alioth wrote:
I still can’t get over the idea that it’s London Oxford. Oxford is nowhere near London.
What’s next?
London East Midlands?
London Manchester?
Or London Aberdeen? :)
I am told that Ryanair once advertised flights to ‘London Prestwick’ to the Scandinavian market.
The silly thing is that you won’t get to London in less than 2 hours after landing in Oxford. It’s too far from the nearest railway station (Oxford Parkway) to walk (you could do it on a Brompton) so you’ll have to book a taxi (probably £20 each way), and then it’s another 1 hr 20 on the train which is the fastest way to get to London (that’s assuming you step on the platform the moment the train arrives).
I presume Birmingham will become London Birmingham if HS2 is ever built.
Peter, your post 101:
One pilot got MORd on a French-UK flight for climbing by 500ft (500ft into CAS) when avoiding conflicting traffic on TCAS. Unbelievable, given that the ATC unit would have seen the other one too.
Totally get what you mean but … the MOR is just the process to record deviations from the norm. Subsequent action that included some form of punishment would arguably be unbelievable. I think it’s important that we differentiate between this process (MOR) and a potential outcome (wrist slap/AIAC/licence suspension/prosecution etc) because recording all the ‘deviations from the norm’ provides the information necessary to make justifiable decisions regarding changes to airspace structure or practices. Which I think we’d all like and is certainly long overdue in the UK FIR.
Agree with you Riffraff that an MOR is no more than an MOR… but this MOR was listed as an infringement, and will thus be passed to the CAA man who processes these.
The CAA man has stated that an infringement is a criminal offence.
The said pilot committed a criminal offence. The whole of the ANO is criminal law. Looking out of the window for parachutists is no defence to busting CAS, by 100ft, or by 10ft. He may get let off, or he may not. He may get a warning letter (which is a black mark on his record, valid for “totting up” for 2 years) or he may get Gasco (which is a bigger black mark, also valid for 2 years, with license suspension – per CAP1404 – as the next step).
This is a pretty steep escalation, especially if (like many) you got Gasco right away. Let’s say you are an ATCO and you make a mistake. Separation loss from 3nm to 2.5nm. Then you do it again 23 months later. You get fired. I reckon your union would be jumping up and down. Ranks closed so tight you could not slide a 0.001" feeler gauge in there.
We will never know what happened, and it is extremely unlikely the said pilot will advertise his fate 
The data out so far suggests an extremely small proportion – of the order of 1 in 1000 – of the pilots “processed” talk about it openly. All we get is these anonymised reports, not accessible to the public, and then we get the CAA stats which somehow relate to some of them. Some MOR items do say what happened to the pilot in terms of punishment.
July numbers are out.
Infringements are well up
But ATZ busts are not up in proportion, so maybe the dirty reputation certain airports got for reporting loads of these has had an effect. Great that EuroGA has provided a platform for discussing this; nobody else in the UK has, and a lot of pressure was applied not to discuss it, including various people popping up here.
The sentencing numbers are out also
Notable is the continued reduction in Gasco “course” sentences (5).
The provisional suspension numbers (2) are worded to no longer say that a Gasco sentence means you get suspended next time. CAP1404 says/said that… But of course it may be nothing has changed.
It does at least seem that advisory letters are becoming the more likely outcome in the cases of a first infringement. However, cynically has this more to do with the difficulty of running GASCo courses at the moment?
I would have thought any course that involves roving lecturers in hotels at the moment would be a very bad idea indeed, and, potentially even contrary to Government advice.
I see no need at all for these courses during the current COVID crisis and I would certainly hold GASCo liable if any attendees were infected getting to courses or during the course. It clearly just promotes totally unnecessary travel. I suspect the CAA would also be culpable. I only hope they have done a very thorough risk assessment?
As I say, it is not just the actual course itself but all that is involved, trains, taxis, hotels etc.
MedEwok wrote:
I don’t quite understand. In Germany, if you are in contact with Langen Information, you will always get a handover to a different sector by them, even without a FP. So while you can see the different sector frequencies on the chart, you are not expected to switch on your own, rather you will be told whom to contact and when.
Yes, but there is no requirement for them to do this when you only have requested information (when it is not a controlled flight). The US have this “flight following” for VFR flights as I understood. I asked about this later, and simply got the answer that we have no such thing.
There is something about the freedom to fly wherever you want in uncontrolled airspace, no questions asked, that will be lost if more of the stuff is handed over to ATC. Sometimes though, you only want to go from A to B, and in those cases proper flight following would probably be nice IMO, maybe. But I guess, it’s a bit like a no brain, no headache kind of situation. Airspace infringements is no bigger deal than ATC makes it. In 99% of all cases it is simply a tiny bit of dust on the carpet, solved there and then.
LeSving wrote:
Airspace infringements is no bigger deal than ATC makes it. In 99% of all cases it is simply a tiny bit of dust on the carpet, solved there and then.
If 1% of airspace infringements would actually lead to accidents, flying like we know it would simply be impossible.
But what you say is true for all traffic rules: Speeding, crossing red lights, etc. – everything is safe and free of consequences until it isn’t.
The thing that gets me about the whole airspace infringements thing, is that I remember being told when I was learning to fly all those years ago that ATC would rather know about you than not, so use the radio to talk to ATC and use a transponder. ATCOs at various events would say that this was because if they know about you, if you get close or even enter briefly their airspace, it doesnt matter because they know about you and know what your intentions are, which usually isnt to blatt across the approach… This is absolutely common sense, and in most (All?) of Europe, this is still the case, and only complete morons ever get “busted” and usually when they arent talking to anyone…
…The Problem with the UK system is that this has been turned on its head. They DONT want to talk to you because they have introduced all these “listening squawks” all over the place, and have an automated system that detects infringements such that even if you are talking to someone you still get busted. This means that the best way to NOT get busted for a minor infringements is to turn off your transponder and not talk to anyone…!!
Its nuts…completely and utterly nuts.
