Ibra wrote:
but there are few with 0.5k/1k
That is in the range of 5-10 times hourly operating cost. So same ballpark as fines in road traffic. Makes sense.
In the land of the free the fines seem to be much higher – ok, in these cases for a flight school and not an individual pilot but is there a documented case of a flight school in Europe who had to pay multiple 100k of fines?
In Europe the balance of power between the “CAA” and the “licensed organisation” is very different – because the latter pays heavy licensing fees to the former. So the CAAs can’t just go round hammering schools. Dodgy maintenance organisations also get away with almost anything; the “organisational approval” system, which makes it hard to nail responsibility onto an individual, helps greatly, as anyone who had really bad work done and tried to get some sort of compensation, has found out. Whereas the FAA doesn’t get money from these outfits…
but there are few with 0.5k/1k
Are those for the French nuclear ZITs? Any details of what they did i.e. was it an error, or was it “deliberate” like the other one?
Peter wrote:
In Europe the balance of power between the “CAA” and the “licensed organisation” is very different – because the latter pays heavy licensing fees to the former.
Might be the case in the UK, but not “In Europe”. In Germany the situation is completely different for 2 reasons:
- The CAA is not measured by the “revenues” (in terms of licensing fees) it generates. This income is not even accounted for but disappears in the large budget of the ministry of traffic, etc. So even if the bureaucrats in LBA would care (they do not) they can not optimize for these fees.
- The CAA is not responsible for such fines but we have a separate government agency for that – which is not connected to the LBA and does not receive any fees from anybody.
@Peter, whilst you would be grilled as if you were a terrorist or spy for flying into a P zone, it is highly unlikely that you will be fined or imprisoned. The question is “was there a crime or gross negligence?”. Accidentally getting a little off course and drifting into such a zone is neither. One could change the word accidentally for inadvertently as opposed to knowingly committing an infraction.
In the case of the Italian ULM, you can make up your own mind. To me he did several things that would come under the term knowingly committing an infraction.
You would not find this case in the FFPULM/REX as they are usually written by the person who has committed the infraction.
You will however find several reports of pilots straying into P zones, with the why and what happened in the FFA/REX reports. I have not seen one yet which resulted in a fine or imprisonment. But there many which tell of long hold ups waiting for the police and being grilled.
Most of them get sorted on the ground 
a posted while ago what happens to someone who flew RNP to Calais on VFR from UK though P-area, the tower was not manned but I think Gendarmes called him or airport and asked him to wait, then he spent hours with with his Mrs & 2 kids, friendly chat while they do l’enquete before he flew to Bergerac the same day for a nice flying holiday
I think he got caught in low clouds and decided to just fly the LPV (he has an current IRR and probably knows one or two things about flying in IMC)
I also have never heard of the German maximum fine of 50k€ being actually demanded.
Personally I only know one case where someone got fined, and this was for an infringement of the Berlin class C airspace some years ago. He had to pay a few hundred Euros. I cannot recall the exact amount, but it was less than 1000€.
Since he did not endanger anyone, he could have gotten away with a reprimand. But the FI who was with the poor guy told him to not accept that and challenge the radar plot, which clearly showed them in the class C for almost 15 min, and not only by a few feet but several hundreds. The FI then told the pilot to claim that the altitude encoder was way off.
As you can guess, the club as the operator wasn’t too happy to learn that they wrote to the authority saying the plane’s condition was unstatisfactory.
The club then had to provide the latest maintenance data and calibration logs for the transponder. These clearly proved the FI wrong, as the unit was well within tolerance.
At that point the FI stepped back and blamed the other guy, telling the authority he wasn’t PIC at all. The second guy, for whatever reason, accepted that and paid the fine.
We as the operator decided not to allow this FI to instruct in our planes any more after this incident, because this (and other ones) clearly showed him being of unsuitable character. The guy subsequently managed to be first thrown out of the club and finally banned from the airfield.
johnh wrote:
She says it’s fun to watch them trying to keep their speed down to stay with her. How can they intercept something with a Vne of maybe 60 knots?
Google suggests a Rafale stalls at about 90 knots (presumably with gear and flaps down) which seems surprisingly slow.
I’d guess that when they intercept really slow stuff they orbit it if they can’t keep station?
Presumably they just circle around the really slow stuff.
We watched a Rafale at an airshow a couple of weeks ago. All the aerobatic stuff is impressive but the slow flight is even more so. I don’t know how slow he was but the attitude was about 30 degrees nose up. I guess the engines are providing a lot of the lift.
Don’t know about circling. A 60 degree bank at 90*1.4 knots still has a significant turn radius. One comment my friend made is that our little GA aircraft are a problem because they can be too fast for a heli but too slow for a fighter jet.
A bit more reading about the Rafale suggests that, with the technique you described, they have recorded forward airspeeds as low as 15 knots.
It’s probably a matter of technical debate whether the wing is actually flying in the traditional sense or simply being held up by a rocket-type force.
