I just don’t think this stuff is well defined – simply because there aren’t going to be many (any?) test cases which make it to a court and result in a prosecution which can then be published.
Common sense tells you that if you busted some prohibited area which is not in the notams and not shown on the printed VFR charts, a prosecution must fail, in any civilised country. This didn’t stop the DGAC going after me in 2003 but, had I travelled back to France for it, a prosecution would have still failed – having cost me many thousands on a local lawyer. I say this because I have recently been fairly reliably informed that none of the often mentioned €10k nuclear station TRA fines have ever been imposed. The UK CAA would have never even attempted such an action.
It gets a bit more hazy if the data is some 3rd party commercial tablet software, but again how many pilots have done a major (politically provocative i.e. p1sses off somebody important) bust as a result of an omission in say SD? There are extremely few such busts anyway. In the UK, you would need to bust a major air show with the Red Arrows displaying; that might (on past record) get you a 5k fine. But all that stuff is notamed so the software is irrelevant. So I bet this has never happened in Europe.
So it is a theoretical risk. You could debate it for ever.
VFR is more laborious to plan with regard to restrictions and, in the context of this thread, there is more to go wrong with doing any sort of briefing pack for a fly-in. Not only are you looking at VFR enroute charts (which if supplied would, in Europe, inevitably be bootleg/pirated) but also enroute notams. IFR pilots usually disregard enroute notams. So for VFR pilots one might be looking at a lot of hand-holding. I recall one fly-in, UK to Germany, which was done by another forum quite some years ago, and they held several “planning workshops” for most of the group at which they worked out the route. They got a high turnout but they may as well have flown it in a formation…. I thought it was a bit ridiculous because with that much hand-holding nobody learns much from it.
Rwy20 wrote:
So if you take a paper chart and it gets sucked out the window/door/lavatory or your dog eats it, and you don’t have a second one as a backup, you are “indeed breaking the rules” as well?
Of course!!! But that is more of an unexpected accident thing, and if you now the place, well. A pad going black with every bit of information on it, is something that should be expected, because they do go black from time to time.
Airborne_Again wrote:
That would be a practical impossibility. Does your interpretation of part-NCO mean that the ICAO 1:500.000 charts are also “convenience services”? Is the AIP a “convenience service”? If not, why not?
There is a difference between an app on a pad and the AIP and ICAO charts. The AIP is the official source of all information, and the ICAO chart is an official chart. You cannot bring with you the AIP, actually you can with a pad/phone/pc, but it’s not expected and not necessary, and not very practical in a busy cockpit. It’s the relevant information there that shall be brought along, and SD is a way of doing that, it will show you the relevant information where you are, when you need it. The ICAO chart is of course a convenience service if you will, there are better charts around, and there is nothing on the ICAO charts that isn’t also to be found in the AIP, except charting of the geography itself.
Airborne_Again wrote:
I can not possibly see how the responsibility of the PIC can extend to guaranteeing the trustworthiness all sources (s)he is using
This has nothing to do with it. It is not about guaranteeing. Guaranteeing requires specs. You cannot guarantee anything unless you have specs to relate the guarantee with. There are no certified information database for VFR, there are no specs. The AIP is all there is. The responsibility of the PIC is to bring along the necessary information from the AIP in a suitable format. This is explained in the AMC.
LeSving wrote:
The responsibility of the PIC is to bring along the necessary information from the AIP in a suitable format. This is explained in the AMC.
There is no mention of AIP wither in the Regulation or in the AMC/GM.
Anyway, I think we’ll just have to agree to disagreeing about what NCO.GEN.135 means.
Airborn, I think maybe a separate thread would be a better way to discuss this further. Interesting we have so different views on how this work.
