Infringements of the Heathrow CTR
 

Well folks, yesterday there were an unbelievable FIVE infringements of the LHR CTR, one of which tracked from White Waltham, eastwards towards Heathrow, straight into their departures. At least two of the others (either intentionally or not) cut the northwest corner south of Beaconsfield.

Was there a huge solar flare that played havoc with compasses, or were these folks just lacking awareness? I know we are all human, but still find it difficult to understand how folks can get it so wrong at times.....how can we all prevent this kind of occurrence repeating itself week after week?

Hand held GPS
 

Hand Held GPS form part of the PPL Course?

One of those pilots was a student on a QXC from Thruxton to Sywell. His heading was supposed to be 027 degrees for 72 miles. Unfortunately he ended up flying 072 degrees which put him in the Heathrow Zone. I believe that he mistook the Madejski Stadium at Reading for the Oxford United ground and RAF Northolt for Kidlington.

It is very easy when under a little bit of pressure to convince yourself that you are where you should be rather than where you actually are. A few other issues compounded the problem but he did eventually get onto 121.5 when he realised his error.

Surely it's possible to identify the culprit from White Waltham isn't it?
Anybody taking off from there should no better, and deserves a severe kicking IMHO.
Mind you, I did hear a story about an elderly bloke on his last ever flight. He flew directly south from Denham! Could be just a Prumour though.
(I think I've just invented a euphamism for a pprune rumour!)

Although the student was from White Waltham he was en route from Thruxton to Sywell. He had not just taken off from WW.

Bit harsh Stick, IMHO, yes he made a gross error, but reportedly got on to D&D as soon as he realised he was lost. Requires sympathy and further training rather than kicking IMHO.

As to the original posters question wondering what we can do about it,
I would say a far better safety case could be made for mandatory GPS with airspace warnings than a Mode S txp.

(Cue arguments about heads in cockpits missing visual nav clues, despite reported stude mis-identifying many on subject flight :ugh:)

I made my post before it was revealed that there was a student involved, so no, he doesn't deserve a kicking!
His instructor on the other hand.......;)
The way it read from the original post was that the flight originated from WW, and one imagines that any qualified pilot flying from there would know not to fly east!
I'm not an instructor, but I can't help thinking that WW, with it's proximity to LHR, is not a particularly good place to send a student on a XC excercise.
I wonder how this episode has affected the student's confidence.

I did a QXC not long ago, part of which was between Brentwood and Shoreham, and made damn sure I stayed to the east of Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells so that I was not in danger of infringing London Airspace or Gatwick's CTR even if off course.

When you're inexperienced you should take every precaution not to infringe CTRs. I am sorry, but even student pilots shouldn't be that far off course.

Having said that, I'm not perfect and people make mistakes, so I hope the poor chap/chapette is not too dispirited and treats it as part of the learning process. At least nothing bad happened!

:)

The infringers don't deserve a kicking :ugh:- after all, they didn't do it deliberately.

How about a really drastic suggestion for a change.... something that has rarely happened in the history of British aviation.... have a word with the instructor(s), perhaps??

Hopefully, the student involved will not get put off by this and simply go out and buy himself a decent GPS.

having flown the same route on my QXC, i find it hard to believe that if the student has done most of his/her training at WW, the visual clues close to WW would not have been obvious. the incorrect route would have taken the a/c close to aldermaston/burghfield, greenham common etc, and anyone who flies from WW would easily recognise Reading. so i dont think we have the whole story.
having said that, things dont always go according to plan on QXC`s, and panic can easily set in. most of the WLAC warriors have a lovely garmin 430, the moving map part of which is not normally explained to students. a bleep from the airspace warning would have alerted the student long before the infringement ocurred.
im with those who say that GPS must be taught in the syllabus.

anyone who flies from WW would easily recognise Reading

The reality is that Reading is just a big collection of houses, and there are loads of those all over the place. One can make these statements with local knowledge but if one goes up without local knowledge one just sees a sprawling mess of very similar stuff. I have 800hrs, BTW.

Recently I did a few days of training out of an airfield N of London and despite flying around there for a few days I would not have been able to navigate visually reliably.

His heading was supposed to be 027 degrees for 72 miles

Flying a heading of 072 instead of flying one for 72 miles is a common human error, like 180 v. 080, etc, but it can't be the whole story because nobody would plan to fly a 72 mile leg on dead reckoning :ugh::ugh::ugh:Maybe in the darkest Africa where you will get boiled up into soup if you land in the wrong place, but not just N of Heathrow.

IO,
I think, at least I hope, that if you read my second post you'll find that we agree with each other!

IO - those of us who trained and fly from WW should easily recognise reading. we cant go E due to LHR,so often go out that way, and the lakes east of reading are an inbound reporting point. with aldermaston, the staduim, greenham, M4 etc, if its your home base, you know it like the back of your hand.
agree with you about collections of houses etc, im not good at ID`ing towns i dont recognise.

Regarding the mandatory GPS argument, what specifically would a GPS change about the planning and execution of a flight to remove these errors?

Nooooooooo !!!!!!

I have to put my hand up as someone who has flown a time or a distance instead of a heading.....on more than one occasion. Luckily I didn't infringe, and I quickly noticed the error, but it's a very easy thing to do.

I created my own VFR plog in Excel, and designed it in such a way that my headings and timings were highlighted, and this solved the problem. With the plogs I'd being using from my school, the mistake was too easy to make.

Making landmarks fit where you think you are, rather than recognising that they are wrong, is also something that is very easy to do.

I also agree with IO....a 72nm leg seems very long for DR.

I really think more emphasis should be placed on radio navigation when training. Not necessarily for navigation itself (no VOR-VOR type stuff), but used to confirm that you are where you think you are, at each of your waypoints.

dp

Some interesting responses here chaps. Sorry if my post [I]implied[I]the aircraft was from WW, thought I stated it tracked east from WW.
Not sure about the reliance on GPS - seems to be a fairly common argument nowadays. I have seen infringements before, where the pilot has used the fact that he is "having problems with the GPS" as an excuse. Would pilots maybe become too dependant on it to the detriment of their navigation skills?
DP raised some good points, particularly with regard to emphasis on nav training.

A17

Confession Time from long ago
I trained and flew out of WW many years ago (early 80's) and still remember coming in from the west in the Entry corridor, maps etc put away, perfect trip, stunningly accurate navigation, pride in my skills, at which point one of my pax in the rear seat decided he wasn't feeling well (definately my flying, not long after I'd got my PPL) it only seemed to take a moment with my head down to find a bag from the pocket and pass it back. Looked up and couldn't see the airfield but knew (!!) it would appear so just carried on my heading duh and then realised nothing looked right, odd town, Heathrow very clear in the distance. At this point a couple of brain cells clicked and I realised I'd passed the airfield, a very sharp left turn and reciprocal track got me back in the WW circuit. I was fully expecting a call from LHR and did report what I'd done to the Instructor. Fortunately, nothing official happened, I'm sure I entered the zone but not by very much, but It was a nervous few days awaiting a CAA phone call. Stupid, but after that I never let my attention wander from flying the aircraft!
Mike Echo

the QXC is a navigation excercise, so it should be done using DR, and this has to be the main tool in nav training. my point was that as the a/c approached the class A, the GPS would be bleeping or flashing MSG, or both. if the student knew how to operate the basics of the GPS, it should have alerted him to the impending infringement.

agree that thruxton/sywell is a long DR leg, and once past didcot/oxford, there are not many good ground features until you get to MK.

Assuming he'd programmed a single leg flightplan Thruxton-Sywell DCt (as he reportedly PLOG'ed), and had use of a decent moving map GPS (I'll use a skymap III as an example (it's the one I know best), then the following would have appeared on his display as he set off on a course of 072 deg instead of 027:

• A purple track would appear on his display from Thruxton to Sywell
• A white hatched aircraft track would be approx 45 deg to the right of this
• The aircraft symbol indicating his position would move ever further to the right of the trackline as he continued
• The cross error indication would show an increasing drift to the right
• The class A LTMA and CTR Airspace shown on the display would be getting closer. Eventually an alarm would show/sound.*
• The large town on his right wing would show on the GPS as Basingstoke instead of Newbury (which the GPS would show on his left)

*depending on user setting

etc etc. You get the drift (pardon the pun ;))

ATCO17, you clearly wrote that the wildy tracked from WW and in no way implied that it was from WW.

The whole point of the qualifying cross country is to demonstrate a pilot's competence to plan and fly from specified point A to specified point B by visual DR navigation. Although the GPS would be a superb guard against infringing CAS and the like, it would also, pound to a pile of poo, become the means of navigation. Proof of competence immediately becoming square root of sod all.

For what it's worth, I too have past memories of flying a not heading, assuming what I could see was what I should see and, really unforgivable, not checking my DI for gyro drift ("Donnington Approach, Golf ***, confirm runway in use is 27"? "Golf ***, Approach; runway in use is 27 and the only one we've got!). All good lessons and well learned from; and fortunately no infringements.

what specifically would a GPS change about the planning and execution of a flight to remove these errors

I don't think anybody mentioned "mandatory", but a GPS gives you constant guidance along a track.

It also provides a gross error check because you load your route into it and the route is displayed overlaying the appropriate bit of the map. It's possible to mis-program but very hard to do so and not spot the mistake at this stage.

Anyway, this is a QXC which under present regs is navigated with dead reckoning, so this isn't relevant as things stand. I think it should be brought into the PPL because human intellect will never get better, the training (in today's ATPL hour builder "just passin' through" climate) will never get better; so we will always get these big busts, and on the assumption (which may or may not be reasonable) that the powers to be would like to improve matters, something else has to be done. People will always jump on anybody suggesting this but TBH I don't see anybody having a better idea.

To be fair, I suggested earlier in this thread that a better safety case could be made for mandatory GPS rather than mandatory Mode S txp

I would vote against any use of GPS in PPL training.

The QXC is a VFR navigation exercise. If you can't do it safely you shouldn't pass your PPL; simple as that.

By all means buy a GPS as a back-up once you've got your PPL, but until you get your IMC or IR surely the chart must be your primary means of establishing your position? :confused:

Completely agree. However, navigation (and I speak as a Professional navigator, albeit marine) is (or should be) about the best use of all available information to verify position, course & track. That information should include all systems in the aircraft capable of providing information, such as GPS, radio nav aids etc. The theory that PPL nav training should be limited to compass stopwatch & chart nav only is IMHO, flawed.

PS IS it mandated anywhere that the QXC has to be navigated by DR?

The hardest thing for a student pilot about dead reckoning is not spotting features, roads and rivers per se, but the workload that comes with it.

If you let the GPS take that pressure away from the pilot, you are making the exercise much easier, which defeats the purpose of getting someone used to cockpit management/multitasking.

After all, multitasking is the most difficult thing about flying, if you take that away what's the point ?

The debate comes down to whether you are training pilots to reach a certain standard (in a syllabus drawn up largely in WW1), or training them to reliably fly from A to B.

Some interesting comments on here.

One particularly interesting one, though:
Why not? I'm shocked to read a comment like this from two experienced pilots (although it doesn't surprise me to read this from IO540!;)) I've done so, many times, and I teach my students to do it regularly.

I think the key thing which is missing from IO540's original statement is that the ded reckoning needs to be backed up by pilotage - i.e. looking out the window, positively identifying your position (with three unique features if possible), and having a good strategy for making adjustments to your heading if your track is not good. I taught these techniques to PPL students, and found that most of them combined it with track crawling and managed to navigate quite comfortably. I now teach it to CPL students, who all master it eventually, most of them sooner rather than later. I've used it navigate over most of England, a fair part of norther France and Belguim, most of Arizona and Florida, and small parts of California, so I'm pretty confident it works in most different types of terrain (although the type of terrain you need to use for the pilotage aspect does vary from one part of the world to another).

As for other issues raised on the thread, GPS is not the answer. I know a student who got lost on his PPL QXC in a G1000-equipped aircraft, even after his instructor (no, it wasn't me) suggested to him that if he took a quick look at his moving map screen whilst flying solo the CAA would never know. A gross error check would have helped the student in this case - but there is only so much information and so many techniques a student can take on board, and it may have been that this student's instructor decided that gross error checks are one technique too many for him to handle.

It certainly sounds, from the limited information we have, that he did everything right, though, calling for help when he realised he was lost.

Just my thoughts.

FFF
---------------

Its easy to get dyslexic with the headings. I had a student out of shawbury fly me on 012 instead of 120. I let it run as long as possible, we made the edge of the manchester zone!! Not bad when heading for Benson!! He has turned out ok, flying Hercules now (I think) and has made squadron leader!!

My opening line was that there were FIVE infringements of the Heathrow CTR yesterday. Just flicking through the log, I notice that one of those who cut the northwest corner was spoken to by the ATC supervisor. This pilot claimed he had "erronously programmed his GPS".
GPS is all well and good if you understand fully how to use it.

A17

I would vote against any use of GPS in PPL training.

Quite right, in fact I would insist on chinagraph pencils and ban permanent markers and insist that all candidates handswing the prop, of a rag covered tail dragger with an evaporation cooled engine.

There are 3 simple words as to why GPS should not feature in PPL VFR navigation training:

"NO FIX POSSIBLE"


End of.

"NO FIX POSSIBLE"

Seems more appropriate to pilotage, based on this thread.

endof.

My opening line was that there were FIVE infringements of the Heathrow CTR yesterday. Just flicking through the log, I notice that one of those who cut the northwest corner was spoken to by the ATC supervisor. This pilot claimed he had "erronously programmed his GPS". GPS is all well and good if you understand fully how to use it.

Yeah, it accounted for 20% of the busts :ugh:

WW Thruxton Sywell is a favourite QXC at WW I advoided it by doing WW Sywell Kemble. Reading is easy to spot look at the railway layout a very easy was ot working out where you are and there more distinctive from the air. (But you need to know your railways though)

MH 152
at least ten departures stopped; same number broken off; stacks held up. Thousands of passengers inconvenienced and 747's 777's etc forced into manoeuvres at low level possibly after long haul flights. The consequences of CTR infringements at major airports are great.
...I do agree with your point that GPS should not be part of PPL, GPS should always be x-referenced and not trusted as sole nav aid.
Best bet when flying in vicinity of Heathrow is calling units for listening watch/FIS, London FIS, SVFR, Thames radar, Farnbro, Southend. They may not prevent infringement but if it occurs, you'll be wearing a squawk that helps get a message to you to stop the infringement early. If unsure of position call emergency fixer service 121.5, that's what they are there for.

Really? What were the causes of the other four? ;)

Not GPS apparently. ;)

Pareto anyone?

I had to look that up, lol.

I bet you 60% of the violating pilots had GPS. No doubt there is a principle which describes a 60:40 result, and you know what it is :)

LHR has been done before. Primary problem is a stupid surface area.

Apart from that, FFF has nailed it quite well.

Feel free to expand further...