the rest of us it borders on the bleeding obvious.

Cub – forgive me, but I feel I should make one further point in case it is not apparent.

When you put yourself in a public office, in front of a classroom, etc, you had better expect scrutiny. That is the way we do things, and rightly so. That is why I ask the questions I have, and even then, it is not directed at one individual, but the organisation.

When we have a private debate behind closed doors in an unoffcial capacity and we agree it is confidential, then it must remain confidential.

When we have a debate with a person representing an organisation behind those same said closed doors we can only decide whether we are prepared to agree that should remain confidential or not, but sometimes the debate will not even be had, without the assurance first being given. Righty, we should think carefully whether that is something we wish to do, because in either of the above circumstances our integrity is compromised if we do not adhere to our agreement. We should also ask ourselves why the discussion should need to be behind “closed doors” in the first place.

I make no reference to any particular event, I am simply commenting on what has been said already in this discussion.

Graham. If you say I have breached the standards of this forum then so be it. I simply object to being somehow held personally responsible for the system that I am defending by people who apparently seek to change that system. If you or Fuji or IMCR or Peter (FGS they may all be the same person FAIK) want to change the system then you really need to engage with someone who can change it. You have Timothy and possibly others on the Forum who sit on the AIWG and you say you have received an offer from someone within the CAA – Great! Either accept it or decline that level of engagement but please don’t think that brow beating me is going to make any difference. That is what I meant by playing the person rather than the ball but I am accepting of your judgement that I have breached your standards and will now leave as gracefully (or at least I thought I was graceful) as I arrived.

This is a most interesting thread with no particular outcome I think. Pilots, the same as all others, just want openness, clarity and fairness, all of which seem to be lacking from one particular side of this debate. Sad really that this should happen in such a relatively small “community”.

@Cub – no-one is brow-beating you, nor holding you responsible for anything. If you take up a particular position and disagree with someone, then don’t be surprised if they offer a counter-argument – that’s all! This is an adult debate, not a group of school children who are waiting to be educated by you (or anyone else).

I make no reference to breaching any standards (indeed, it would not be within my power), merely point out that calling people barrack-room lawyers and/or calling out their identity is not really what we do here. It’s a bit different to Flyer, that’s all, but you’re most welcome here. Clearly you wished to continue the debate after it was banned on Flyer.

I’d like to make a point about the online exam which now seems to be largely discontinued.

I think that’s a huge opportunity lost.

For most people, an online course and exam would be a lot less “punishment” like than the GASCO course. It’s zero cost and doesn’t involve lengthy travel or days off.

The problems with the previous course were multiple, but the idea of the online course wasn’t bad.
The main problems of the online course were that the tutorial had nothing to do with the exam questions that followed and that the exam was very much a test under pressure.

If this could be re-thought it could be a good opportunity to deal with minor infringments.

I’d suggest something like this:

-Identify the major causes of infringments
-Identify things that the pilot can do to reduce the risks of infringing
-Identify things that the pilot can do to reduce the severity of infringments when they do happen
-The course material should be focused on getting these across to the pilot

For example, it could be taught
- about how to use a Frequency Monitoring Code
- what to expect with it
- what not to expect with it
- how it mitigates the effect of an infrindement
- how working an ATC unit might help to reduce the changes of an infringment
- how working an ATC unit might help reduce effect of an infringemnt
- how working an ATC unit might result in less sevre outcome for the pilot if they do infringe.
- What the rules are to cross an ATZ
- The importance of ignoring an Regional Pressure Setting and using QNH or 1013 as appropriate
- Needing of an ATC clearance to cross class D (in case there are still any pilots who trained in the USA who are confused!
- How to do modern flight planning (ie electronically)

There are a lot of FREE tools available to pilots today.
For example there are online NOTAM plotting tools. I suspect many don’t know about those or how to use them.
There is SD light for doing proper pre-flight planning. (Free)
There is EasyVFR light for monitoring your position in flight (Free). – full disclosure I help out the development and testing of EV.

What many probably don’t realise is that SD light and EasyVFR Light can talk to one another. So you can plan your flight on SD Light, get a details route plan and a NavLog and export this to EasyVFR light and monitor your position in relation to your planned route while you fly.

Many pilots don’t have a tablet, but most have a smart phone and these apps can be used there, totally free.

How many infringers don’t know that these tools are available to them and allow them to do modern flight planning and navigation totally free? Is it better to test them on whiz wheel calculations that they learnt on their PPL (current test) or to introduce them to more modern and reliable methods of planning and navigating?

Perhaps take an example flight and show how it’s done from begining of planning on SD light to inflight use on EV Light.

Then the test should not be about testing their skills, but rather about testing that they paid attention to and learnt from the course material.

So the answer to the questions should be in the course material.
I’d say that there should be no time limit on the exam, because we’re not testing the pilot’s intelligence but rather how well they picked up info from the course.

For example if the test asked what was necessary to cross an ATZ. So what if the pilot missed that info or didn’t remember it. Would it be better that they work it out as a process of elimination from the various multiple choice answers and guess before the time is up, or they spent 20 minutes looking up the rules of the air or rewatching the course material and in the process took onboard the information? The second is far better as it means that they have acquired the knowledge.

Let the pilot take all the time in the world to make sure that they’ve gotten the information that the course seeks to convey to them.

By doing this we ensure that those pilots take on the info in the course and the course could be easily updated over time as new risk factors or issues emerge.

It would be a lot less controversal than the previous course/exam or the GASCO Course.

dp