Peter wrote:
I believe there is a €10k fine for busting certain prohibited areas. I did so in 2003… got away because I didn’t land in France afterwards.
I am surprised you spread such FUD 
If you look at the map there are not that many restriction areas, and if you look into the details, most of them are not active, especially during the weekends. There are training areas for the French aerobatic team, which take up quite a bit of space, some nuclear plants on the Rhône, some paradropping areas, including some that are only active during the weekends,
If you really want to go by the book (and you should), you need to look them up in the AIP, check the activation times, the conditions for penetration and plan to avoid those that must be… If you can fly high you can more or less disregard a lot of them.
Peter wrote:
Almost true. ATC can clear you through most CAS but they will assume you are still looking after any restricted areas.
Exactly. Nothing like the basic service in the UK. I hear all the time FIS query whether aircraft are aware of active areas ahead, and if they are not they offer options.
WhiskeyPapa wrote:
I have a funny story or two to tell you when we meet in person.
Looking forward to that! A guy from my home base got it wrong an a flight to Marseille many years ago and was escorted into Istres instead by a couple of Mirages…
Aviathor, you have written more or less what I wrote.
The €10k fine is widely publicised although there is no evidence I know of of it having been levied, or the optional add-on which is aircraft confiscation. Many past threads on this. What happened to me is true; I don’t write sh*it which I invent on the spot. I could scan and post the correspondence. The DGAC behaved despicably and I have no reason to believe they would do anything different today if the individual involved just happened to have had a bad night with his Mrs (which is largely how things work in southern Europe).
Remember the thread title.
The UK system is irrelevant to what happens in France. Also almost nobody in the UK who flies for real talks to FIS. Actually there is a lot less need for an IR in the UK than in the rest of Europe, due to the ability to fly almost everywhere in Class G – except in the winter when flying OCAS often puts one in icing conditions. Here is one such scenario.
Still anecdotical. There has been one very mediatic case where a C172 from LFPT strayed into the Orly CTR and into the path of the arriving prime minister’s Falcon. IIRC he even at one point turned off his transponder. He got a hefty sentence. IIRC they suspended his license. Never saw him again.
Other than that I have not heard of many prosecutions. Some fines for overflying noise sensitive areas, but I think it was proven that someone on the ground cannot possibly determine with any kind of certainty that an airplane 1500 feet above is actually within the noise-sensitive area, and they stopped that nonsense.
So the few known cases have bee blown out of proportion. That said you do not want to mess with nuclear power plants.
And please do not antagonise North/South.
Sure, most offenders won’t get the maximum fine.
But if that €10k fine for the nuclear ZITs has been pure fiction all along, since it hit the media c. 2003, one would think that somebody would have dug out a French pilot who can look up French law, and it would have been debunked. What does French law actually say on this?
I don’t know what fine I would have got had I landed in France (the DGAC asked the CAA to prosecute me on their behalf, IAW ICAO procedures) but that experience was enough for me to take this business seriously. Casual ATC (French ATC prefers to not use the phrase “cleared to” for CAS clearances) is a good thing, until it goes wrong.
I guess the nuclear plants are the biggie to avoid in France and rightly so. As for the rest, ATC are helpful and will try to get you what you want. Anyone flying into CTRs without clearance should know better than that and that is not only in France…
The problem with ultracomplex airspaces like that is that it becomes difficult to actually see the individual areas in this mess. Ideally the activation hours should be part of the dataset so that it would be possible to only show those active.
The area around Plovdiv is similar… FULL of garbage. Only, most of the R areas there are only ever active in thunderstorm conditions as they are anti hail rocket areas. Took me a while to figure that out. once you take them away, the area is pretty much empty of threats.
Aviathor wrote:
Other than that I have not heard of many prosecutions.
I personally know one guy (who even worked for our local aviation administration for some years), ATPL holder, FI, examiner don’t know what else who was fined 500 Euros for cutting through the corner one of those areas on these Marseille charts on the previous page. The French do indeed prosecute – but maybe only pilots of “D” registered aircraft which would come as no surprise to me.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
The problem with ultracomplex airspaces like that is that it becomes difficult to actually see the individual areas in this mess.
I forgot to mention that there are 1:250.000 charts for the Paris, Lyon and Marseille/Provence areas which are significantly easier to read than their 1:500.000 counterparts. Well worth it if you are going into one of those areas.
According to various media articles the fine for overflying a nuclear power plant can amount to 75.000 €. The size of the fine depends on whether there was intent and if any damage ensued. In 2008 a pilot was sentenced to a fine of 500 € for overflying Penly, but he was intercepted by two Mirage 2000 and forced to land (at least that was what the prosecutor required). In 2014 a German pilot was intercepted for overflying the Penly reactor. There was another overflight in 2015.
I found several news articles relating drones or light aircraft overflying nuclear reactors, but only the reference to one giving the aftermath.
From the news articles, it seems like what they fear the most is someone taking photographs of the plant.
Aviathor wrote:
From the news articles, it seems like what they fear the most is someone taking photographs of the plant.
And you can’t do that from 3800 ft…?
