The complaints and appeals procedures are clearly and conveniently laid out.
If I were Mr. Lawson, I would not give up – and point out that I am only requesting numbers not details of incidents, and therefore the CAA’s response is disingenious. (I made an FOIA request to our government on immigration, and for details like this where I anticipated they would try and worm out of an answer on grounds of confidentiality, I explicitly wrote and highlighted I only wanted numbers and not data about individuals or particular cases).
Thats an interesting letter. I fail to see how privacy of an individual is compromised by releasing overall statistics.
I wonder if the various pilot representative groups would have had the same answer as the individual.
Regards, SD..
the initial MOR is protected by the EU registration
I am told that MORs were all published until recently, and now to see them you apply to be put on a circulation list.
This did seem strange since the MORs which NATS and then the CAA ask you to fill in (in the event of any infringement) will contain your full name and potentially all kinds of personal details. I am sure infringing pilots complete these with a huge amount of diligence, in the obvious belief and hope that mitigating circumstances will be properly considered 
I wonder if the various pilot representative groups would have had the same answer as the individual.
Highly unlikely they would want to get involved. An FOIA request is not going to win you any friends.
That justification is patently ludicrous and clearly the result of an internal discussion along the lines of “is there anything, I mean anything at all, that we could use as a justification for not letting these numbers out?”
The request is clear in that it asks for numbers, not details of individual cases. The information would clearly be completely anonymised and poses no threat to any relationship of trust with respect to the reporting of infringements.
Most of these requests never get followed up on, but if I were the person concerned I’d give them hell over an answer like that. Perhaps I should just request same…
Yes, it is rather a poor response. No way that is justification for not releasing summary data.
I think Mr Lawson, whoever he is, should appeal. 
The CAA did release some old data e.g. see here and even spent money producing the utterly disingenuous video in that link. I reckon it is disingenuous because the principal reason for the high failure rate is that the question bank is loaded with bogus questions, so your chances of getting a pass are greatly reduced. The exam is also loaded to fail, by a very short time per question, a fixed order, and a pass mark higher than any of the normal pilot exams. However in any case the data published previously would contravene the excuses given in that FOIA response!
As I said I have no idea who Mr Lawson is but I am aware that some other FOIA requests were sent to the CAA in recent months, on the same topic, with particular emphasis on finding out if there has been a very recent policy shift whereby some large % of infringers are sent to the Gasco course. I am not aware of anybody else having received a response.
Someone sent me another UK CAA response to an FOIA request.
Again, the CAA is working hard to avoid releasing any data on what proportion of infringers get send down to the various punishment routes.
On the last two pages is however some stunning data on Q1 2018 versus Q1 2019:
It is IMHO absolutely impossible for such large increases to be real, especially with the March CTR numbers being unchanged at 15. The “really wild” CAS busts, where somebody flies right through some big airport CAS without knowing there is an airport there, are all CTR busts. The data must be massaged in some way. We all hear of more rigorous reporting but that started some years ago with the software tools NATS use which highlight all busts so the ATCO cannot fail to notice it. Perhaps all discretion has been removed from ATCOs; previously they might have ignored “corner nipping” involving say a minute in CAS, but now all those get pursued. Most notable is the massive TMA increase; I think this must be the London TMA.
Note that these quarters typically involve very little GA activity. Most busts will take place in the summer months, but obviously the data for summer 2019 doesn’t exist yet. No wonder Gasco manages to run a session every month, each for up to 24 people. It’s not a bad money generator too; with say 20 you get £4k and, based on some stuff I did recently, the cost of the room is probably about £500, maybe a bit more for food. So that should generate 30-40k in a year.
I doubt the figures are massaged – it’s much more likely that automatic infringement detection hadn’t been set up everywhere in 2018, but the rollout is now complete, or as you say all infringements are now getting reported where before some minor ones were allowed to slide.
I also doubt it’s a money making exercise or conspiracy to generate revenue for GASCo.
Of course it is not a “conspiracy” (= a criminal act). Sure the numbers are real, but generating them clearly involves some disingenuous process. I suspect it is a change of procedure to increase the catch %.
For example, why not set the “loss of separation” threshold at the Mode C altitude plus 10,000ft. Then most CAS busts will produce an official loss of separation, which will give the regulator even bigger reasons for going after everybody.
As regards charities, they have to make an income for their executives and their expenses. So the incentive to generate a chargeable activity is definitely present.
