FL "I believe we should help each other in aviation. If we see someone doing something wrong, and have an opportunity to speak to them, a simple 'Do you realise ......... ' is preferable to keeping quiet, letting them carry on and then reporting them."
And there you have succinctly summarised one of the big problems in UK aviation. The police-state attitude of SOME leads to stupid scenarios such as the one here. The end result is that the "heliport" ATC staff allowed the pilot to keep flying without warning when they had a perfect opportunity to confront him and explain what he was doing wrong. They should also have been prosecuted.
But in truth, nobody should be prosecuted for this. I would rather that "my" CAA spent "our" money on some of the vastly under-funded services they offer. The pilot in this incident could have added to his defence that the CAA have a responsibility to ensure that NOTAMs are disseminated in a manner which ensures that the message gets to the target.......I believe at the time of this incident we were all still struggling with the farce that continues to be the online service.
On a trip this summer to Manston, I did my online search for NOTAMS along and near by intended flightpath. There was no mention of a major airshow at Folkestone and there was no mention of the fact that 6 Tornados were using Manston as a staging point for the airshow. In my pre-flight phone call to ATC these things were not mentioned.
In an age when I can get BBC and other weather reports direct to my mobile phone, is it too much to ask that the CAA catches up ? If the right info is available in the right format, then we could all avoid infringing an empty field - sorry, heliport.