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

From pilots, only what is in this thread.

From ATCOs, yes, I had private input. Almost no ATCOs (UK or elsewhere) are willing to talk about it openly, even where policies are nominally published. And it is clear that nobody else does anything remotely as aggressive as the UK.

Unfortunately it is a very long thread.

The only country aspect I recall which got anywhere near the UK policy was that Belgium did not allow infringing traffic’s blip to merge with CAT traffic (regardless of the infringer’s Mode C return).

I think I posted this at the time, non-attributed.

Nobody else gets near the UK’s stupid +5000ft/-5000ft/5nm “virtual cylinder” concept which is so wonderful for making trivial infringements serious.

serious busts that are handled by Police (ZIT)

One needs to appreciate that this is just another example of some State body making a conscious decision to make a rod for its own back – and deliberately so to elevate the issue to a more serious level than is otherwise warranted. In the UK, power station RAs are just RAs, which until the mad bust-them-all policy of recent years were not regarded as serious.

The French “reportedly €10k fine / aircraft confiscation” ZIT policy (which seems to be rarely enforced in reality) is no less crazy than what the UK is doing with all areas where “you aren’t supposed to go”.

There is indeed a fundamental difference between the UK and France (actually UK to most other places) in that the UK doesn’t have prohibited military areas. The AIAAs are just class G and you are supposed to be on the radio but they can’t bust you if you are not. Even a MATZ is just G (although you would be truly dumb to go through it non-radio). France is what one might call “a seriously militarised country” and its mil airspace is operated with extreme aggression; so much so that even French ATC are very evidently unwilling to phone them up. French pilots have told me that the military formally owns all air there and it allowed civilian usage at its discretion. Maybe that is not true, but the result is the same. Same in Switzerland.

The bulk of this long thread is regarding civilian airspace and there the UK seems to be the world leader in madness but plenty of other countries are strong competitors in the mil sphere. Which is surprising, given the ex RAF (especially ex RAF ATC) club running airspace policy in the CAA etc

The more basic thing is that the UK’s shooting policy has done nothing to reduce busts. It has merely busted thousands more pilots, and greatly increased the % flying with the TXP OFF, especially flights with an FI in the RHS whose income needs to be protected and who has an extra risky job because most busts are caused by in-flight distractions.

I doubt anybody in the system “gets this”.

The 2020 figure of 753… remember the year when airlines were largely shut down, when you could fly down the Gatwick runway… the system still managed to MOR 753 pilots! For what?? For entering empty CAS without a clearance. WTF.

Is the answer that they are much better at reporting/detecting busts?

They are but that was implemented before 2019.

They cannot reduce busts other than by suppression of activity – because most busts are errors due to stuff like distraction. Virtually no pilot would have “busted” when planning the flight at home.

There are a few dickheads in the system (past posts here show some articles written by some of those involved – was it some GASCO writer?) which assert that some pilots do it deliberately but that is 100% BS. But the fact that “some” of those operating the system think this shows how badly broken and mismanaged it is.