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What's the biggest fine or sentence ever imposed on a pilot?

Let me start with David Harbottle and £175000 local copy. Various people asked me why we don’t have a thread on this, but none of them wanted to start one The large fine is presumably the result of a disposable income calculation which UK courts use nowadays.

Some distance behind, but ahead in jail time, is David Murgatroyd and 3 years local copy

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

There were some ruinous customs sentences/demands imposed on people who got on the wrong side of those, such as full VAT plus punitive tariffs. Not sure if that qualifies, but it is certainly good to be super careful with those guys.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

OK; I am excluding stuff like VAT assessments, otherwise this one would rank pretty high (although IMHO that one is a fine dressed up as an import VAT assessment).

Notably there is no evidence of the widely discussed €10k / aircraft confiscation for French nuclear ZIT bust having ever been actually imposed.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Does this count? 6 years and… 18 kilos of cocaine.

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/helsingborg/tre-man-doms-for-kokainsmuggling

ESME, ESMS

I wonder what the aggravating factors were to make the Harbottle fine that high.

Andreas IOM

I think it is obvious that he was a “usual suspect” for the CAA for many years – see e.g. here – so when they got a chance they went after him with everything they had.

The fine would have been based on an income derived formula, because he didn’t do anything that hasn’t been done before. Loads of airline pilots have been caught with fake paperwork, over the decades.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

I would bet that the UK CAA informally keeps a reasonably long list of ‘known to the authorities’ pilots.

Probably half people that they suspect or know are doing dodgy things and half outspoken CAA-critical folks that they’d love to catch out.

EGLM & EGTN

Yes I am sure they do exactly that. It is after all what the police have always done. The big difference is that CAA employees are all over social media nowadays, under nicknames mostly, and often beating up people, so you get a lot of “personal” stuff developing. I am not sure whether the police ever did that sort of thing.

Germany has a max fine of €50k on things like airspace busts. Has this ever been imposed?

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Very little further input on this one

There are lots of examples in other threads, although the topic seems to have a common thread: a fine is imposed, widely reported, but the case either collapsed or never actually happened, and the subject of course almost never talks about it

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

To be honest, I don’t personally know anyone that has had a large fine. The few I do know of are small and I’ve only heard of second hand:

  • The first French pilot to fly in a nuclear power station ZIT was arrested but not fined. Info-pilote article so verifiable.
  • Another French pilot was ramp checked by the gendarmerie on either Belle Ile or the Ile d’Yeu and found to be without his medical. His aéroclub faxed a copy almost immediately, but he was fined €300-400. Another Info-pilote article. I now keep my licences and medical safely in the back of my logbook.
  • A Dutch member of our aéroclub flew from Holland in a friend’s microlight. The pilot was apparently fined by the Dutch or Belgian authorities for flying above MTOM, but it was in another country, and the wench pilot is dead, so unverifiable.
  • Anecdotes from a friend who used to co-own a plane with Maurice Kirk. There’s a lot on the internet, none of it balanced, and no idea how much is true.
EGHO-LFQF-KCLW, United Kingdom
63 Posts
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