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

Capitaine wrote:

This Mike Busch article about altitude and heading deviations, Coping with single-pilot IFR, and the underlying NASA study, might be of interest

The article is from 1999 (last millennium) and itself is referring to research that has been done 18 years before that (in 1981) based on the incident data of the previous 5 years (1975-1980). So it is talking about causes of incidents more than 45 years ago. That is not only pre-historic when it coms to nav equipment but even basic parts of avionics like radios and headsets have been much worse than today….

I didn’t realise that flying N reg was an excuse for roggerring everybody on the way.
I wish I’d have known that when I was younger.🤣

Another lunchtime Mike Busch article: Pilot’s Rights: Do you have any? (That certified letter from the FAA probably isn’t a Christmas card). It explains the whole process, but I can’t find a copy online so the very short summary is:

1. File a NASA ASRS for literally anything
2. Be very suspicious of anything like “call the tower after landing” but be cooperative without making admissions
3. Do nothing until consulting an aviation attorney. When in doubt, say nothing.
4. Never attend an ‘informal conference’ without being fully briefed by your attorney

The major point is to avoid self-incrimination, which is difficult for pilots; anything you freely admit doesn’t have to be proven by the investigators. He also recommended AOPA’s legal services, and to resolve any problems as early as possible.

Putting aside being fined for “what if” which is mind blowing, it does look like EDR136 is inside Echo airspace, why on earth flying though in case of IFR lost comm to join FPL route is a problem? (assuming you have ATC airborne clearance before losing comms, I can’t see any problem with it or maybe I am missing a trick: it’s 100% ATC responsibility for anything that happens one wholly inside controlled airspace or controlled route)

OCAS (Germany don’t have much of that) yes I agree, the PIC deserves the hits for anything that happens or may happen on directs off-airways or outside airspace…or maybe he got fined for filing IFR OCAS bellow Echo or filed VFR leg in that EDR136 section, otherwise it does not make sense !

Can any of this happen if one files IFR Airways? say ATS Route L610 through EDR170B

Even worse, what if you fly through an RA not in your FPL route (you did not plan) while inside controlled airspace or airway and talking to ATC, do you expect to get a letter afterwards for not planning it?

Ibra wrote:

Can any of this happen if one files IFR Airways? say ATS Route L610 through EDR170B

L610 is a bit tricky. It is a CDR1 conditional route precisely on the segment and levels where it passes through EDR170B. CDR1 routes are available for planning at times stated in the AIP which is H24 in this case. AIP-Germany (as most AIPs, I guess) says that in this case you can always plan the route unless the daily airspace use plan says otherwise.

Ibra wrote:

Putting aside being fined for “what if” which is mind blowing,

The reason for the fine has never been a “what if”. The fine has never been meant for actually flying through the RA or trying to do so. This would be a crime and not an administrative offense anyways.

The reason for the fine has been “inadequate flight preparation”. SERA clearly states that the pilot has to apply due diligence when planning a flight. That includes to check wether it is possible to fly the planned route. Germany BAF had the opinion, that by filing a plan through a RA the pilot obviously demonstrated that he did not make himself sufficiently familiar with the airspaces and therefore did not apply due diligence in flight preparation.
The core question there is, if it is enough diligence if the pilot relies on IFPS acceptance of his flight plan or needs to do checks beyond that. BAF held the opinion that it is not enough to just play around with IFPS until you get an accept.

Obviously, that position is quite ridiculous as if one wanted to check the route beyond IFPS, for each flight the pilot had to consult literally hundreds of pages of quite complex tables. It simply is a fact that manual flight planning in Europe is not possible and therefore the pilot has to rely on software.
In this specific case it adds to the story that the root cause of the problem is that DFS itself failed to report the RA correctly to Eurocontrol, so that they were missing in some cycles of the RAD documents (so even a more diligent pilot who had consulted all the RAD documents manually couldn’t have avoided the mistake).

As far as rumors go, BAF has realized that their opinion has been “quite weak” and therefore has revoked the fines.

Indeed, NFW you would get caught by this when flying published path like Airway or SID/IAP during their planning times, there are few exceptions where deviations from middle of published route may put you in restricted or prohibited airspace on you own responsibility but in middle of the route the responsibility is on the route designer? otherwise, the whole system will crash: riots and sieges

Direct within airspace is not clear but I had impression it’s now ATC responsibility (on vector it’s 100% on ATC), Direct outside airspace, is 100% PIC responsibility for planning and execution

I wonder also what this means for VFR FPL? I never filed anything other than DCT on IFR waypoints in Europe, of course, one has to be daft to fly those without clearance or on lost comms

SERA clearly states that the pilot has to apply due diligence when planning a flight. That includes to check wether it is possible to fly the planned route. Germany BAF had the opinion, that by filing a plan through a RA the pilot obviously demonstrated that he did not make himself sufficiently familiar with the airspaces and therefore did not apply due diligence in flight preparation.

One had to be millions year disconnected from any form of practical flying to make such argument

There is something called tactical flying which is how most of IFR is handled in practice these days, you just file anything that validate in the FPL system and resolve it with ATC while airborne

What if the pilot had intentionally planned to fly through that RA by asking a clearance? (as always you avoid if you don’t get one)

Ibra wrote:

Putting aside being fined for “what if” which is mind blowing

I don’t see it as a “what if”. It is a de facto breach of SERA 2010 b. Perhaps the ATC is just fed up correcting this error in planning on behalf of the PIC, happening over and over?

Perhaps the ATC is just fed up correcting this error in planning on behalf of the PIC, happening over and over?

Probably, why they can’t put a restriction on filing in FPL system? or decommission or restrict the use of L610 Airway from AIP?

It’s not like this is the first time in the history of aviation where this problem has ever happened, it’s “bread & butter” everywhere and there are zillions of well documented ways to fix it