RobertL18C wrote:
beardy tech-averse old-timer pilotsYou called sir?:)
I meant a very different sort, but you knew that ;-)
Peter wrote:
Most of them won’t have Mode S so tracking them down is a lot of legwork, unless they reveal their identity on the radio.
If they’re renting a club aircraft there’s a good chance it has at least Mode C, so I don’t think tracking them down is that much work because the club will obviously readily reveal who was flying at X time on Y date…..
Graham wrote:
I don’t think tracking them down is that much work because the club will obviously readily reveal who was flying at X time on Y date…..
It is already much more work than just looking it up in G-INFO.
Graham wrote:
If I had to try and distill that down into one cause then I’d say the biggest difference which makes this a UK problem and not a problem elsewhere is privatised ATC.Privatised ATC allows NATS to keep a straight face whilst taking a black-and-white view on the matter. They can (with varying degrees of seriousness as the situation demands) take the position that the only acceptable number of infringements is zero. They are a business, contracted to provide a service, and part of the business terms are that un-cleared traffic does not cross certain lines in the sky. If any un-cleared traffic does cross those lines then they can quite reasonably take the view that the other party to the deal (the CAA, which regulates the GA that crossed the line) has failed to keep up their side of the bargain.
Hence the enormous pressure on the CAA coming from NATS.
I’m not so sure this is the reason. Terminal ATC (which would have to deal with the largest proportion of GA busts by far) in Sweden is also to a substantial extent privatised. Give or take half of Swedish towers/approach control units are private. Yet there is virtually no debate about airspace busts although of course they happen all the time.
Of course there is privatised and there is privatised.
The scenario I describe depends on how aggressively commercial the privatised ATC provider becomes.
It certainly seems that they exert a lot of pressure on the CAA. I would expect a regulator to firmly resist pressure to regulate in a way that suits a particular commercial interest.
To pour some gasoline on the fire, on the subject of encouraging GPS usage, isn’t the UK CAA one of two in Europe (with the Dutch CAA being the other) that actually worked with EasyVFR to make a moving map solution available to everyone for free?
In 2009, Airbox developed the AWARE device. It was a car nav unit, running Airbox software. It was launched in association with NATS, and NATS gave it, it’s compliance mark. You bought the hardware, and any maps that you wanted. The software was free. It was the first software to be awarded this mark from NATS.
In 2012, SkyDemon launched SkyDemon Light which allowed flight planning (but no in-flight usage) and was awarded a NATS preflight compliance mark. The software is free. It was the first software to be awarded this mark from NATS.
In 2013, EasyVFR launched an app for inflight usage, which achieves the same compliance mark that Airbox AWARE device achieved. As the app was available on Android/iOS, there was no hardware cost to anyone who already had it, and the software is free and still being updated and maintained. To be clear, NATS simply set a standard which an app would be judged against. It was EasyVFR that approached NATS to gain the accreditation. NATS role was simply to set a standard to be judged against.
The EasyVFR Basic Netherlands app was instigated by the Dutch Airspace Infringements Prevention Team, and is supported by DGB, NLR, AOPA NL, KNVvL, KLu and LVNL.
Airborne_Again wrote:
I’m not so sure this is the reason. Terminal ATC (which would have to deal with the largest proportion of GA busts by far) in Sweden is also to a substantial extent privatised. Give or take half of Swedish towers/approach control units are private. Yet there is virtually no debate about airspace busts although of course they happen all the time.
Are those from aircraft based in airports that sits inside terminal ATC zones?
Ibra wrote:
Are those from aircraft based in airports that sits inside terminal ATC zones?
No idea.
From various sources and emails it is my distinct impression that NATS have leant on the CAA very heavily.
It would be a great shame if this were true.
I also are getting the distinct impression that we are very much out of line with the rest of Europe, and, for that matter, the rest of the world.
Peter wrote:
It is a real problem because you cannot mandate a given product because it would give that vendor a commercial advantage, and since every nav product is different, which one do you teach?
I tend to think more and more that GPS or no GPS is irrelevant here. It’s better to think of compass and paper map as the “manual” flying, while GPS (moving map) is an “autopilot” or simply “automated” navigation. I agree paper and compass is arcane, but there really is no other way to learn navigation. With some practice it’s accurate enough to prevent busts, but it’s 10 times easier with a moving map. We still have to separate the thoughts here. Busts have very little to do with the basics of navigation. A bust is a bureaucratic thing, and can be handled by other means than better navigational equipment or better skills (better communication for instance, or simply use flight plans more often, but that’s impossible in the UK by the looks of it (VFR)?)
This UK situation seems odd to me.
