Quite. The CAA rarely take action until there is an accident.

Just realised the Spitfire in question is not the one I thought it was.

sadly if the situation was reversed and the Chinook pilot had been at fault action would have been taken against him by the service . Sadly some experienced people out there who the rules don't apply to.

Is this necessary? The CAA can prosecute without recourse to the Police/CPS. While they may not have had access to 'proper' evidence nor wish to deter the use of the Airprox process, the pattern of behaviour suggests it might have been called for in this case.

EAP

Basic Airmanship!

lsh
:E

As I have always said, a lot of warbird owners are often put on pedestals quite wrongly as highly skilled individuals when often it is simply down to the depth of their wallet in being able to purchase and fly the warbirds and not the skills set they have.

Ironically, it was these extra post-Shoreham changes mentioned, that I believe was one of the main reasons cited by this pilot as being while he was calling time on public display flying.......

In aviation we have a very good reason to embrace open reporting with a bias towards a no-blame culture. To someone outside of aviation this may appear to be a 'soft' option especially when compared to something like motoring offences. The societal gain from reduced accidents by virtue of an open and honest reporting system tips the scales of justice away from prosecutions. If an individual or organisation steps away from open and honest reporting or any flight safety investigation then the scales of justice should revert to normal.

Once the regulator has grounds to suspect either gross negligence, a deliberate act or a deliberate effort to frustrate a safety investigation then the regulator should suspend any relevant licences and provide any & all non-privileged information to the police. From then on the regulator should be in a supporting role until the police / CPS / courts come to a conclusion. In my previous discussions with the CAA I expressed a preference for all such investigations to be handled by the NCA rather than an individual force. As aviation can cross boarders the NCA is best equipped to liaise with other national authorities. My sense from the CAA was that they were verging on clueless when it came to anything that looked like a formal or legal sanction. Indeed, they frequently make excuses on behalf of any miscreant even when the individual has made no effort to engage with an investigation. About the only exception to this is with alcohol where direct police enforcement has become the norm.

My overriding concern with the CAA is that they seem to have become detached from the 'aviation' bit. Any professional aviator would baulk at the thought of using a circuit joining clearance as permission to fly as low as you like, with any flightpath you like with zero regard to other airfield users. Yet in this case some members of the board thought that a civilian pilot attempting a military-style VRIAB could be absolved from knowing or understanding the limits. In no way is a 30ft high-speed beat-up of an airfield acceptable when you have been cleared to join the circuit. It is either a deliberate act or a yawning gap in professional ability and regulatory action is required. Yet I am left with doubts regarding the professional ability of the UKAB Secretariat itself:

Do they really think that an aircraft taxiing to park has any responsibility for collision avoidance with circuit joining traffic, let alone equal? What next... giving equal collision avoidance responsibility to a taxiing C-130 that has the audacity to dangle its 40ft fin over the runway it is just exiting? How about an aircraft under tow, or just one waiting to clear the runway?

There is a whiff of madness with both the CAA and UKAB when it comes to professional aviation standards.

Exactly!

lsh

The money (lots of it) might buy you the aircraft, but it clearly can't buy you airmanship.

Nail, hammer, head, hit. I've read most of the above links and I'm frankly gobsmacked at the cavalier attitude of ONE pilot

What a twunt .. who was possibly only spared further grief because of the effective lookout and prompt actions of a certain Chinook crew.

I've had an 'airmiss' (100' max seperation from 3 x FJ and very much a brown trousers moment) and they are NOT FUN!!! (No, it wasn't my fault!) so why do these cowboys do this kind of stuff?????? Arrogance? Stupidity? Thinking that the Rules don't apply to them? Answers on a VERY small postcard please

CS

I'm surprised that K&C hasn't launched into a diatribe against vintage aeroplane pilots in general.

Risky Shift; the practise had become "normalised" - Had always done it that way, no problem, until.........

lsh

Errr... Not so fast...

From personal experience, the AIRPROX board is reluctant to rate incidents "A", where there is no solid radar evidence to corroborate a pilot report.

This incident reminds me of one I submitted some years ago. Another helicopter pilot who claimed to have seen us after being alerted to our presence by an A/G operator, for unknown reasons failed to fly in the direction and routing he had said he was actually flying and shortly afterwards flew directly over us (only just) from our 6 to 12 o'clock in a steep descent. I was hovering into wind at about 1200 feet. He missed us by possibly ten metres at most as he suddenly appeared from behind and above, with almost nil vertical separation. The tail of his aircraft almost passed through our rotor disc as he descended through our level on the same heading as us. Strangely, there is a common factor here - his transponder appears to have been switched off before we got close but came on without Mode C as he flew onwards at low level.

This pilot either did it deliberately (which is what he admitted in his report due to "late sighting") and therefore lied on the radio that he'd seen us and was then so incompetent he didn't realise how close we'd actually come to having a mid air collision.

It was as close as I ever want to get to another helicopter; it still makes me shiver to think about it (even though as "lsh" might recall, I've flown quite lot of pre-briefed very close formation in my time). However, the incident was formally classified merely as a "B" risk (i.e. safety not assured).

Plus ca change!.

Ormond Haydon-Baillie was doing this ****e back in the '70s and Don Bullock in 1980.

It's about time the CAA tightened up the rules for Warbird pilots.