WOW what a story!
A few months later, a letter from the German authorities arrived, the French had asked to prosecute on their behalf, on the grounds that I shouldn’t have been flying in this sort of weather
Unbelievable! Mind you, I had exactly the same “DGAC treatment” in 2003 over busting a French nuclear prohibited area which was not (in those days) on the charts or in the notams and I was in receipt of a radar service at the time! They took 5 months to raise it with the UK CAA.
I have never heard of the DGAC doing this “prosecution over weather” to their own.
Quite some story about what seem to have been a 100% correct decision. Here in Germany it would have been a lot simpler. In order to encourage pilots to do this kind of precautionary landing (“Sicherheitslandung”) all bureaucratic hurdles have been removed many years ago. You don’t like the weather around you? Pick any field of your choice, land there, sit out the weather and take off again. All you have to do is inform the land owner and leave your conctact details in case you caused any damage to his property. No police, no authority, nothing else is involved. An instructor colleague once had his student do such a landing because the student had to go to the toilet so urgently that he could not concentrate on flying any longer…
Thanks for sharing, Cobalt. Interesting first-hand account.
Peter wrote:
I have never heard of the DGAC doing this “prosecution over weather” to their own.
I am not sure about that. And I am not sure that “prosecution” is the legal action that I think you have interpreted it to mean. It would be interesting to see the french wording rather than bad franglicisms. What I am pretty sure this means is that they asked the German authorities to investigate, and determine if there was a basis for any license enforcement action.
If they wanted to press charges, I do not think they would have just send a letter to the NAA.
It was Cobalt who used the word “prosecute”. And it is the right word.
I do not think they would have just send a letter to the NAA.
That is the right procedure. Under ICAO (sorry I don’t have the reference but someone familiar should be able to find it) each contracting state agrees to prosecute its citizen who committed a crime in the airspace of another contracting state. That was the provision under which the DGAC went after me. It is a key aspect of ICAO otherwise nobody would have signed the treaty, since it would allow an offender to simply escape back home.
Obviously the DGAC (or the French police etc) cannot prosecute in the UK – each country does prosecutions internally.
And this is not an extraditable offence, which shuts off the only other route to get somebody who landed back home.
And it is obvious that a particular state won’t prosecute over something which would not be a crime there – this is a standard principle which underpins e.g. extraditions. That in turn means that if – in this case – a wx-factor forced landing was not a crime in Germany, then the French had zero hope of getting Germany to prosecute somebody. And that was how I didn’t get prosecuted back in 2003: the CAA told me they get loads of French prosecution requests which were completely unreasonable given the circumstances and would have never resulted in a conviction in the UK. So it was dealt with with a stiff letter, copied to the DGAC, and that was it.
It does make one wonder whether it was possible to prosecute a pilot in France over busting something which was not on the charts and not in the notams. I suspect not if he got himself a good lawyer, but that’s expensive (a few k a day in the UK).
I wonder if the French simply send these letters because they know that no prosecution will take place (they don’t really want it to happen), but they also know that it will give the pilot concerned a ‘good shock’ and make them ‘twice twice before doing it again’.
If they sent a polite letter directly to the pilot, the pilot would probably take it less seriously.
Peter wrote:
And that was how I didn’t get prosecuted back in 2003: the CAA told me they get loads of French prosecution requests which were completely unreasonable given the circumstances and would have never resulted in a conviction in the UK. So it was dealt with with a stiff letter, copied to the DGAC, and that was it.
But I think the end of the story would have been the same in France (if a French pilot were involved) too. A little slap on the wrist because of poor weather planning, and good job because you did the right thing in the end. Again I do not think there was any intent or expectation from the French that it went any further. They leave it up to the issuing authority. The whole thing may be based on differences in procedures in UK/DE/FR
A little while back a plane landed on the A7 (?) motorway in Southern France. I have not heard there was any prosecution after that incident although there was a lot of mumbling about endangering the life of car occupants. Maybe @PetitCessnaVoyageur knows more about this?
In any event, Cobalt’s experience is exactly the reason why I won’t fly VFR in that kind of weather. To me anything below 1500 feet is a reason to find a plan B, and I won’t plan a VFR cross-country unless the forecast ceiling is at least 2000 feet. And this is just a no-no especially in an area with tall man-made obstacles.
I think if one screws up and ends up in a field, the letter makes no difference. 99% of all pilots should be self aware enough to realise that that shouldn’t have happened, and of those the large majority will realise that this was their own fault to begin with, and learn from it.
In general, prosecution for mistakes where the consequences to the person making the mistakes are an order of magnitude higher than the potential sanction is silly. And in this case, this could easily end up in injury, or with a substantial cost. And even then – had it not been possible to fly the aircraft out again, I would have had to pay for salvage. None of which I really considered, because the alternative was entering IMC in hilly terrain with no clear idea where to get out. Even instrument rated pilots come to grief if they enter IMC in these kind of situations.
The French did not prosecute for the landing, but for taking off with a forecast that indicated I was unlikely to make it to the destination. Which was true; I fully expected to land somewhere en-route because I was following a front, the mistake was going one alternate too far…
Back to the original discussion, I have noticed there is sometimes a ‘cultural’ aspect to local pilots’ views on entering IMC during what is supposed to be VFR flight. For example, I learned to fly in Vancouver, which is an area that is hemmed in by mountains. You can’t mess around with IMC, because you are going to hit granite. It would be quite common to delay take-off or cancel the flight because it is obvious you can’t get out of the lower mainland area VFR. Fortunately there are webcams on the mountain passes in addition to the aviation weather sources, so you have a pretty good idea what the route will be like. Culturally amongst local pilots, inadvertent flight into IMC was taken quite seriously.
However, I did some flying in central Canada (no mountains) and the local pilots were much more apt to ‘go take a look’, presumably with bits of flight in IMC, because there is nothing to hit over the flat prairies.
I get the same impression in the UK, I suspect there is a lot more popping up and down through clouds, or flying low level which might involve bits of IMC… the majority of the east and south have only gentle rolling landscapes.
After experiencing a few mountain passes which are fully blocked by clouds (and having to sleep in my sleeping bag at the nearest airfield), I personally came to the view that the ‘grey area’ is quite dangerous. If you enter cloud in the mountains, you can’t ‘hope’ to get to a safe altitude, it might involve a significant climb and you will surely hit something first. If the flight is VFR I should see the ground. If I can’t see the ground, I won’t mess around in the muck, I will fly a properly planned IFR flight!
Yes, plus the UK has had the IMC Rating since about 1969 which means there are loads of pilots who can fly in clouds legally. Many (most?) of these are renters, too. The rest of Europe has a miniscule IR holder population and nearly all of it are aircraft owners.
Yes, plus the UK has had the IMC Rating since about 1969 which means there are loads of pilots who can fly in clouds legally.
That’s the point. Want to fly in clouds? Get an instrument rating. That really is all there is to it. For Germany the IR has never been easier than today. IFR flying has never been easier than today. There is absolutely no reason to promote “VIFR” flying, as it is only a matter of time when those pilots without proper training and procedures become the subject of an accident investigation.
