I think it was poor form for this pilot to be prosecuted, but he did admit to flying illegally... Do you know what actually happened to him (fine etc)?

I know the Americans go after illegal VFR but didn't know anybody in Europe did too.

I think a phrase such as "unable to maintain VMC, request IFR clearance and a climb FL150" is better as it is sufficiently ambiguous about the conditions at the time the call is made ;)

Indeed; let's say there are dispersed CBs or some such, and if flying below CAS you will be in IMC and thus unable to avoid them, but if you climbed to FL100 you would be VMC above the organised layer and able to avoid them visually.

Obviously, in this case, one wants to get the climb clearance before entering IMC because once in IMC one can't see a damned thing ahead :)

Would that perhaps be a historical thing? Until "recent years" a pilot did not have a GPS (and smaller aircraft would not have INS) and thus had only a vague idea of where he was once out of surface contact. Some of the stories I have read about the navigation capabilities in the RAF are incredible - most of the planes really were VFR only, with dead reckoning necessary in IMC. Only a few years ago I spoke to a Hawk trainer instructor and he said none of them have any nav capability other than map reading, and went on to tell me how brilliant they are at map reading.

It might, but I tend to think that it's a much bigger problem for ATC with a fastjet or transport pulling up and climbing, as it tends to go a bit quicker than even fast GA type a/c, and that might be some of the reason for the rules.

As for RAF fastjets, well they sure have the airspace incursion drill down cold, and that is in aircraft with proper avionics like the Gr.7 or Jaguar. Not that good at map reading methinks! :ok:

Found the story on the internet - it is in German.
http://http://www.pilotundflugzeug.d...FR_Air_Filing}

Thank you pmh1234. Very interesting (the google translation :) ).

No wonder the Germans dropped the prosecution. The conditions appeared to be unsuitable for a VFR flight which is perhaps why they wanted to make an example of him, but ATC cannot know the actual flight conditions of the pilot so unless he explicitly stated he was in IMC they cannot do anything IMHO.