Timothy wrote:
This is a much bigger question, which I raise at lobbying all the time.
Someone does need to get a grip of airspace and manage it actively – I take your point about the nature of a privatised system. The CAA as regulator should be reviewing anonymous data and focusing on improving the hotspots – surely the CAA should be using its clout to intercede. Lowering the airspace, in the example near SOU, wouldn’t be such a big deal if zone transits were largely a given, rather than a 50/50 or worse enterprise. For that to happen it becomes a much wider issue of ATC resourcing and manning and to an extent NATS and other ANSPs have created the perception of controlled airspace being a hostile environment for GA and a place where it isn’t welcome.
What are your thoughts on the just culture point, where there appears to be a lack of separation; where those investigating the infringements are the same people deciding whether or not to prosecute or punish the pilot? An airline safety department has data coming in which is solely dealt with by gatekeepers who only pass on filtered, anonymous data to the airline management after their investigations – except in the case of negligence or a deliberate violation. The CAA should have a similar system for matters like this to foster a just culture. I’m pretty shocked at the revelation here that many GA flights are conducted around CAS with transponders off – it’s grossly negligent to do so if you have one fitted and totally unjustifiable, but at the same time the logic for doing so is inescapable – hence the need for a just culture wrt airspace infringements.
Timothy wrote:
The problem is that no-one is responsible for the curation of our airspace. By law, the CAA has no role in proposing any changes, they can only allow, disallow or suggest changes to Airspace Change Proposals that arise from others. Thus most ACPs come from airports or NATS and are then consulted on (by the proposer) and adjudicated by the CAA.
That might change a tiny bit in time. In the DfT “Aviation 2050” consultation (see Annex A) , There is talk of some legislative change to allow DfT or CAA or a new instance to coordinate ACP or generate a masterplan to which the various ACP need to adhere.
Timothy wrote:
That recommendation of the report has not been formally adopted, though I expect it forms part of the individual discussion about what happens to each infringer. But that misses my original point, which was that we should encourage adoption of new behaviours (primarily VFR moving maps and using Listening Squawks) with a very clear carrot and stick policy. Apparently the Legal Department stepped on that one, but I don’t know the details.
There is a surprise.
I have read on here no reference to these individual discussions? Discussions between who? Based on what evidence? How do those discussing this know whether or not the pilot was using GPS (or not).
Sadly, when I read the majority of the replies on here, none of them stand up to any scutiny. They amount to “nice” sounding words.
I reference my earlier post several days ago;
Some serious points on here that at least warrant a response and yet not a single member of GASCo can even be bothered to take 10 minutes to address any of them.
Thats is were the real problem is – no one takes any personal responsibility, no one is prepared to enage with the people they serve, and no one is even prepared to make a simple apology when they get in wrong and some wonder why there is a complete absence of trust between the people, the politicans, the authorities and many of the public servants.
Timothy wrote:
[funding reductions] All of this is true of the CAA
AFAIK it’s even worse in the case of the CAA, as they are expected to actually provide a 6% return (in other words, a regulator run with the profit motive). If this is still true, it provides a perverse incentive to add useless fee-attracting activities such as the SRG forms for N-reg owners, or the unnecessarily expensive drone registration scheme they have proposed and intend to impose on all owners of drones (and model aircraft) in the UK.
alioth wrote:
If this is still true, it provides a perverse incentive to add useless fee-attracting activities
Not sure how much that it is true but also provide incentives not to kill GA activity neither: more flying is a “good profitable thing”…
Timothy’s complaint about [bad] pilots resisting reeducation begs the question.
If there is a pool of ‘bad’ pilots who need to be caught and reeducated, then yes by definition they need to be caught and reeducated, and will complain about the GASCO course.
It is also plausible (IMHO more likely) that most infringers are diligent pilots who got caught out.
What a shame we can’t see the statistics to try and work out which.
For diligent pilots, getting caught out will already be a contra-indicator of future infringement, even without the reeducation.
In this scenario a sensible policy to reduce infringements is to educate the wider pilot population, especially to mitigate the poor navigation training in the PPL. The GASCO safety evenings actually do start to address this, and I think they are an excellent idea.
I have been to two GASCO Safety Evenings. (Both were very similar, so one would have been enough :-)
There was a lot of time given over to infringements, and moving map GPS was very strongly recommended – not at all like Peter’s experience.
Also, as others have commented, a “joined-up” policy would try both to reduce infringements and to reduce their severity – IMHO any infringer who was squawking mode S and in radio contact should always be treated more lightly than the rest. I am no ATCO, but I imagine they prefer communicating infringers to the silent ones.
DavidS wrote:
It is also plausible (IMHO more likely) that most infringers are diligent pilots who got caught out.
Perhaps not though as 75% didn’t have a moving-map GPS and of the 25% that did, half of them were not using it?
Now I know you can be diligent without using a GPS, but whether it is sensible to be without it when flying close to controlled airspace is another matter. I would argue it is not.
Timothy – when you assessed these cases did you come across many where the pilots had so many deficiencies that you thought they probably shouldn’t be flying?
This stuff doesn’t really add up, since – as is obvious to anybody hanging out even loosely in GA – non use of GPS massively correlates with non use of Mode S, yet the ability to track down pilots correlates massively with the use of Mode S.
Thus most of those sent down to Gasco will be Mode S users who were using GPS. And either cut it a bit close or got distracted at a crucial moment. The accounts I have seen from the course attendees confirm this. Most attendees are experienced pilots who f’d up – in most cases extremely briefly – and because they were trivial to trace they paid the price.
This also means most non GPS users got away with a CAS bust.
The ones who didn’t were the ones who did highly visible highly provocative and possibly quite dangerous (especially if totally non TXP which will also correlate highly with non use of GPS, hey ho, hey ho, it’s the same crowd of specific old farts that do this stuff) busts like e.g. flying straight over Heathrow and taking their time to take photos of the two nice looking runways with lotsa big planes sitting around… the CAA will pull all the stops out to get these, by collecting radar tracks, following them back to where they start and end, see what airfields are around there (radar tracks don’t go all the way to SFC), visiting them, talking to people, checking tower/club/etc records… and perhaps even matching ATC recordings with voices of people interviewed. Some of them they get from the radio, after the pilot has shat himself. And the only way you can do such a prize bust is by not using a GPS and following the M25 thinking it is the M23 or whatever. The CAA has the resources for only a small number of these cases per year. And obviously it will preferentially go after those who were contacted on the radio so can be identified. Everybody does the low hanging fruit first. Those who never talked are gonna be hard work – as the 2016 report shows.
So the whole enforcement/punishment system which nowadays is sending most down to the £400 day out is not working because it is simply picking up those who are most likely to bust and are easily tracked (i.e. high hour flyers with Mode S). Working this out is no bloody rocket science!!!
Which as I say is what the Gasco course attendees have reported. One of the accounts is even printed in a “closed club” magazine which Timothy knows rather well 
Let me take the liberty of assuming a fair usage policy and let me quote a few lines, from an account of a pilot who I know personally and who definitely doesn’t bullsh1t:
I expected the other candidates to be weekend bumblers who had stumbled into controlled airspace in their homebuilt, or club aircraft. …. It was a huge relief when I heard that one of the seventeen participants was owner and pilot of a PC12, another a Spitfire pilot… etc.
I have to agree with Peter.
This does not seem to add up.
You get the distinct feeling someone is being very disingenious.
I can only repeat;
1. Where is the statistical data!!!!
I can also only repeat my concern as to who is collecting the data and under what auspices? I see no record that GASCo is registered, and if they should be, and arent, this is potentially a criminal offence. It is also a serious matter that the regulator (who is registered) has not complied with the rules requiring them to establish whether their contractors are registered.
I am sure someone from GASCo will be along to correct matters and put us at ease.
If the data has been properly collected then the statistics at least should not be a secret!!
Or maybe they think that in the face of such hostility and distortion they’d rather not?
Once you accuse an organisation of criminal activity you are very unlikely to get their engagement.
