The park would also be drummed out of court in a millisecond.
The 2000ft ‘rule’ they cite in AIC 91-36D is in a section titled “8. Voluntary Practices”.
This dropped in my inbox the other day.
caa injustice mor bmaa slides presentation
Rather concerningly but unsurprisingly, the CAA is running some sort of counter offensive, with “the CAA report the presence of a hard-core of GA pilots who think airspace infringement reports are an over-reaction by CAA/NATS” appearing in a recent presentation.
The Dutch lawyer is flat out running his action against the CAA. I have not followed it closely. They have tried to get at him via the Law Society but of course he is not a member 
A good summary. Of interest:
“If, as an aircraft owner, you receive a letter in respect of an MOR asking for the pilot details – ask them if are you required to provide the information by law.”
The Pilot article mentioned is already in this thread, and the Flyer open letter is here with the CAA’s response here.
It’s interesting how my perception of this topic has changed. I initially didn’t know what ‘infringement’ meant (the only context I was familiar with was copyright infringement), happily agreed that VFR shouldn’t be in class A and no aircraft should be in a zone P unless there is really no alternative. Having spent a few of my formative years on the other side of the atlantic I maybe have an American fear of big government, but to me this UK policy is disproportionate verging on persecution.
The last two links above are so far tongue in cheek that if they were any further, somebody’s face would come off.
Gasco are back in business, getting a good stream sent to them by the CAA chappie
Notice the “advisory letter” numbers not rising similarly
Clearly traffic is well up, and the guy decided to hit the subject hard
Notice the rise in CTRs, but most UK CTRs are like a graveyard these days, with Heathrow the only exception.
There is a lot of Farnborough CAS busts. They have today sent an email to various other airports about it. I can’t reproduce it here because it is weirdly formatted HTML and doesn’t load in one piece for me, but it talks about VRPs which is a great way to get lost… is this 1918 or 2021? This is the airspace; after many many flights through there in years past, the only way I would go there now is in my VW, at SFC plus 1ft. Or at ~FL100 with London Control.
All that CAS, just for private jets, carrying on average 1.8 passengers (according to their presentation at the time).
Couple of things about Farnborough:
1) In keeping with what seems to be UK airspace philosophy they manage traffic inside and outside totally separately. Farnborough LARS west, which is the default radar frequency for anyone OCAS in that area is on 125.250 and if you want to enter the zone you call Farnborough Zone on 133.440. Brize Norton do the same, and they have very little traffic so why they do it is beyond me. I believe it reinforces the approach to airspace management which is absolutely not an equal-access philosophy, but one of it being their private fiefdom which they might let you into if they’re not too busy and it won’t inconvenience any of their very important customers. What this all means is you get aircraft steaming towards the zone, asking for a transit and being told to call on the other frequency – plenty of potential for last-minute cock-ups.
2) They massively understaff ATC. Unless it’s busy the two frequencies are usually bandboxed, so when the folks call for transit on 125.250 you get the rather ridiculous situation of the controller saying “call me back on 133.440”.
Several times I have called up Zone for my transit with plenty of miles to run, they give a service and say call you back when closer….. then they forget about you. Enough times I have been 1 mile to run and saying “Zone, how about that transit?” and the guy has clearly forgotten or got busy doing something else – probably triple-bandboxed and vectoring the jets onto the ILS which they do on yet another frequency. Then as you’re half a mile away, at 2,400ft as you’ve been since you first called them, they clear you “not above 2,000ft”. I always go straight back with “unable, request 2,400ft” and you can hear the irritation in their voices when they clear you for it because it means they have to check for anything close by in the LTMA which starts at 2,500ft.
Then you have the ludicrous proximity to the Blackbushe circuit, and a silly focus on VRPs which is a recipe for disaster.
The sad thing is, someone like me with no background in ATC or airspace management can tell them exactly why it’s infringement central. But they’re the experts and they designed it like this….
Word for word Absolutely.
Same experience in IMC too
As it fits in this thread. In Germany there is a major debate around the following cases:
A pilot files an IFR flight plan completely in controlled airspace with DCTs that would lead through an active ED-R. Flightplan is accepted by IFPS. Pilot commences the flight and gets the usual “Cleared to destination via flight planned route” ATC clearance and follows it.
Now the pilot gets fined! Interestingly not for flying through the ED-R itself (which would be a crime under German law) but only for the administrative offense of “insufficient flight preparation” as the pilot should have realized that the rout leads through an ED-R and must not have filed the plan in the first place.
There also is an advisory local copy of German ATC about this topic. Those in this group with sophisticated German skills will, however, realize, that DfS never states that this is actually illegal but rumbles around the topic on two pages with something like “in case of radio communication failure we could not revoke the clearance…”
In the end it becomes pretty obvious that what they really say is: "We know that it is our fault when we give a clearance through an ED-R that should not be given but we do not want to check each time and therefore pass the old maid to the pilots.
If this legal opinion will hold in front of courts, you basically can no longer accept any directs or vectors in flight as a pilot because it is practically impossible to check if that DCT or vector would lead you through an ED-R.
He needs to get a good lawyer.
As you say, this breaks the main principle of IFR in CAS and being under ATC control.
Even Eurocontrol (IFPS) validation alone should be a sufficient defence, because the failure of IFPS to reject the route is wholly due to the relevant country having failed (usually as a deliberate action of omission, to create more work locally for ATS staff) to supply the latest airspace data to IFPS. All that IFPS does is apply the rules supplied by the various airspace owners…
If this happened to me I would fight it all the way.
In the UK system (as in much of Europe actually) IFPS can easily validate practically any route, and this has led to various “situations” but AFAIK this principle has never been tested legally. I know one guy – an IR instructor – who used the Autorouter to produce a route, partly OCAS, right across the UK, and flew it, and busted loads of CAS, created a total havok with ATC, then told me (I was a beta tester of the AR at the time) this tool is a load of crap and he will never use it again Nothing happened to him… the CAA here presumably does not want to probe this tricky area. If an MOR gets filed, it must be getting quietly binned because I have never seen one in the MOR listings. The nearest I have seen (and posted about it here before) is one where a pilot was cleared for a descent out of CAS and briefly re-entered a lower section of CAS on his way down; I have asked London Control about that in the past and they were not bothered but thought it is probably better to not do it.
The IR planned diversion component is designed to test this aspect of IFR flying. You are required to avoid danger, restricted and other threat areas (eg Gliding and Parachuting, NOTAM). It is quite usual in the complicated UK airspace to fall foul of a direct clearance. Am aware of one pilot getting a licence suspension when cleared direct by Cardiff and the pilot flew into Bristol CAS.
If under radar vectors I would, through abundance of caution, request explicit re clearance through a D or R area.
