Snoopy wrote:
LOIH is approved for VFR operations, however that might be based on national law which is second to EU law.
…
If I understand correctly, according EU law, taking off from LOIH with (hypothetically speaking) 400m RVR (or s it 1500m VIS?) and then joining IFR and entering IMC in airspace class G is legal.
Even according to EU law it is illegal to take off from a VRF only airfield in IMC. Your comment “which is second to EU law” is misleading at best. If the airfield is approved for VFR only, it is VFR only.
It might well be, that the airfield could be approved for IFR operations according to EU law. It could also be, that the airfield operator applied for IFR operations in the approval but that was denied (but I doubt it). But all of this doesn’t change the fact that from a pilot POV the approval of the airport as published in the AIP is binding.
If you think it is contradicting EU law, you can take administrative action (and later legal action) against it. When it comes to individual certification, there is no general EU law that overrides individual certification decisions by a local authority.
But all of this doesn’t change the fact that from a pilot POV the approval of the airport as published in the AIP is binding.
The AIP is not binding. It’s not a legal document.
Any country in which a briefing from the AIP is not a defence is a 3rd world country 
How the hell else is a pilot supposed to brief? If the AIP is garbage…?
A bit of a side topic, however. The legal position is not trivial – as this thread shows, to the amazement of many.
Peter wrote:
Any country in which a briefing from the AIP is not a defence is a 3rd world countryHow the hell else is a pilot supposed to brief? If the AIP is garbage…?
A bit of a side topic, however. The legal position is not trivial – as this thread shows, to the amazement of many.
You mean including the UK? I have that in writing, got e-mails.
Peter wrote:
The legal position is not trivial – as this thread shows, to the amazement of many.
The legal position is not so complex either – if you take away all the smoke generated by pilots that want to construct a loophole that is not there to justify a behavior that they actually know to be illegal.
cpt_om_sky wrote:
if he took off and the plane was at some point turning east on autopilot
he had probably less than 60 or so seconds to notice it, to decide what to do in imc and to reprogramm/change avionics.
60 seconds is like eternity when all you have to do is to check rate of climb and direction the AP is flying.
It’s also not a all a difficult decision what to do if the AP does something wrong in this situation: One press of the button to disconnect the AP and fly by hand.
cpt_om_sky wrote:
the pilot was a very “thorough checker”.
cpt_om_sky wrote:
as a very experienced local he knew very well that his flight would be very short turning east.So you are basically telling us that this accident has not happened because it could not possibly have happened to this pilot?!?
Unfortunately, accident reports are full of pilots that have been said to be “very thorough”, “extremely cautious”, “very thoughtful”, … There are some cases where even the best and most cautious pilot just had bad luck. In the majority of cases, however, at the end of the accident investigation many people are surprised that the image the pilot had has been in significant contrast to what he actually did when flying.
Snoopy wrote:
The AIP is not binding. It’s not a legal document.
You can’t have “rules of the air” (SERA), “air operations” (NCO) and “licensing rules” (FCL) specified or overridden in AIP unless EU law allows it and has a mechanism for that (e.g. NO NVFR in Greece AIP, min SERA altitudes for Restricted Areas…), however, aerodrome & airspace & air traffic rules are still under national authority, anything about these in AIP does have legal value !
When a country says you have to be VFR on their AD surface and it’s surrounding on AIP & National law, you have to comply with it, once you are in the air in Golf you are back to SERA & EU law
To the horror of many, you could depart VFR in Golf Germany up/down IFR in clouds to the base of CAS/MVA and back, you can leave LBA/EU deal with any administrative action where the legal scope of each one apply, this is not a pilot problem (an easy fix is to have a form of restricted airspace around VFR aerodromes in Golf with an AIP that says this volume of the air is “VFR only” or “IFR require LBA (not ATC) autorisation”, actually Luxembourg used to have this legal wording in their AIP but I think they have changed their mind)
No restrictions as far I can see: one can file Z-FPL, takeoff VFR (1.5km visibility & clear of clouds), call it IFR at 10ft, climb 400ft agl, turn north and climb in clouds or blue sky to 10kft and ask Wein FIS to “join IFR”
Traffic permitted = VFR means you can’t takeoff IFR with 400m RVR or file I-FPL (see AD1.3 for index)
The guy did takeoff with visibility less than 400m though, VFR or IFR would not make any difference to legality but will see what investigation comes up with, sadly, he flew into terrain which way illegal & dramatic than flying into clouds…
is this now the most likely legal hypothesis and consensus ?!:
you are not permitted to go out of loih ifr.
you need to have at least vfr conditions for take off (1.5 km visibility and clear of clouds).
In my understanding you have to depart VFR from LOIH, when you can switch and climb IFR if you are rated & equipped depending on who you ask, I think 1ft should be ok for me (as far as Austrian rules and airspace are concerned there are no “ATZ/RMZ/CAS” until 10kft but there is plenty of clouds & terrain around, I am sure flying away from clouds into terrain is illegal, flying in clouds away from terrain is legal)
Just for completeness: The AIP is not legally binding. Hence “information publication”. It doesn’t have legal character. One will be “ok” following the AIP, but that doesn’t mean not following the AIP is illegal. I tried to find something in national austrian law (LFG) but not enough time currently…
