I am as good a person to check with as any
You can no doubt ask the GASCO guy how many they process, but isn’t the policy changing as we speak?
beginning this week, 100% will get a letter.
On this
only about 20% will have any further action taken.
how can they be so sure? Surely it must be done using some objective criteria.
skydriller wrote:
What happens when you get a letter but dont think you did anything wrong?
My suggestion would be to file it where think fit.
Peter wrote:
how can they be so sure?
It’s just the average over several years, and there is no real reason to expect it change much.
Timothy wrote:
It’s 20%However, beginning this week, 100% will get a letter.
However, only about 20% will have any further action taken.
I have the figures right in front of me, I don’t have to guesstimate.
So of the 1000-odd infringers, 800 get no action. The remaining 200 get made to do the tutorial and online test, of which 112 (56%) fail and get invited on a £200 course.
Are you saying they run these £200 courses for 112 attendees a year? Those invited have seen the venues schedules, and that doesn’t seem plausible.
Timothy, around the issue itself (infringements) I really don’t disagree with anything you say. We really have to do much better as pilots. We’ve all seen people out there who we don’t think should be allowed to tie their own shoelaces, let alone fly aeroplanes, and at the other end of the spectrum the best/most current of us can make mistakes. If you are going to enforce, I think it needs to be fairly close to zero-tolerance. Otherwise you have this impossible balance between cause and effect – you might let someone off because there was no loss of separation but actually their actions were completely indefensible and they should be sanctioned, and at the same time someone in a different situation could be much less culpable for their bust (perhaps a passenger was sick on them just as ATC asked for an orbit and their GNS430 chose that moment to go dark) but get the book thrown at them because a Ryanair had to go around.
Where I think we do disagree is that I think the CAA has to take much more responsibility for how we’ve arrived at this point. They and the flight training establishment that they control spent at least 15 years telling the pilots it trained that they shouldn’t use GPS and that a map, stopwatch and compass was the ‘correct’ way to navigate. The ‘just’ approach that you mention also needs the regulator to acknowledge its own role in creating the problem rather than projecting an air of infallibility.
It’s obvious that moving-map GPS is by far and away the best tool for navigating near airspace that you need to remain clear of. The recent Airspace4All publication (which I cannot believe does not go out without a nod from the CAA) that suggested once again that GPS is a backup to the paper chart and traditional navigation was an absolutely appalling thing to send out and will do nothing to reduce infringements.
Timothy wrote:
What happens when you get a letter but dont think you did anything wrong?
My suggestion would be to file it where think fit.
No way, because that means somewhere at Gatwick there would be a note on my file saying that I (or skydriller) infringed airspace when actually I (or skydriller) didn’t.
How is that just?
It’s like if I’m in a pub and there’s a fight in the other room and when the place is emptied a copper tries to give me a caution. But it wasn’t me – I was in the other room. It was that bloke who looks a bit like me who was in the room where the fight took place, and no I’m not just going to accept the caution – you’ll have to nick me and all these people will bear witness to the fact that I wasn’t anywhere near it.
Neither coppers nor the CAA get to shortcut due process by adopting a ‘we decide what the facts are’ mentality.
Ok, fight it then. Your choice.
A4A is entirely separate from the CAA. The CAA do not attend meetings and are simply one of the many bodies that they lobby.
I was in the room when that flyer was canvassed, and I expressed my own views (personally I have not touched a paper map for many, many years), but there were also people representing more grassroots forms of aviation who felt that more balance was required. I gave way because I know that I and those I represent are more tech savvy and better equipped then the target audience for the flyer.
As far as the history of GNSS goes, I have been at the bleeding edge of advocacy that the CAA and EASA are way behind the times, and dangerously so. If you were to ask the CAA or DfT to name one person who has been making that point, it would probably be me.
But my reaction to their new found enthusiasm is different from yours. Not that they should be punished for past failings, but encouraged in their new found enthusiasm.
Oh I’m not advocating punishment for past failings, just suggesting that they might want to bear in mind their own part in this when they start telling us that we’re the problem.
To be honest, I expected a better response from you than “ok fight it, your choice”. You know that it’s a serious issue if the CAA (or anyone else) are deciding the facts for themselves without the supposed infringer even knowing what’s going on.
Silvaire wrote:
And the problem with that is?
Nothing whatsoever. Please read in context.
Graham wrote:
Neither coppers nor the CAA get to shortcut due process by adopting a ‘we decide what the facts are’ mentality.
But that’s how they run their affairs. Fact, the UK is one of the most legally corrupt countries in the world.
Graham wrote:
a ‘we decide what the facts are’ mentality.
You cannot run a regulatory body with power to prosecute on ‘’we decide how we feel and what we decide are the facts’’.
Timothy I am sorry but you admitted this in an earlier post.
I do agree.
However, my best advice is not to fight the “no action” letter.
But if you don’t want that advice, I shrug my shoulders. Get better advice or go your own way; it’s really none of my business.
I have been a member of the English judiciary for 22 years and have never encountered any corruption in that time among judicial office holders, lawyers or probation, and only a couple of times in the Police.
It’s a good thing I’ve not been sent a ‘no action’ letter then, isn’t it?
I’ve not suggested the UK is legally corrupt and I distance myself from that sort of Guardian article. The authors of those sorts of thing are usually ashamed to be British, for one reason or another, and look for any reason to tell us how awful we are. If hypothetically I had to be falsely accused of a crime, then I’d rather it was here than anywhere else in the world.
I just don’t like the idea of a front-line functionary being empowered to decide the facts about something I hypothetically might or might not have done.
