Someone's in trouble....
 

...a BBC report about light aviation without any glaringly obvious inaccuracy or hyperbole, remarkable.

Can't just find the link but if the pilot lurks here it may be worth finding the thread about the Yorkshireman who infringed a TRA in front of the Spadgers last year.

At least it will give them a target to start saving up for if the alleged crime is proved.


Sir George Cayley

have just posted this elsewher but it's waht I saw
 

Was happily sat on the beach at Eastbourne today watching the Red Arrows when, as all nine of them completed a fly past at around 500' and commenced toward the west, a small light aircraft (can't be 100% sure of the make) appeared at a similar height and heading in the opposite direction.

First feeling was of total disbelief, or that maybe this was part of the airshow, but the Reds took avoiding action and (only a third of the way through their display) disappeared into the blue yonder.

They did return after about 5 minutes or so, much to my surprise, to finish their show, but there were several requests from the organisers for any photos in an attempt to identify said intruder!

I have a feeling everyone was so slack jawed at seeing this plane out for a pleasant afternoon bimble ther can't have been that many pointing their cameras to the sky. I certainly wasn't.

The plane in question passed right along Eastbourne seafront at not much more than 500' and about 500' offshore. Think it may have been a foreign reg but again can't be sure.

Lesson for everyone guess is read the NOTAMS. Eastbourne Airshow over 4 days is a fairly clear one.

Anyone else there and see anything else? Or hear anything re the result of this?

Hummm.....

Strange that a light aircraft could fly by an airshow, get everyones attention, while flying at 500ft, yet noone can read the registration, yet when people claim they have read a reg of a low flying aircraft, people say you can't judge it's height from the ground, so it could have been higher than 500ft.....


Just seems strange....

No excuses for not reading the Notam

Tea, no buscuits, coming up for someone I feel :ooh:

Agreed, not only that but even a minimal FIS from London Inf should have kept him/her out of trouble should the NOTAM be not or mis-read.

I have been told that a good number of pilots around the south coast that spoke to Lon Info the last two days were unaware of the activity at Eastbourne.

Not much excuse when three NOTAMs are out about it.

:confused:

Well I say that, because, unbelievably, I forgot to read a NOTAM I printed off once and was warned about a TRA when enroute. Maybe I was fortunate. There was no excuse me failing to read the NOTAM before anybody jumps in with a lashing keyboard :{

Guys,

I was also sat on the beach at Eastbourne when this happened.
The Red Arrows were doing their stuff as usuall and a good time was had by all.

Then this...obviously uninformed..pilot flew over at what seemed to be the height at the display aircraft were using for their "low passes" Now as I don't know what that height was I will keep from comment but I just report what I saw.

I was videoing the whole of the Arrows display so I do have some digital footage of the aircraft but it is not clear enough to read the registration. There does appear to be a "Circle Logo" with some writing inside on the tail which, would suggest to me, that it is some sort of club aircraft.

I would like to say that I am shocked that it happened but, regrattably, this is the 3rd year I have seen such an act.

As a proffessional pilot I would never consider taking off until I knew I had read the information and NOTAMS for the route I would be flying.

I just hope that the idiot gets his ass kicked for pure stupidity. In this industry there is NO room for those that are not prepared to make themselves aware of the dangers/restrictions they will find in the air. If they can not be bothered to do their pre-flight actions properly then how am I expected to beleive that they will keep a good lookout in flight!? (Which they obviously did not either - 9 Hawks trailing red, blue and white smoke are NOT hard to miss people)

I apologise for the large amount of spelling mistakes but im afraid it was a rather jolly night last night.

EzY

IMHO, this is a very good reason for always getting an FIS. We're all human; one can miss things on NOTAMS. Talking to London Information is the belt and braces approach to cross country flying.

You are assuming all pilots check!
No-one has mentioned the freephone number. If they can't even phone the 0500-354802 number for free.... :rolleyes:

Given good weather, IMHO I'm afraid there is NO CHANCE of keeping everyone out of that area. I don't think you realise how many people don't have a clue about checking NOTAMs, 0500 354802 etc, AND basically really don't care - it's going to take a lot of prosecutions or similar, highly publicised, to make these pilots do it!

I'm thinking of starting a log of how many pilots come for their 2 year checkouts and DO NOT know how to check notams or know about 0500-354802. I use these JAR hours to show them so it is getting slightly better locally but it is worrying.

That was the other really disturbing thing. The rogue aircraft did not seem to be aware of the presence of 9 jets trailing smoke, from where I was standing he seemed to just continue on his merry way, admiring the view.

Am I the only one who, when confronted with that traffic, would have turned tail or altered course rather rapidly?

One of the Cabair fleet??

Maybe, so long as people don't come to rely on London Info or any other FIS as a substitute for checking NOTAMs. We have had people blunder into the display area around Old Warden (not a TRA but notified active - and an ATZ) and on asking if they have checked the NOTAMS have admitted they haven't. I wouldn't necessarily expect London Info to be aware of every display taking place on a particular day.

Conversely, we do get more people calling for traffic info and transit, so these people are reading NOTAMs :ok:

I see the red arrows telephone number mentioned above.

I believe there is also one for royal fights.

I take it, that everything on these lines would also be included on the notams? Hence there is no need to ring them if you've checked the notams just before flight?

If this is not the case, is there an equilivant non-freephone number? If I were to make a flight from outside the UK into the UK, I coudn't access the freephone number before the flight.

dp

The freephone number covers all TRA's and temporary airspace upgrades, including Royal Flights, Red Arrows, and any other TRA's. It is recorded each evening at around 19:00 local and will be re-recorded if an emergency arises (e.g. Soham and the Hatfield rail disaster, both of which generated emergency TRA's).

The stuff it covers is also in the NOTAM so you don't need to do both if you don't want to, however some may want to as a belt and braces answer.

Mike

It's worth doing it every time - takes out any worry of 'not seeing the NOTAM' for airspace they would nail you for. ie if you happen to miss a notam in a long list about kites over the Isle of Wight, well, who cares but you and the kite owner? If you happen to break a missed Red Arrows display area, you just put another tick in the 'why its right to make GA spend money on Mode S' list
Anyway, I'm arguing against myself now - these pilots don't read NOTAMs to be able to miss them!

I agree, an area FIS service is not (and never should be) a replacement for pre-flight briefing and I would be alarmed if I / we noticed a trend towards that. It is however what it was intended for i.e. the provision of information pertinent to the conduct of a flight.

I would also agree that sorting the wheat from the chaff is still a problem with the comprehensive AIS brief. However pilots have the use of third party software often discussed here and the frequent use and familiarity of the narrow route brief should get you better results. Not just a more pertinent result but a better understanding of what the brief tells you. As I have said before one thing that pilots ain't and that is stupid! Lazy sometimes yes, but not stupid.

Vintage, we have finally got the better of the new briefing system. We daily remove the chaff and have greatly improved the way that we display the (manually) extracted data for the Lon FIR. I can say with some confidence that we should now have the details of all major NOTAMed activity available much faster, and more accurately than we did. All displayed on the non digital "half mil maps" in front of us! If maps and pins were good enough for Dowding in 1941 they are good enough for us!

:ok:

This may not really belong in this thread, but I think it's vaguely pertinent on the theme of flight planning. There seems to be an increase in cross-channel traffic nowadays that seems to be unaware of the gliding site at Waldershare Park. Today's best examples were lucky they were spotted and launches delayed.

I get a tad concerned, when I'm trying to be conspicuous (in a yellow glider - and gliders do tend to turn more than most..), when an a/c crosses the field below launch height and closer to me than is comfortable. It would be more comfortable if I had any indication that the driver inside gave any indication that he knew I/we were there.

I'm not brave enough to mutter anything about GPS maps v. paper charts...:hmm: