National CAA policies around Europe on busting pilots who bust controlled airspace (and danger areas)

Timothy wrote:

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.

On that I genuinely respect your opinion, but that is not my experience and I have a good deal of proof from all quarters which solidifies and would confirm the statement,

FWIW I am personally horrified that this is what it has become. I challenge, has it ever been any different? I tend to kid myself that we had developed and grown as a society, but evidence tells me we may have regressed.

The process decision maps are all in CAP1404

http://publicapps.caa.co.uk/docs/33/CAP%201404%20DEC2018%20E3.pdf local copy

Every infringer I have dealt with has been because they failed to have an adequate mental model of the airspace around/ in front of them before flight and the flight/issues then developed so that they lost situational awareness of where they were in relation to airspace and infringed. Some of them launched with an over ambitious plan that left them virtually no room for error as well.

Judgement is applied. I have attended such a meeting, and I was very complimentary about the standard of discussion and conclusion.

I think the key is just not to infringe.

I have given up expecting the CAA to have the right attitude to any of this, because I just don’t think they’re very good at what they do.

Other views are available.

I see a similar dichotomy between the pilot who infringes by 32’, causes an RA, which causes departures to be stopped and a trainee controller being temporarily suspended, and the guy who flies straight across the Stansted Zone, through the ILS at procedure altitude, at a time when there happen to be no arrivals.

In the current system, the former gets more severe treatment, because there has been a separation loss and other consequences, the other might just get a letter.

In my opinion, the culpability of the latter is greater than the former, but that is not an opinion shared by the CAA and ANSPs

I sort of agree with this, but not completely. I don’t think it’s the extent of the bust (small vs right across the zone) that should matter, but what cause the bust. For example consider these two situations

1) Pilot did no planning for the flight. Didn’t have an up to date map (paper nor electronic), and relied on memory of where the airspace was. They vertically bust a CTA by “just” 100ft for a short period. But that was because they didn’t know the airspace was there. It could have been much worse, but their climb was limited by the cloud base.

2) A pilot, planned their flight in detail. Programmed their GPS with the route, carried a current paper chart, marked up the chart with the route and carried a plog. For some reason their GPS failed, and after a few minutes of trying to rectify the problem, they pulled out their spare device, only to find that they’d exceed the max number of devices and had been logged out. So they reverted to their paper chart and plog. They misidentified a town and turned a few miles too early and ended up crossing a major CTR. Realising that things weren’t going well (landmarks weren’t matching what was expected) they contacted an ATC unit for help, only to be informed that they were in the middle of the CTR.

To me the first pilot deserves a more robust re-education. They were an accident waiting to happen and only luck meant that it wasn’t worse. The second one was a genuine mistake by a conscientious pilot.

It should be the reason for the bust that is important, rather than the degree of incursion or the outcome.

@Peter wrote:

Nobody disputes that prosecutions are very rare. They are a matter of public record here.

I’m afraid that website borders on dishonesty, like so much of CAA-IET’s work (which is perhaps why they were ordered to pay me more than £11,000 costs in the Ullswater “crash” case).

Only the successful prosecutions (i.e. those which result in at least one conviction) are published there. Last time I checked, there were more than twice as many unsuccessful prosecutions, but those figures are well hidden, perhaps even from the chief executive.

Bottom line: if you get a letter or phone call from some ex-copper in the CAA-IET retirement home, don’t expect “fairness” or any particular knowledge of or sympathy for GA. Just listen politely, keep it shut, and call a specialist GA barrister with a decent track record (i.e. one who secures some of those desertions and acquittals). If you can afford to fly you can probably afford his reasonable fees, and IET can’t risk too many more failures without appearing to breach the code for Crown prosecutors.

Rather than arguing about whether the current system is fair, perhaps we should be considering how it could be improved.

Timothy appears to be “inside the room” where these things are being decided, so perhaps through suggestions to him, we can help make the system better.

A few things come to my mind.

- Put your case forward
If I understand it correctly, pilots are being informed that they bust an airspace, and told what “punishment” is being handed out. I appreciate that the authority doesn’t see it as punishment, but clearly the pilots see it differently.

Part of this might be the fact that they’ve been judged and “sentenced” without having got to put their side of the story across. I think it would be really important for the CAA to explain what they believed happened, perhaps giving a copy of the report (radar traces would be excellent, but probably too much work). The CAA could tell the pilot what they proposed to do (no further action, online test, course, suspension of licence). But most importantly they would give the pilot two options: either accept the CAAs proposed actions, or submit their own account of what happened (including evidence that they didn’t bust if that’s what they believe) and any mitigating circumstances. Where a pilot opts to submit their own account, the CAAs proposed action would be reviewed in the light of that submission.

I think this is just common decency to allow someone to put their side of the case forward. I suspect that there may often be lessons to be learned on both side, but that’s ignored at present. People will always feel hard done by if they feel that they’ve been judged without being able to put forward their side of the story. I’m sure Timothy would be uniquely positioned to understand that as a magistrate.

- Online test questions
I’ve seen some of the questions to the online test (I think they were published here at one stage). To be frank, they really weren’t appropriate to the task at hand. For example testing people on calculations of wind correction angles. They really should be encouraging the use of electronic aids because doing the calculations by hand is too error prone even for someone who knows what they are doing. Or for example one question was about mental calculations for converting from QNH to FL when flying under an airspace with a base defined by a FL. Really flying under that you should have 1013 set, and not be trying to do mental calculations of the difference in pressure settings and then trying to remember if you need to add that to your altitude or subtract it.

The test shouldn’t be about how much of the PPL exams you remember, but concentrate on the mistakes that pilots make that cause infringements. (Eg not checking if you understand how to convert from altitude to FL, but rather that you know when to set your altimeter to each). Procedures rather than calculations.

If the test was more about real world flight than PPL theory, then pilots who fail would not have a genuine reason to feel hard done by.

- Courses
A lot of the criticism of the course comes from both the cost and the incidental costs (travel, accommodation and time off work). Perhaps with modern technology this could be improved significantly.

To avoid the high costs and incidentals, there could be a webinar course as an option. I appreciate that this isn’t the same as a classroom course and their maybe concern that pilots wish to avoid classroom course for other reasons and might even turn on a pc, join the webinar and walk away.

But there are ways of dealing with this too. For example the webinar could be longer (eg 12 hours over 2 days instead of one 8 hour classroom course) and the webinar could be followed by a test at the end of each session (on the items actually covered on the course-not PPL theory) to prove that the participants actually followed and understood the material. There could even be occasions where the participants were polled for their opinion mid-session before the point was discussed (like raising hands in a classroom to get a coconscious). Those who were not engaging with the webinar would be obvious.

Webinars can be interactive with participants asking questions and giving answers too.

A webinar has no room costs and no meal costs so should be a lot cheaper. There is no travel nor accommodation costs. And it should be possible to schedule them on weekends or different days so that it doesn’t involve days off work. This would reduce a big amount of the grips pilots seem to have with the classroom courses.

- 2 Yearly Revalidation
All pilots have at least a 2 yearly interaction with an instructor (or examiner). The CAA should instruct its instructors/examiners that as part of this interaction that electronic aids should be discussed and if the pilot isn’t familiar with them, then a basic introduction given.

Even for those pilots on a tight budget there are options. EasyVFR basic is available free and NATS endorsed and runs on all modern smart phones and will show you exactly where you are on the map and warn if you are about to enter airspace. Its airspace is fully updated. There really is little reason for a pilot who has a smartphone not to be running some form of GPS software.

I agree a tablet is far better but a smartphone with EasyVFR basic is a no-brainer in the UK. Pilots on a budget can also use SD light to do their ground planning if they aren’t willing to pay for full version EasyVFR/SD/Garmin Pilot. In fact the two combined can mean that a pilot can prepare on SD light and transfer the route to EasyVFR basic and follow that route in flight, all with no software cost at all and fully up to date and with airspace warnings.

If this was discussed at the revalidation perhaps more pilots would use these devices and thereby make themselves much less likely to infringe.

I do think that the CAA has some issues of its own to consider too. They aren’t completely blameless.

- Airspace Design
Airspace is very complicated in the UK. Those based there probably don’t see that anymore. But those of us from outside can see just how complicated it is. I’ve often planned flights (assuming I won’t get a clearance through airspace as more often than not, I don’t) and end up planning a route between two airspaces only to find that I’m kept low by CTAs above, and below the route are a whole load of small airfields (too small to have an ATZ, but none the less airfields). How to get through there safely can be difficult or avoiding involves a big detour around a CTR.

I appreciate that the CAA is in a difficult position here. Make the airspace less complicated and it becomes too big, and make it smaller and it becomes more complicated. But the issue should be considered.

- Airspace Access
Part of the problem with busts comes from the fact that pilots are trying to avoid the airspace in the first place. If (like in many other countries) pilots could assume that they would get some clearance through airspace they might spend less time trying to squeeze between narrow gaps and running up close to the boundary. Yes, the airspace can be crowded but often a lack of controllers could be the issue. More controllers = more aircraft that can be controlled and therefore less pilots trying to avoid airspace in the first place.

France is a really good example of this. Pilots expect to be able to go through airspace in France so they don’t run up against the edges or squeeze through narrow gaps, and most importantly they are in touch with ATC (to get those clearances) so potential errors are spotted in advance and any incursion can be dealt with quickly. I appreciated that French airspace might be less busy than British airspace, but their services to GA are light years ahead of the UK, and totally joint up.

Farnborough LARS was a great step in this direction, but now I hear pilots no longer want to contact them because the controllers are too busy to give any form of traffic services and the pilots feel that they are just being controlled in uncontrolled airspace for the benefit of heavier GA. That was a real lost opportunity.