According to the CAA website they undertook 16 prosecutions in 2011/12. As there have been gulity pleas in all 16 cases it appears that the reason that there are no cases that the CAA lost on the list is that the CAA did not lose any.

So the moral of that story is don't plead guilty.

And there will have been way more than that mostly to do with breaches of dangerous goods carrage with airlines which are a piece of piss to prove .

In previous years the CAA publication had the following title:

I wonder if the latest publication is also for "Successful" prosecutions?

I think that the CAA website makes it clear that the 16 prosecutions listed were the only ones that took place - "In total during the year, the CAA undertook 16 prosecutions". Whether unsuccessful prosecutions would have been listed if there had been any is another matter.

The CAA did lose cases during this period

LA - Would be interested to hear how many cases you know about that the CAA held in that period in which the defendant was found not guilty or aquitted.

A 100% conviction rate at trial is otherwise very impressive, I bet the CPS wish they could equal that!!

The CAA website states clearly:

GP write to your MP and get them to do a FOI and state that the CAA have been economical with the truth on there website.

Frankly if the CAA are being misleading thats a worry for anyone facing a prosecution by them. as undoubtedly the Judge or Magistrate will draw an inference on sentencing from the published figures from the CAA. It does make an overt statement of "We only prosecute if the case is beyond defence and we always win"

To the best of my knowledge there are no formal guidelines for sentencing CAA matters, as is the case in many other criminal matters, including motoring offences.

Guidelines to download - Sentencing Council

GEP

That is not an impressive record at all as it smells of selective prosecuting of sure to win cases.
I noticed the only illegal charter was of a ppl in a single nothing bigger!
A bit like the World champion boxer taking on a wimps and claiming 100% success???

Pace

That's a very good point.

It does look like there is policy to not take on well funded and determined defendants.

I may be wrong but I have a feeling that Tudor Owen (aka Flying Lawyer) successfully defended a number of CAA prosecutions before his elevation to the Bench.

He did indeed.

Agreed other than the TBM pilot all the rest seem pretty tame prosecutions and none against the supposed huge market in illegal private jet operations.
Bit of a difference taking on a multi millionaire who will fight back hard and some impoverished PPL who could not afford too!

The repercussions on loosing an illegal charter and determining it was actually legal would be huge for the CAA a risk not worth taking ?

Pace

Yes; there have been multiple threads in the bizjet forum and elsewhere saying how the CAA goes after these ops but always settles on the court steps. It may be hearsay but it is quite persistent.

I am sure they don't want to create case law on scenarios like the one where the aircraft owner writes two cheques (one for the pilot and one for the leasing company) but the pilot has actually arranged the whole lot. There is no doubt IMHO the CAA would lose that one.

And let's face it - who cares? It's hardly carrying unsuspecting paying passengers, like the CAA's "illegal charter" leaflet says.

It was also very embarrassing for the CAA when they tried to play the safety case on private jet ops and discovered that professionally flown corporate jets had an accident rate of .2 per million hours the same as large airlines while their beloved AOC ops had an attrocious 3.2 per million hours even worse than single pilot owner flown biz jets!
Fly safe ? Fly private : )

Pace

It's interesting to see the different views held by various people about these prosecutions. But I'm a bit ambivalent on the topic.

Personally I take the view that I may not agree with the rules, I may not understand what the rules are supposed to achieve, but I try to follow them - because they're the rules. If I make that effort and others patently don't, then I shed no tears for those others who are caught and taken through the judicial system. On the other hand, if someone makes a genuine mistake and finds themselves in breach of the rules and then does whatever they can to remedy the situation, there seems less justification to me for the matter to end up in court. But, as has been pointed out before, the list which has prompted this discussion provides only very limited information and gives only the barest hints about the attitude of those involved, which may well sway the decision to prosecute.

One thing that does concern me, however, is that in at least one instance the list suggests that the CAA department dealing with these things is either rather relaxed with their terminology or are not aware of the rules that they are enforcing. For a department dealing with the law and and its prosecution neither situation is acceptable in my view. The case in question is CAA-v-Barke (on page 10) where there are references to the aircraft being 'given clearance to take-off' and the pilot failing to ask for clearance - from an air/ground radio operator. This caught my eye because it's my main area of activity these days but I wonder how many other similar inaccuracies or issues of concern are glossed over regarding the operation of aircraft which is the cause of most, if not all, of the cases. If the CAA is going to be so cavalier in their language describing the law that they are supposed to uphold, surely they can't be surprised when others interpret the law with similar approximations.

We are riddled with laws covering literally anything. 3000 new criminal offences brought in by labour and laws made to cover any eventuality.
No wonder the average motorist breaks the law on Average 30 times a day !
With so many laws and regulations no wonder many in all walks of life try to work within that interpretation of the law that suits .
It was Sir Douglas Bader who wrote

"Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools"... (rectified thanks to Contact Tower)

Pace

And of course it was another Bader, Douglas, who said it that rules were "for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools"...

Whether that really only belied Bader's general dislike of rules I'm not sure.

Although I doubt any of the rule breakers on the list were wise men anyway...!

Whoops rectified :\

You are correct ;) How would others regard that statement?

Hi all,

Had a little event with the local Special Branch, UK Borders Agency and a CAA enforcement officer here at the airfield a few nights ago.

CAA chap showed a table of prosecutions over the past few years and basically there were only about 30 a year, with about 3 or 4 acquittals.

He said they tend only to prosecute where they feel there is an almost certain chance of conviction.

He also added that they do look very carefully at every available option, and often go for other solutions such as navigation training for infringers etc.

If I recall correct, they get about 200 complaints a year to follow up - so prosecution not too likely.

Yes, it may seem strange that some areas do not appear in court, but then - for instance (and in my words) - an agreement by someone to halt certain activities may actually serve the purpose just as well as a prosecution.

Certainly, bearing in mind some zone busts by individuals I know, prosecution would not achieve an increase in flight safety.

That is what it is all about. Safety.

Not Asil Nadir doing another runner was it??
:=

Do you think the CAA misrepresented this stuff in the court by e.g. saying that someone took off from an A/G airfield without a TO clearance?

Admittedly the last time I was in a court was 1985 (carelessly driving an XR3i ;) ) but the prosecution lied about a number of things which would have been fairly easy to sort out (technically if perhaps not without a lot of hassle) . Yet it was obviously quite difficult to extract oneself from that situation after you pleaded guilty. There is nowadays a thing called Newton hearing which can be used in such a situation but it needs a defendant who is fairly determined to get justice and not just buy himself peace by using a cheap (stupid) solicitor and writing a cheque which is what most businessmen are happy to do (and that is also what keeps HMRC in the money these days). For example I was accused of doing 90+mph in a street which was not long enough to reach 90 by a factor of several times but proving so would be expensive (they initially told my solicitor they would be doing me for 60 in a 30 and I spent some weeks trying to find an expert witness from Ford, without success) so I gave up and on the day the figure went up from 60 to 90 and I got done for 90 in a 30. In the goode olde pre-CPS days, the police did this quite often if they didn't like somebody.

I doubt the CAA would knowingly lie in a court case. They will pursue avenues that bear very little to the case at hand just to score points, though, but that is a disease widely spread in the Anglo-Saxon legal system.

The Police, by contrast, both on the continent and in the UK are on record for forging and falsifying anything if it fits their case and they think they can get away with it.

I had a traffic warden lie to a court.

The conversation at the roadside went:

Her: "what's your date of birth?"

Me: "why do you need to know?"

Her: quotes some statute which gives her authority to demand my date of birth

Me: gives date of birth

In her statement to court this somehow translated to "refused to give date of birth". I just couldn't get my head around why she thought it worthwhile to knowingly lie like that.

Ahhh, Pace, now you're talking about a different issue.

As I said, I may not agree with the rules, and I do what I can to influence them during their drafting stages. But once they're in law I will try to follow them and I make assumptions about the actions of others with the expectation that they, too, will follow the rules. Maybe I'm just a bit boring like that but that's how I approach things in aviation. Strangely, I take a slightly different view in some other domains like motoring, for example, but that probably a whole different topic.

One of the reasons I treat the aviation rules as I do is that I may not (or probably certainly do not) understand the entire objective of each particular rule and how it interacts with the multitude of other aviation rules that exist. Whilst the implications of infringing some rules may appear obvious, in other cases this not be so - and even when we think it is obvious it's quite possible that we have not seen the whole picture.

xrayalpha's final comments are, perhaps, the most important to bear in mind. In aviation, prosecutions are done less to protect the community from wrongdoers and more to try and change behaviours.

can't help missing a hint at the position of wise women - perhaps they're not supposed/expected to go flying...

One would certainly hope so.

I can't really help thinking though that for some of the blatant violations like flying without a licence the punishment should be much greater. I mean one could argue that with light aircraft the third party risk is relatively low even without a licence but actually to fine someone just a few thousand pounds for flying without one fails to do justice to what a serious business we are really in with flying, GA or otherwise...

I had that too, in the late 1970s. The police wrote up a substantially false interview with me, at my office. It concerned parking within the confines of a pelican crossing. I said that I was the main driver but had no records of who was driving on the day (some months earlier). The record of the interview said that I admitted driving on the day. I believe these procedures have since changed ;)

I am not suggesting the CAA would lie but if they get a less than very competent lawyer then anything is possible. Look how many pilots don't know the details of air law.

That is because they are private prosecutions and the CAA has to pay for them. It wants to be able to claim costs in order to recover its expenses therefore its all about money at the end of the day.

I thought the CPS had the same approach, but I was wrong. According to their website:
https://www.cps.gov.uk/about/principles.html

one of their tests is whether a:
"... jury or bench of magistrates ... will be more likely than not to convict ..."

And it can't get any costs in scotland.

Maybe why you see very few cases up there. And when they do they don't have a very good success record. The pilots flying under the sky bridge to avoid birds as an example.

I say Jock; that sounds like a good wheeze. Must remember to dive under the next bridge in case of pesky sparrow attack...;)

Some of the experiences on here would leave you to question why you would agree to answer questions without being represented. At least that way it is difficult for either party to misrepresent what was said.

As a pro you should never ever answer any questions to either company or the authorities until you have representation.

They want you to spill the beans while your still in shock and can't think straight. They really don't want you to have a decent nights sleep and then a lawyer/ BALPA rep sitting next to you advising what not to say and to also act as a wittness.

Yep, oldest trick in the book, and other considerations aside, you will often say things without realising that they are not an accurate representation of the event. You need only consider how often witnesses cant agree on the basic elements of an event.

Fuji
 

You have hit the nail on the head, I once sat in a court and listened to the evidence in a low flying case, the witnesses who were all claiming that the aircraft was within 500 ft could not agree if the aircraft was a high or low wing type.

The defence brief in this case was non other than The Flying Lawyer who walked all over the CAA case. I suspect that the CAA had little option to bring this particular case as the NIMBYS were ganging up and getting political, in the end it was the very people who started the ball rolling that provided such poor evidence that the made a not guilty verdict the only course of action for the magistrates.

Are ATPL holders never prosecuted by the CAA or are they just never in the wrong?

Both, actually. Keep up, old chap!








;)

The stuff ATPL's usually get into trouble for are usually directly related to company infringements and the company gets done.

Unless you work for ryanair then its in your contract that your liable for any fines etc.

The other thing is that most ATPL's will be able to bring in a raft of technical witnesses. The likes of the BHX case would get pretty techincal very quickly and cost a fortune.

But in general the enviroment we operate in there is less chance of screwing up. You get the odd few that bust noise and get a snotty letter and a fine but apart from that its dangerous goods and stuff like that that comes up and if the ATPL hasn't been given the correct info in the first place the system is at fault not them.

By BHX do you mean the Thompson one where they nearly did an Amsterdam 737 and kept quiet about it?