What?
So most of those on the course are already using GPS. How do we know?
If this is true the publicity material is shockingly deceptive.
Where are the stats?
I repeat, where are the stats?
How on earth does the selection process work for those that go on the course? Transparent accountability?
There seem to be quite a few (cynical?) claims made by various people in this thread.
As with all forums, I have no idea what is true, what has been made up, and whether their sources of information are genuine or not.
I would say – keep flying, enjoy it, and if believe you have infringed and have been dealt with unreasonably, then go and seek legal help. :-)
Similarly if you believe the CAA is too heavy handed and creating rods for its own back by approving poor lower airspace services coupled with arbitrary and excessive separation minima for unknown traffic, then I’m sure a court or an MP from the APPG GA group would be most pleased to hear what’s going on.
James are you concerned that you posted the wrong info previously?
The 5000ft/5nm is easy enough to check.
Not particularly. :-)
I still stand by what I’ve heard for now, but as I don’t work at the regulator or at an ANSP, I wouldn’t know whether the rules have changed from one month to the next.
In the sense of the original question – how different local authorities prosecute CAS busts – I would like to offer my experience from Austria.
Departing from Salzburg in southerly direction I was climbing in order to stay clear of the mountains and touched LOWS airspace D. As soon as I noticed, I descended again. According to SD the maximum altitude was 150 ft within D – but only for a few seconds. The whole infringement was less then a minute.
Transponder was running on mode S. Consequences: nothing.
However, there is a story going in the school where I did my license from a guy who busted the restricted airspace (in Austria) during the WEF in Davos: a lower 5-digit EUR fine + compensation for the sortie of two Eurofighters…
Many thanks for that data point, Supersonic.
Was that 5 digit fine actually paid?
We have had quite a lot of threads here, years ago, about the subject of fines in Germany (and Austria and Switzerland, IIRC) and they always seemed to be theoretical, not actually paid out. Germany has the famous €50k fine for an infringement. It’s like the French ZIT (nuclear power station) P zones with a much reported €10k fine and/or aircraft confiscation, but despite asking everybody under the sun I have never found anybody who knew anybody personally who got either of these two options.
In the UK, if you do something really crazy, like shutting down Heathrow for half an hour, you will nowadays probably get fined £5k (plus various “re-education” stuff). In years past, you often got no fine. This stuff can be dug out here although with some effort. These big ones happen perhaps 10 (?) times a year, and always get dragged out at infringement seminars. The currently popular one is a video where Luton got shut down for 45 mins; they will probably milk that one for the rest of 2019 until a better one comes along. And I would expect similar fines everywhere else, because less than that is a joke and much more, say 50k, will bankrupt most pilots (would have to sell their house), which would get appealed as excessive.
According to my FI – yes. As the story goes the authorities “favorably” considered that the pilot also had to pay for the two fighters’ sortie. Probably a much higher 5-digit figure. Poor guy stopped flying for some years…
The fully costed cost per hour of a plane like that is of the order of €30-50k per hour… That was a figure in the RAF about 20 years ago, FWIW.
Eurofighters in 2010 cost £70,000 an hour in the UK. IIRC the expectation was for the price to come down considerably.
Fixed budget cost (1bn? 50bn? 2% of GDP) on the number of hours flown (allmost zero?), that willl be a gigantic number…
l expect GA proxy of 2.5×fuel consumption to apply for an airspace bust interception example but that would be way cheaper compared to an A380 go-around but still costly: I don’t see that many JF flights offred on Wingly ;)
