Originally Posted by
SASless
It takes Radar and Transponder Data to convince the Board???
A Military Aircrew, Tower Operator and the Thousand eye Witnesses cannot suffice....really?
Not to mention the Offenders very own narrative?
Time to break some Rice Bowls folks!
Convince them of what, though? The AIRPROX board (like the AAIB) are not allowed to apportion blame, only to report the facts. What the board members are possibly "convinced of" isn't allowed to appear as blame in the reports. It's up to the reader to draw his/her own conclusions and for that same old cliche, "lessons to be learned". They don't have any regulatory powers.
In my military fixed wing days I was involved in an airprox (called an "airmiss" back then) where another pilot breached the ATZ by flying at 90 degrees across the climb out lane, apparently following a line feature to another airfield. When traced and subsequently asked to make a report he made it very plain that he had been flying the same route for thirty years without speaking to ATC and he seemed very much offended that a) anyone thought he shouldn't be allowed to do so and b) I hadn't identified his aircraft by exact make and model (not surprising because all I saw was the side of a blue and white tail fin pass right across my nose and it was over in a split second). The other pilot obviously hadn't seen me at all. He initially denied being involved until told he had been traced to landing. He had been watched in binoculars by ATC at the airfield I was flying from until he landed a few miles away. The ATC agency at the other airfield were contacted at the time to confirm who had just landed. The incident was confirmed on radar.
I had no chance to take avoiding action but it was still classed as a "B" incident (safety of flight not assured) by the AIRPROX board. I learned from it but I doubt the other pilot, a grumpy old duffer by all accounts, would learn anything from it at all.