boscomantico wrote:
Again, a brief period where these fines happened. For all we know, it did not happen again afterwards.
Following the PnF Article…. thankfully they put such stuff on the table so they get corrected. I honestly wonder what garbage would happen in Germany more than that if it was not for Jan and his folks to keep the finger on it.
UdoR wrote:
How to lose your license in 35 minutes using ForeFlight that keeps you totally blind: plan, file and fly an IFR flight from EDQG to EDVK in FL60 (lowest possible flight level). The results from FF are all Eurocontrol and DFS valid but guide all through three military restricted areas Hammelburg, Wildflecken and Schwarzenborn.
Let’s say FF gives you COSJE SILWE FULNO P605 ELNAT at FL60. Besides DCTs to FULNO (which go through R-135 and R-134) this route goes along airway P605 (MEA 5000 ft) direct across R97-B (GND-FL80). If the route validates and you get ATC clearance you’re good to go – the zone is not active. Same applies for the part of the route that goes out of airways through R-135 and R-134. DCT or no DCT it’s not important the only important thing is the condition under which the restricted area can be penetrated.
BTW Z99 (MEA 5000 ft) and T850 (MEA 6000 ft) go through the same zone and can be flown within the altitudes that are part of restricted area. If you were right these airways together with P605 couldn’t exist in their lower part below FL80.
Again, whoever told you this should read German AIP first. If I’m wrong, and there’s some hidden regulation which confirms your claim, I’ll gladly read the explanation and apologize.
UdoR wrote:
@Emir The routes along the airways do not validate in Eurocontrol whenever the flight time is within the operational hours of the R zones. The directs validate.
That’s the piece of information that was missing from the beginning, thanks. The reason for that can be either missing information on active zones in Eurocontrol system or missing validation rule in Eurocontrol code for checking zones on DCT routes. However, if the route is valid and accepted and you get ATC clearance before takeoff, you’re good to go and penetrate zone. That’s what German AIP says and I’m not aware of any other rule/law for flying in German airspace. If, for some reason, you still have to avoid zone after getting the clearance, it’s ATC responsibility to guide you during this process.
This thread really went off-topic. It wouldn’t have if everybody had read that Udo linked to. I will do it again and even link to an already translated version.
But again, its from 2021 and the issue hasn’t come up again since then.
@boscomantico it is settled in that IFR routes on airways do not validate. But my concern is that a flight plan with directs still validates. There is no such check in the eurocontrol system about what lies in between two waypoints that are connected as a direct.
I haven’t found any information yet that contradicts or confirms the question whether filing such a flight plan is actually unlawful or not.
What is absolutely clear is that ATC will not clear such a flight plan. Because upon clearance the responsibility passes over to ATC. If you get a clearance it’s not you to blame if you fly through active military shooting zones..
As there doesn’t appear to be any further prosecution of filing flight plans that would guide through restricted airspace it may not be a concern for real life. But it is for training and nobody else can tell me why 🤪 (not even FIs)
I haven’t found any information yet that contradicts or confirms the question whether filing such a flight plan is actually unlawful or not.
Filing a flight plan (for your own use) cannot be unlawful.
Some people say that in some countries everything is legal unless prohibited, while in others nothing is legal unless permitted. In reality it is always the former, otherwise normal life would be impossible. Yes certain European countries regularly earn the latter label by commentators…
It looks like, a few years ago, some official(s) in Germany got off the wrong side of the bed in the morning and the system there was dysfunctional in terms of controls on the legal process.
This can happen; for example in the UK prosecutions were done by the police, which made it easy to go after somebody they didn’t like, leading to many problems. Today there is an extra step in the system (the Crown Prosecution Service) which does a good job of preventing that sort of thing. But some official bodies still do their own enforcement e.g. the RSPCA (an animal “charity”), British Rail, the CAA (!).
And it is with the CAA that we are seeing really dreadful behaviour and miscarriages of justice because it is basically just one (well known) bloke making most of the decisions (they pretend it is a team) and anyway the whole place closes ranks if there is any internal review (a lot of them are an ex RAF club).
But the UK CAA’s structural problems will exist in every other CAA too – because the job (like every job) self selects on personality, and all CAAs act as the logical next job for anybody ex national air force. So a “club” forms internally, preventing scrutiny. Also remember that a lot of ex air force people are guys who failed to make the grade they wanted, so they end up with a chip on their shoulder (clearly visible in the UK CAA). One German military officer I spoke to said that some 90% of German AF guys are so macho they leave the AF very fast as soon as they realise they will never become fast jet pilots!
So it is not surprising that this happened and it was a while before it was stopped.
boscomantico wrote:
This thread really went off-topic.
I don’t see much off-topic – we just expanded it a little bit.
Regarding the main point, as @Peter pointed out, there’s no law under which filing flight plan can be prosecuted.
UdoR wrote:
There is no such check in the eurocontrol system about what lies in between two waypoints that are connected as a direct.
It’s hard to specifically claim this because I’m aware of the situations/countries where the system functions as expected: when zone is active DCT across it is not possible, otherwise it is. It might be that for Germany zone data or activation data is not sent to Eurocontrol.
UdoR wrote:
I haven’t found any information yet that contradicts or confirms the question whether filing such a flight plan is actually unlawful or not.
As I wrote in post #25 German AIP is pretty clear on this, in particular about routes section 7.3 of the document below.
Emir wrote:
It might be that for Germany zone data or activation data is not sent to Eurocontrol.
And here’s the explanation for Germany by AR developer and a quote:
achimha wrote:
In this case, LVNL chose to not create a restriction in the Eurocontrol system that would prevent flying through that airspace. Most likely due to laziness. The Germans don’t do it in all cases either, saying that they can handle occasional route changes and the risk of somebody going through it and rather save the (20 minute) effort of adding the area to the system.
Well that ends this thread I think. Those are the rules, as @Emir quotes the German AIP is perfectly clear under 7.3.3 what the PICs responsibility is for routes filed.
We might not like it and we might imagine IFR to work differently, and maybe it does in some other countries, but not in Germany. Such is life 🤷
