That report states
The aircraft was lost in international waters and, in such circumstances, Annex 13 to the
Convention on International Civil Aviation places a responsibility on the State of Registration
of the aircraft, in this case the USA as represented by the National Transportation Safety Board
(NTSB), to commence an investigation. However, the State of Registration may, by mutual
agreement, delegate the investigation to another State. On 22 January 2019, in anticipation
that an accident investigation would be required, the NTSB delegated responsibility for the
investigation to the State of the Operator, in this case the UK as represented by the AAIB.
which is interesting, but that applies to a crash investigation, not routine enforcement matters.
It is my view that once a case gets to court, (UK) with emphasis on litigation, it is 50/50 as to whether one can win regardless of truth, fact or fiction. The Scottish judicial system has operated on this basis for decades. Be aware of which way the wind blows on judgement day.
I am quite astonished that Mr Henderson finds himself where he does. I am sure a full appeal would not go amiss.
I take your interpretation that the insert above relates to a crash investigation, the findings which should then have been handed over to US authority to pass enforcement judgement, if any were required.
but that applies to a crash investigation, not routine enforcement matters
How come the legal case end up in UK court? the CAA could raise it with FAA & US DoJ?
I’m sure Henderson’s team has or would have raised the court jurisdiction if that was a possible defense.
It has flown in UK airspace on the way out and was going to fly in UK airspace on the way back. So that must be sufficient.
How come the legal case end up in UK court? the CAA could raise it with FAA & US DoJ?
AFAIK the US assigns stuff outside US airspace to the IFU which deals with that region, and basically washes its hands of it – unless it is something really big like a B737. This also happens with Boeing or Airbus airliner crashes in “African” countries which clearly don’t have the resources.
However, like I said above, a crash is not the same process as some allegedly criminal action by a pilot.
I have always thought that anything inside the country’s airspace can be prosecuted by the country’s prosecution machine. But maybe there are subtle factors involved? I can’t think of an LTMA bust in the MORs which took place outside the 12nm line, for example. Yet there must have been loads of these, because of the crappy system where your IFR clearance is silently trashed by a handover to “London 124.6” which is London Info.
I don’t want to dwell on the Sala case because we have a whole other thread on that, but it could hardly have been an NTSB or a “real” AAIB investigation given that the wreckage was not retrieved and thus not examined. So I am not surprised that the AAIB got the job of writing it up, and prob99 France didn’t want to get involved (possibly with brexit angles in operation too) so that leaves exactly who?
Are the court proceedings in any way connected to the crash? While it triggered them, the charges are not about it, but misuse of UK aviation privelages.
In the Sala case, the crash was only incidental, the case was prosecuted on what happened before, including the previous day. So it was definitely in UK airspace.
At least according to the prosecution…
I think the Sala case is complicated w.r.t. this thread. It involves the jurisdiction of the UK CAA and the UK criminal system over the Channel Islands, which surprised me because they have their own police. Henderson would have been busted for accepting money for charter work without an AOC, in any country. I reckon it is nothing to do with the 12 mile limit. And nothing to do with flying a plane because he wasn’t flying one 
There are lots of countries in Europe which have a coast but which have airspace going out way beyond 12nm. I wonder if this has come up in any of those?
Also, I wonder if people get done for busting the weird little airspace slice the Irish put in against their FIR boundary near Derry/Londonderry (the other side of the FIR boundary it’s class G). After all, the MORing ATCOs will be not just foreign, but outside the EU.
Ibra wrote:
How come the legal case end up in UK court?
In my opinion this is exactly the reason why the claims in that case did end up to sound so awkward – as discussed in that thread:
Prosecution did not go for a straightforward claim of “performing a commercial flight w/o having the AOC” because in such a case it would have been an utterly complex question which law is applicable and which court would be responsible. They rather designed the charge in a way that it was quite obvious that they are responsible.
