This isn't a grey area.

A pilot who holds a VALID UK-issued PPL, and a Part 61.75 FAA-issued licence with current BFR is legal to fly an N-reg aircraft both inside and outside the USA in accordance with any limitations of the underlying UK licence, and those applicable to the FAA certificate.

Mike, you're going to think I am arguing with you for the sake of it!

No (new) can of worms here. The pilot's licence, if it is as represented, would not have permitted him to operate a commercial flight here, or in the US. That in itself is enough to bring the conversation to a halt. Conversations about AOCs, Part 135 permission and the rest of it are entirely redundant since the pilot is fundamentally not qualified - possibly quite spectacularly so.

I think it does raise questions about the CAA and DGAC's ability to regulate GA flights within their territories - but we might want to be careful what we wish for there.

Nobody yet knows what the passenger understood about the flight, and that information may sadly be permanently unavailable. Speculation as to the views of the deceased is probably beyond even PPRUNE's wide-ranging chatter.

I had understood - mistakenly obviously - that the AAIB had said it was not going to carry out an underwater search . However I now see that it IS going to do so - and what's more the AAIB has defined an area of only 4 square nautical miles for what they call a "priority search". This search will be separate from the privately-funded search being carried out on behalf of the Sala family - although there will be liaison between the two searches.

The AAIB search is expected to start at "the end of this weekend" and will take "up to three days". They say "Side-scan sonar equipment will be used to try to locate the wreckage on the seabed. If the wreckage is found, a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) will be used to visually examine the wreckage".

patowalker

I fear that you are mis-interpreting that letter, which is relatively well known in air-law circles.

Your original 'grey area' relates to somebody operating an N-reg, with both a UK PPL, and a US part 61.75 license based on that UK licence. They are free to do that anywhere in the world.

The letter refers to a different situation - namely, a UK pilot flying an N-reg aircraft elsewhere EASA land, with his UK-issued EASA licence. No 61.75 piggyback licence. Here he is attempting to place reliance on FAR 61.63(1)(v)

The FAA opinion is that even an EASA licence has a country of issue (such as the UK), and that whilst this will allow such a licence to be used to fly an N-reg in the UK (in this example), it would not allow the pilot to fly the aircraft in another EASA European country. For that, he would need, either:

1) an FAA licence (61.75 or native); or

2) another EASA licence issued in the country in which he is now flying.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for the explanation 2D.
Donald

I am amazed by the constant sensationalism of the fact Dave Ibbotson was a gas fitter......On the days that he was 'contracted' to fly Sala it is fair to say Dave Ibbotson was acting as a pilot. It is only the background of the 'contract' that is full of unknown facts.

If the flight had taken place in Daytime VFR conditions most of what Dave Ibbotson was asked to do would have been legal under the privileges of his licence, the bits that exceeded his privileges are the being paid to fly a 'commercially orientated charter' & being put in the position of being asked to conduct a flight at night when he had Daytime Flight privileges only.

The 'finger wagging' towards Dave Ibbotson isn't going to bring him back so it serves no real purpose now, I am not trying to defend his actions as such, but when a person hits ' Rock Bottom ' they will do anything to claw themselves back to where they need to be. We are not talking about a man with no responsibilities, this was a man who had/has a wife and children, to provide for your kin most people will do anything to achieve that........ So, Dave Ibbotson was a man who worked as a Gas Fitter/Plumber, did Disco's, volunteered as a Para drop pilot & then did a few ' Ruskin type flights ' for Cash in Hand.....His intent was most likely that he did all this to provide for his family ( I admire him for wanting to provide for his family, I certainly don't condone what he was doing by taking on the Cash in Hand work, but I don't condemn him for doing it either if it was a means to an end to provide for his kin )

He was probably an 'easy target' for others to take advantage of his vulnerability by offering him the 'Golden goose' If he took the work he was guaranteed a continuing source of income or profit that may be exhausted if it is turned down.

Sadly, there is going to be collateral damage for his family on top of their personal bereavement, we keep seeing remarks about Willie McKay telling newspapers that it has "been an absolute nightmare for us." & the agent claims his son is still owed €1.7m from the deal. I am pretty sure that the Ibbotson family are having a bigger nightmare than the McKay's as are the Sala family.

I am sickened by the remark " the agent claims his son is still owed €1.7m from the deal. " Does he not understand that the deal has turned very sour & 2 people are dead?
With an emphasis on the £1.7m owed, you can see where the funding for the aircraft running costs & pilot charges was going to be coming from? So, if you think you are going to be 'copping' £1.7m I would even absorb the cost of the aircraft running costs & pilot charges as a 'gift' to the Cash Cow to get into his good books.

The more remarks/comments purporting to have come from the agent that I see I can only conclude that every player they represent is just a rolling source of income with no real regard for the actual player.

Mode S & ADSB are not the same thing.
 

In what is called a Professional Pilots Network, there seems to be a huge gap in the general understanding of ModeS and ADSB and Flight Radar 24.

ModeS is a transponder system like ModeC, except that in addition to displaying altitude, it displays a unique id number for the Transponder. All Mode C transponders look the same to the receivers, and depend on the selected Squawk to make a difference obvious when you see two of them on the screen. Radar systems can not tell the difference between two Mode C aircraft squawking the same code.

ADSB is a different thing entirely. It runs in the background and is carried by the Mode S squawk.

In simple terms;

Mode A sends a four digit 0-7 code.
Mode C accompanies that ModeA code with the altitude of the aircraft, based on 1013.
Mode S has the A & C data and adds in a unique ID for that airframe.
ADSB is tagged on to Mode S and sends the GPS derived Lat/Long of the aircraft and some other details, like heading, speed, call-sign, route and others.

That's it simplified just enough to suit the needs of this forum.

As for FR24, ADSB Exchange, or better still 360Radar.co.uk tracking them, they have different filters in place, depending on what they have agreed with aircraft owners.

FR24 do not show some airframes, Military and Police are usually missing, despite having ADSB on some.

360Radar show all that they receive, no filtering, and their display includes Police, Military, Coastguard, Private aircraft and SAR resources such as lifeboats.

For an ADSB equipped aircraft, the tracking sites mentioned, only need one receiver, out of the thousands that they have all over the world, to pick up the transmission from the aircraft, and that's what allows the public to see it on the web page.

For an aircraft with Mode S without ADSB, the sites all need 5 ground station receivers to get the response to an SSR Radar head pinging the aircraft. The 5 or more stations, send the received data to a server that crunches the time difference between each response, related to the exact location and height of the receiver's antenna, and plots a position for the aircraft. This process is called MLAT. The results of this are added to the ADSB results and makes a composite page where lots of aircraft show up, some ADSB and some just Mode S that have been subject of MLAT calculations.


So... if you only have Mode C, they know you are out there, but can't plot a position for you, as you don't have an ID attached to the squawk, so the server that crunches the number can't be sure of the responses coming from just one aircraft.

Even if you have Mode S, they need 5 hits on each pulse, to be sure of your position.

So even if this aircraft had been transmitting Mode S, it might still not have been within range of enough FR24 receivers to get MLAT'd so it will not be on their page. No conspiracy theory, no non-squawking skullduggery, just the wrong part of the world. 360Radar.co.uk do not have enough contributors in that neck of the woods to be confident of seeing cross channel traffic at that height. FR24 might be in the same position, as lots of contributors feed more than one system.


The total costs, for the end user to monitor Secondary Radar in this way, come to less than £100 as a one off. You buy a small device (Raspberry Pi, or use an old PC) and connect it to a cheap mast, on the chimney or in the loft, and using your domestic broadband, you send away to the server, all that it hears.

In exchange for sending your reception up, they give you access to the shared product of all the calculated positions resulting from you and many others sending in data. There are thousands of "anoraks" all over the UK doing this. Alliances are being formed world wide, and in the next 12 months, an almost complete coverage of the globe is to be expected.

You do of course also need a receiver connected to your PC or Raspberry Pi in order to capture the transmissions.

£20 on Ebay, that's how we end up at nearly 100 quids.

Much of the discussion so far has actually centred around speculative breaches of regulation relating to how the flight was operated, procured and perhaps represented. To the extent that any of the parties involved in such suspected breaches of regulation are still alive, the fines and sentences are relatively unimpressive.

When and if, life insurance and other policies relating to the (presumed) deceased passenger fail to pay out, there will undoubtedly be a desire to engage lawyers looking for places to cover the shortfall. It remains to be seen how many parties there are that have a direct enough connection to the flight and the passenger that they would be feasible targets for a claim. Probably not as many as some assume.

The more interesting question will be whether the investigation of the circumstances surrounding this flight bring to light a more commonplace culture of illicit charters in the sports world. Not just football, but perhaps horse racing too. Then the spotlight would be on the regulator (CAA and DGAC) as to why they had apparently lost control of a small but important chunk of their responsibility.

@Warren peace : many thanks for that short but clear explanation , I did not know you needed minimum 5 returns to establish a mode S track on FR24. Learnt something ,
Indeed many confuse mode S and ,ADS-B , and some forget that to have ADS-B-out ( broadcast) you need it to be coupled to a certified GPS, which is not the same as a hand held Garmin ....

Back to the aircraft in question ; Has someone here seen a copy of the PLN ? . and if yes which letter was on the equipment field ? even the inbound one to NTS plan would do .

113knots?!

The address ( Martin Grange Lodge, Martin Common, Bawtry, Doncaster, DN10 6DD ) is most likely on the MARTIN GRANGE FARM estate that encompasses :
Property Features, A superbly restored 6 bedroom farmhouse, Detached staff cottage, Excellent equestrian facilities, In excess of 35 acres, All weather track with a half mile gallop, Walled courtyard enclosed by the traditional stables, 27 stables, tack and feed rooms in the large American Barn beyond & Horse walker, lunging ring and weighing machine.
This was on the market for £2,000,000 until recently but is now marked as Property no longer available.

https://www.houseladder.co.uk/property_for_sale/6086042


So there is some collateral sitting in this property, strangely Martin Grange Lodge was also on the market for £1,250,000 with the following details:

House For Sale £1,250,000
Martin Grange Lodge, Martin Common, Bawtry, 6Dd. DN10