There was this famous case in Germany a couple of years ago:
“Pilots are only allowed to abort landings for safety reasons.” “The stunt triggered an FAA investigation.”
Well.
LeSving wrote:
He flew above a runway on an airport.
I don’t understand the relevance of this? According to SERA rules, VFR flights are only exempt from the 500 feet or 1,000 feet rules “except when necessary for take-off or landing”. If I understand correctly, he was doing a low pass over a runway he never intended to land at? I am assuming he was VFR. If IFR then he is not permitted to deviate from IFR minima again “except when necessary for take-off or landing”.
This discussion leads to this old chestnut 
Of course, I have never done a low pass over a runway 
But obviously you are not supposed to do that in airline operations, unless authorised. The Habsheim crash was a flight obviously authorised by the French Govt which is tightly integrated with Airbus the authorities as a part of a marketing operation.
These pilots obviously thought “sod it, we are bust anyway”. My guess is that the Icelandic FO agreed to it; I can’t imagine any multi pilot LHS “just doing it” and hoping the RHS will not object.
This is normal psychology. Why does the avionics workshop contents of a soon-to-close RAF base end up on Ebay?
europaxs wrote:
There was this famous case in Germany a couple of years ago:
That one was to my knowledge organized well in advance with ATC and the operator being aware and in agreement. Who made a stink of it was the press which then got some jobsworths interested in making problems for all concerned. But in any case, this one was very different from the unnanounced thing that Icelandair 757 did.
Nowadays you even get people running to the CAA if someone does a wing wave on departure. What a sorry state of affairs…
Mostly though, if you do things the right way, talk to the airline, ATC and other stakeholders, you may well get the permit to do something like this on a special occasion. There are still a few possibilities to make last flights and similar things a special event for all concerned. But nowadays spontaneous ideas usually catch the attention of newsscouts and therefore end up in unintended ways.
a1650772 wrote:
According to SERA rules, VFR flights are only exempt from the 500 feet or 1,000 feet rules “except when necessary for take-off or landing”.
That doesn’t really apply anywhere. I don’t know what the local Iceland SERA say, but it for sure doesn’t apply to Norway and many other places. SERA is more of a suggestion, the regulations themselves are found in local adaption of the regulations.
LeSving wrote:
That doesn’t really apply anywhere. I don’t know what the local Iceland SERA say, but it for sure doesn’t apply to Norway and many other places.
OK sure – it’s only an EU regulation so it obviously has no legal force anywhere! I appreciate Iceland and Norway are not in the EU but they do both implement SERA rules. I’m sure its absolutely legal for an airliner to fly over a town at 500 feet in Iceland. Perhaps we will find out shortly if the pilot is charged as it was reported that the police are investigating.
It has nothing to do with EU or not. SERA is made like that from the ground. Each member state is supposed to localize as wanted/needed. It’s explicitly written in SERA itself. You cannot look at SERA alone, you also have to look in the local adaptation of SERA wherever that is located for each country.
a1650772 wrote:
Perhaps we will find out shortly if the pilot is charged as it was reported that the police are investigating
I’l bet the Police on Iceland say “yawn” to all of this (not publicly of course). Which is another issue here and perhaps the pilot’s largest (only real) lack of judgement. Today when every single thing becomes recorded and blown up on the internet, this also forces the authorities, police and Icelandair itself to react publicly in the “correct” way. Which 10 out of 10 cases means over the top PC. After that, things usually sort of normalizes some way or the other, but by then the whole thing is forgotten, at least by the internet.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
That one was to my knowledge organized well in advance with ATC and the operator being aware and in agreement.
You are correct. I wasn’t aware, that the passengers and ATC were informed beforehand. Apparently the CAA was “investigating the case” anyway. However that again is “just” the info you get from the www…
LeSving wrote:
SERA is more of a suggestion, the regulations themselves are found in local adaption of the regulations.
SERA is certainly not a suggestion but legally binding in Norway as well as all other EU countries. But here we’re talking specifically about minimum heights and SERA explicitly allows the competent authority to allow lower minimum heights.
Each member state is supposed to localize as wanted/needed. It’s explicitly written in SERA itself.
SERA gives the competent authority leeway in some specific cases but not generally. Recall how (before Brexit, of course) the UK tried to loosen the SERA rules for cloud clearance and was forced to comply.
