One reason for an increase in infringements and level busts may well be that "reports" weren't being "filed" (Davidt). I suspect that most pilots who do this are blissfully unaware. I was on one occasion, and I got a report filed on me. It was a sensible process in my view.
They asked me to explain myself (I had passed through the base of an airway by 500'). At first I was indignant that I couldn't have, but in checking my plan and route realised that I had missed the base altitude change (min 5500), the airway line runs along a main coastal road and I simply missed it during planning. I sent in my report confessing to my error, and I got a "Don't do that again, Happy and Safe Flying" response.
Now I'm much more careful about planning routes and altitude.
I support the trend that Davidt mentions of increasing report filing. As long as it's kept sensible and cautionary (except in extreme cases like flying into a Red Arrows display or worse) then we should be told when we infringe or bust.

Assuming of course we can be identified.

Infringements
 

Dear All,
Yes there has been an increase in the reporting of infringements. This is because controllers are being encouraged to report them so that everyone knows the real extent of this problem. BUT there does seem to be more happening anyway. Since the 1st of April the airfields in the London TMA have reported 77 infringements of zones, half of which resulted in a loss of separation with other aircraft. Also there was recently an infringement of the Southampton zone by two powered paragliders that got very close to a british regional jet. Turning off your transponder does not hide you from the investigations departments. All that does is give no protection to any TCAS equiped aircraft. If you want to see what a big jet looks like from 100ft away just get lost, enter a zone and switch off your transponder!
If you fly in the south of england the places that get the most infringements are Stansted and Luton. Sure the airspace around Luton has changed and as pilots you should be aware of that! But when was there a change to Stansted's airspace?:)

The "On track" project was intended to identify what changes to CAS might reduce the number of infringemnts.

The results, conclusions and importantly recommendations are here:

www.caa.co.uk/docs/33/CAPAP2003_5.PDF

Go on - have a read

It is worth while.

Whilst doing so consider how the recommendations have been implemented.

I am on GPRS now (far away) but I did read the Ontrack report last year and one key point it mentioned (well buried) was that just 18% of infringers were using a moving map GPS. Since the % of pilots that routinely "go places" and use a GPS must be approaching 100%, that should be telling somebody something.

In any event, I didn't find that report useful. It doesn't identify anything that could be actually done - short of a drastic change in PPL training (and aircraft equipment improvement :) ) which will always be fiercely resisted by the flight training business.

IO540

Have another look at the report. It seems less than 50% of the infringement cases had a GPS. Now you may argue that all the other aircraft that never infringe CAS are fitted with GPS, but I suggest that this figure is likely to be fairly representative of the GA fleet as a whole (since the report indicates that half of the infringements occur in club aircraft). Indeed 40% occur in owned or syndicate aircraft. It would be interesting to know what proportion of the GA fleet is owned/syndicated and also if the average kit fit is better than the average club can. If as I would imagine the owned aircraft is more likely to be fitted with a GPS, why are they the subject of so many busts?

Moreover, the report suggests that high work loads are a significant common factor in infringment cases. If GPS was reducing work load, then the number of infringements would be going down, not up.

I agree that of course proper GPS usage (in terms of proper installation, maintainance of database and training) would go a long way to improving the situation. Sadly this day is a long way off. But I maintain that traditional navigational techniques are sufficient to keep one away from CAS, it is just a shame that people are not being taught it properly (or are not wanting to be taught it).

Droopy

My clear recollection (again, sorry for writing in a rush) is that yes, quite a few had a "GPS" but only 18% had a "moving map" which I take as meaning a "moving map GPS". (There is no other "moving map" product on the market in Europe).

This could mean that a lot of people are flying around with non-moving map GPS units. Such units are a total waste of time. You get just about zero situational awareness. They are good for one thing, IMHO: when you are floating in your life raft, you can pick your handheld radio and call up some airliner on 121.50, give him the lat/long and ask him to call somebody up :)

If a lot of people really do fly with £100 GPSs from a camping shop, it's no suprise GPS has such a bad name.

The whole report was unprofessional, with categories such as "get-home-itis" or similar.

IO540

It is my experience that there is no one correct way to fly a light aircraft. I, like a number of other pilots have a GPS with a moving map. I have experimented with it but I almost never use it, preferring instead to get a string of numbers, which allows me to manage my flight and refer everything back to my paper map. This has the advantage of integrating my DR navigation with the GPS and the VOR, it also allows me to carry on with little problem if the MOD decide to jam my GPS.

I am perfectly prepared to believe you do not infringe CAS and I know I don’t, so our systems both work. It is the low currency PPL who gets into trouble, probably flying a club aircraft with all the toys but insufficient brain capacity to hold everything together through the rust.

Rod1

IO540,

Agreed, the moving map situation could well be a solution, particularly if something like the CAA charts (1:500,000, 1:250,000 and 1:50,000) are used as the data source and regularly updated (even better, use the MOD military charts which are up dated more often). But the £100 camping GPS can also be used PROVIDING the user takes the time to put in a proper route which considers all the NOTAMs and current charts. As can more traditional methods, but again with the appropriate training in their use.

I would challenge your argument that situational awareness is best provided by moving map GPS, although I think it rather depends on the type of flying you are doing. Sure IFR flight SA is adequately fulfilled by moving map. In our situation of low level VFR navigation, a 1:250,000 chart suplimented by the appropriate 1:50,000 OS Map as required gives better SA than the current breed of moving map GPS units (at least those available to the consumer market). Having said that it depends on the map reading skills we have been taught and maintain.

I personally believe that the infringement issue will only be solved when pilots learn how to navigate and plan properly. How people choose to navigate is largely upto themselves and what sort of flying they do. But however they do it, they must understand how to do it properly, be able to gross error check their progress and have a plan B when the seagull chooses to poo on their wings. I don't think it is necessary to mandate the use of moving map GPS, but I do think that a wider use of 1:250,000 charts would help.

But the £100 camping GPS can also be used PROVIDING the user takes the time to put in a proper route which considers all the NOTAMs and current charts

Any nav method is legal, but a moving-map GPS gives you situational awareness and position relative to airspace. A non-moving map GPS doesn't even begin to compare. You might as well use a moving map unit and stick duct tape over the whole display, with a little window cut out showing the lat/long, the track and a few other numbers. OK, people can enter waypoints manually into the camping shop units, but this creates another area ripe for unavoidable human errors. No wonder people slag off GPS so much. As always in UK GA, cost must be the underlying issue here.

In my business I have to develop procedures which ensure that everything that goes out of the door is 100% right. One soon realises that if you pay somebody £200k they will make the same number of human errors they would make if you paid them £10k. It is the system one is operating that (largely) determines how many c0ckups an individual with a particular attitude to getting things right is going to make. That's why the CAA safety evenings are a waste of time IMHO - no use telling people to not fly into hills, etc.

If you fly with 1:50k O/S charts then you must be doing a very different sort of flying to most. I have those on a tablet PC too - great fun to watch but of no use I can see for aviation (except for buzzing some bird's house :) )

What struck me about the ontrack report is that it didn't find out what exactly led up to the error. Obviously nobody is going to plan to infringe airspace, or infringe an airshow, so something must have led to that situation. It's no use accusing the pilot of having been in a hurry to get home, or having been swayed by others to fly, for example; that tells us exactly nothing.

I have already said that notam related stuff is caused mainly by pilots not being taught to get notams in the first place, so I will leave that one now.

I suspect that airspace infringements are caused either by plain nav errors, or by a departure from the planned route (call it "bimbling" if you like). The question then becomes: how to minimise those, in the context of a "45-hour" PPL followed by perhaps just a few hours a year flown.

I totally agree with the subject of this thread, I was also amazed/ shocked to read the latest occurence reports.

I counted 53 seperate incidents of airspace infringments (not including level busts) by GA pilots.:eek:

And a further 15 incidents of pilots getting lost/ disorientated.

These figures are appaling and these "pilots" should be ashamed of themselves!!

However, I think it opens a wider debate about the quality of training or rather the required level of knowledge required to pass the PPL ground exams. Yes, everyone makes mistakes no matter how well trained, but i think the figures speak for themselves, this is a very worrying trend indeed!

Almost common to every incident, when ATC told the pilot of the infringement, "The pilot appologised." well Im sorry but that doesnt make it ok.:mad:

Dunno about SA relative to airspace on moving maps.

Most places in southern England you have airspace. Whether you are in it generally depends on how high you are rather than where you are in relation to a line, and the height limits are not readily visible on screen.

If it's a biggish chunk of airspace then one or more of the boundaries are most likely off the screen.

What works is your position transferred on to the map, and you're more likely to be able to do that accurately based on a point feature such as a town or village than you are on a line feature like an airspace boundary. Most of the basic GPS units include a database of towns and villages, even if they don't have any graphical mapping info. There's an unfortunate temptation to shave the corners of airspace with a GPS map whereas a properly selected and entered turning point will keep you clear.

To some extent it's the same as the difference between setting off with a map and eyeballing your way and pre-planning your route and turning points and sticking to it. If you pre-plan your route, program it into the GPS and stick to it, then you're less likely to run into trouble than if you eyeball your way on screen, with the added bonus that your workload is lower and you spend more time looking out instead of studying your position on screen.

Yesterday a guy in a flex wing called (no transponder) asking to transit overhead my airfield at alt 4000ft. I made no attempt to ascertain where he was, but informed him that the base of controlled airspace overhead was 3500ft, and at 4000 he would be in controlled airspace. He said that conflicted with his information, but he would check. He eventually reported transitting at 3000ft. I was very busy with other traffic, so I didn't have time to identify him on radar.

These figures are appaling and these "pilots" should be ashamed of themselves!!

Why? They don't do it deliberately.

I hear some appalling stuff on the radio almost every time I fly but I don't blame the pilots for this. They are the victims of a training apparatus which could have been written in WW2, and most of them fly so rarely they can probably barely remember which knob in the plane does what. A large majority are non-transponding (yet in most cases the aircraft types involved would not qualify for the standard anti-Mode-S outcry that the plane has no electrical system) which must make ATC tear their hair out at times. As well as making a RIS nearly worthless - if you can get it in the first place, that is.

However, I think it opens a wider debate about the quality of training or rather the required level of knowledge required to pass the PPL ground exams.

Why the ground exams in particular? I've done both the JAA PPL and the standalone (not piggyback) FAA PPL. 6 or 7 exams for the 1st, 1 exam for the 2nd. There is more really relevant practical stuff relevant to flying in the single FAA exam than in the multiple JAA ones put together.

Yet more rigorous ground exams are not the answer.

IO540,

I quite agree that they don't do it deliberatley, but if I did it "by accident" then I would be ashamed of myself. I would say it is quite a poor failing in their navigation technique and situational awareness. I just wonder if these pilots actually do something about it after they infringe controlled airspace and cause havoc at LHR, i.e revise a bit of airlaw re airspace classification or speak to an instructor for some advise on how not to do it again etc, etc.

I think the ground exams should be more demanding and by reading the PPL confuser and doing the exam the next day doesn't by any manner or means make someone proficient to fly around UK airspace. I think the above point could be echoed throughout the whole PPL ground exam process.

I have some ex-students who now have a licence who are, quite frankly a liability in the sky. Whats worse is that these people are allowed to carry passengers. Not their fault, but the system which is currently in place does not demand high enough standards for licence issue. I make the point again that these figures speak for themselves.

IO540,
I wasn't meaning that a non moving map GPS is used in isolation, rather to supplement the paper chart. But I agree, using such a system does open up the opportunity for mistakes.
As for 1:50,000 maps, yes the flying I do is little unusual although with a helicopter, the world is your landing site (almost). There are even one or two 1:25,000 maps kicking around in the back.
Cactus99:
I do hope you don't mean it when you say :
Are you saying that you taught these liabilities?
Yes, the PPL Confuser makes a mockery of the PPL ground exams. No, increasing the Ground School will not prevent busts. Yes it is important that students learn how to read maps and how the information displayed affects the flight planning process. But the only way to learn how to navigate is by going out there and flying it. Instructors should be spending more time teaching students how to read the map and the land.

Cactus99

I have some ex-students who now have a licence who are, quite frankly a liability in the sky

I don't want this to sound like a cheap comment but (it appears you are a PPL instructor) have you never thought about teaching them differently?

I think the "PPL confuser" stuff is way overdone. Yes, students do use it, but the CAA/JAA exam syllabus is asking for this kind of thing, by being loaded with absolute crap. The same thing happens at every aviation exam level. Even at JAA ATPL level there are various sources of questions, and these are used by JAA ATPL students probably more widely than the PPL Confuser is used by PPL students - unsuprising given the vast amount of crap one was to swat up for that license. The FAA question bank is publicly available and has been for some years.

Every PPL knows about controlled airspace. It's no rocket science. You don't need exams for that. It's one of the most basic things in flying. It's not like the daft VFR rule details, about 500/1000ft spacing from cloud, 140kt max speed below some level, etc, which nobody I know can remember and which are practically irrelevant.

Droopy

I wasn't meaning that a non moving map GPS is used in isolation, rather to supplement the paper chart. But I agree, using such a system does open up the opportunity for mistakes

This is my biggest gripe in these GPS debates - the fact that so many people automatically assume the pilot is going to get airborne with his face stuck to the moving map GPS and without a chart of some sort being carried. IMV, only a d1ckhead is going to do that - simply because a GPS, like any other device, could pack up. Does the ontrack survey find a significant proportion of pilots actually having done this, and who didn't plan the route beforehand with a chart, and whose GPS packed up? I bet you that nearly all infringements are done by pilots who have everything functioning perfectly.

My opposition to non moving map GPS devices is that even if used in conjunction with a chart, they are still highly confusing. Lat/long values are completely useless (unless sitting in a life raft, etc), the mag track is pointless (you have the compass for that), and position relative to some user-defined waypoint is an accident looking for a place to happen (except perhaps for locating an airfield).

Camping shop GPSs are good for .... camping or hiking :) If you get lost, you plot the position on the O/S map and carry on. Can't do that in a plane. The pilots who buy this cheap crap do so because they can't afford the proper stuff, which is a few hundred quid more.

Droopystop, yes Im afraid its true, they meet the required standard on the test day, but you know full well that when the going gets tough theres not a hope in hell that they will cope with the situation. Yes they need more practical experience in the air but the PPL sylabus limits us on how much we have to teach them as part of the course.

IO540, yes Iam a part time PPL instructor, and yes I try various methods of teaching people, but at the end of the day, they only have to reach the required standard on the test day. My point being that the required standard is not high enough.

I have been guilty of teaching much more than is required of me but I make no appology for that.

My experience is that some PPLs I have met havent got the faintest clue about what class A or class D airspace means or what it looks like on a half mil chart, and this IMHO is what is causing these airspace infringements.

Cactus99 - what a frank reply. It is good to see.

I suspect there are many who hold your view.

It is a shame the training industry is not not prepared to put more effort into a fundamental reform of the syllabus.

In my opinion GA is in a bad way these days. We need to do something about it!

Cactus

My experience is that some PPLs I have met havent got the faintest clue about what class A or class D airspace means or what it looks like on a half mil chart

That is hard to believe. The airspace is labelled, with clear numbers. Obviously somebody like that will be infringing all the time, but is there any data to support that a significant % of infringers can't actually read the chart? I know a large % of the general public has insufficient literacy for such a task but it should be difficult or impossible for someone that bad to get through the PPL exams (today).

Why don't you take such people to one side and have a "word" with them? Or perhaps have a word with their instructor.

Or report their school to the CAA. I doubt the CAA gives a damn but if enough people reported such schools then something might be done.

This would not happen under FAA - the punter would never get through his oral, never mind the checkride and the preflight planning for the checkride.

IO540,

I wasn't suggesting that people go flying glued to the moving map, although I suspect it happens. I was meerly trying to point out that a properly planned flight, with rigorous inputing of waypoints into "a camping" GPS (and cross checking) is an entirely adequate means of staying away from CAS and having adequate SA (not withstanding the fact that the user must understand the system limitations).

The £100 unit I have gives me the required track and distance to my next waypoint. If those waypoints are well chosen and one sticks to the plan, then that is all that is needed.

Cactus,

Indeed a sad state of affairs. The flying school I used to work for had a system where a SFH pilot had to do 6 monthly check rides and that seemed to help and of course gave them insight to how good they were and the opportunity to relearn and practice things they wouldn't normally do.

I would be interested to know how fixed wing nav techniques differ to those of the rotary world and if rotary pilots navigate more successfully than FW. I am not trying to be arrogant here. Helicopter pilots often navigate to places where that are no distinguishing features (ie runways) so their navigation technique relies heavily on interpreting charts (during planning) and the ability to relate ground to map (when flying). Indeed it would be interesting to see if my supposition is bourne out by the infringement statistics.