I can't imagine the CAA is doing this for the cash raised through fines. The amounts quoted here wouldn't fund the Belgrano canteen for more than a week!

Presumably their actions are meant to be a deterrent to bad behaviour, and I suspect a lot of the deterrent is non-financial. One of these prosecutions took place four years after the offence. That's a long time not to sleep at night, especially if the prosecution might trigger litigation.

Just commenting in general: I know nothing of the specifics here.

Each ICAO contracting State is obliged to persecute and prosecute a national of that State, on behalf of another State in whose airspace an alleged offence was committed.

In practice, this works less than thoroughly (obviously what "thoroughly" means varies according to which end you are on :) ) not least because different States have different ideas of what evidence is required to have somebody hung drawn and quartered.

No doubt if you did something dodgy over Angola, they would ask the UK CAA to have your family raped and executed. The CAA won't do that because rape is illegal (even within marriage, in these enlightened times) and the death penalty was abolished in the 1950s (much to the derision of Lord Denning :) ).

In 2003 I busted one of the French power station TRAs, and the evidence the Frogs (DGAC) delivered showed I was under a radar service at the time, yet they said nowt. until 5 months later. Also the TRAs were not notamed, and to top it they did not appear on any charts for another year or two. The CAA just sent me a stiff letter and that was it. Apparently the French do this sort of thing quite a lot.

I don't think the CAA is especially limited in what they can do to a foreign pilot, relative to what they can do to a UK one. They can bust both, and they can turn over the aircraft of both to check for any dangerous maintenance (lack of).

Whether the CAA would have asked the FAA to take certificate action against the pilot would depend on their view of what the FAA would think of the UK procedures implicated in that incident. It's quite possible that the CAA decided that a prosecution was simpler :)

16 prosecutions in year - really? doesn't really seem that many. Out of interest is the CAA v Jackson the one following the Gazelle shunt?

Edited to say having checked yes it is and when you read this it makes the penalty surprising:-

http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources...EW%2011-09.pdf

One reason for apparent lack of consistency is the rarity of prosecutions, so no national guidelines.

The other is that fines depend not only upon the seriousness of the offence but also impact on the defendant. People with greater resources pay higher fines.

The guy in the powered kite thingy had a really good quality camera, i wonder what it was, I use a Drift 170 action cam which is supposed to be the best but is nowhere near the quality of the kite guys, i gotta get one of them .

With car driving it is now becoming more commonplace to offer the driver who has broken a speed limit the choice of accepting a fine and the proverbial 3 points or completing a speed awareness course and avoiding the fine and 3 points.
Something similar could be carried out with flying?

Pace

I know of one person who was offered something like this. What he did was very, very naughty but he was told to take training and that was as far as it went.

Not all infringements and pilot errors are MORed, not all MORs result in prosecutions (compare this list to the UK CAA list of MORs published on the website - infringed airway, infringed LTMA) and not all prosecutions go in favour of the CAA.
But even this small list has (in the absence of the full facts) the appearance of a lottery.
Remember, none of us are perfect. The long arms of the National Authorities is only one of the risks we face every flight.

Looking at the colour quality of the shot, and the way it jitters (slightly) when moved fast: GoPro HD

I have both it and the Drift you have, and no contest, GoPro has much better quality :)

Not as good as a though :)

In reality, much video shooting is spoilt by haze - unless you fly low enough to "get noticed" :)

Bob UpandDown

There has to surely be a distinction between a violation as a result of bad airmanship, overload, etc and a pilot with all his senses intact doing something which he knows to be against the law?
The first should not involve punishment as Mal intent was not there.
Yes it should involve re training but you should only punish someone for knowingly doing wrong.
Prosecutions are expensive all round and really should be the last port of call.
Education is a far better route as it will help rectify even those who knowingly do wrong.
I can remember in my youth doing something crazy with a car and being stopped by the police. The officer could have thrown the book at me but instead chose to have a chat about the implications of what I had done and finished by saying that he had done me a favor and to only do him the favor of taking in what he had said.
That encounter remained with me all my life and although I did other things with cars :E I never did that again.

Pace

Pace - I agree. Having read through the cases for example I can see very little excuse flying an aircraft when you know it to have been grounded. The act its deliberate and a willful flagrant of the law.

Where a "professional" makes a mistake, it is more difficult. Did the standard of airmanship fall below that which should be reasonably expected? Where the consequences to have risked harm to others? What actions did the pilot take after the event?

I think these are some of the questions that the CAA should consider before prosecuting.

Many professional bodies "deal" with the discipline of their own members in the first instance unless a third parties insists on the matter being referred to the Court and they have the ability to censure and impose fines. In many cases this would seem a far better way for some of the cases to have been dealt with.

Pace & Fuji
I agree with you.
The fact that not all infringements in the list of MORs end up on the list of prosecutions means CAA must been making a decision over who they take all the way.
Even very, very experienced and diligent pilots make mistakes. On the other hand (and I have seen this many times) even very, very experienced and highly qualified pilots can exhibit flagrant disregard for good airmanship. The former don't even need to be told, they know they have made a mistake and that is enough.

I can see the fines being means tested, although they are massive on the scale of say motoring offences. Even killing a whole bus queue of people would not get you a fine the size of some of these (but might get you locked up).

However what concerns me is not the size of some of the fines but the fact that a prosecution took place.

I wonder if the CAA policy of telling people that the costs will be X if they plead G or 5 times X if they plead NG (and lose) is paying big dividends?

Most GA pilots are relatively skint and if facing say a £10k fine+costs they will plead G regardless.

In my XR3i days ;) I used to plead G simply because the solicitor told me that in this case the police want to teach me a lesson (this was pre CPS) and if I want to plead NG I will need to get a solicitor from outside the area.
No way would I fall for that today because I can afford a £10k hit (obviously so, flying an IO540-engined plane :) ) but I think most people would.

Would any lawyer here have an idea of what % of cases the CAA lose?

I also wonder what pleas were entered in those all-successful prosecutions?

It says it in the document. All successfully prosecutions were guilt pleas.

It suggests to me that only cases where the caa is guaranteed to win do they prosecute.

Everyone who ever drove an XR3i was always guilty anyway...

Back, must have used a rude word somewhere.

Haven't used anything that wouldn't be used on BBC radio Scotland lunch time radio for a while.

Anyway 3 risk assements done, and all the training paper work up to date...

I haven't got any choice in the matter. Flown 6 of them in the last week with no AP down to mins 2 of which the viz dropped after the approach ban. Just with a two needle RMI worked a treat every time with a constant decent approach.

Jock, you never spell your rude words correctly, so that can't have been the reason.;)

Dublin Pilot

Errr no. There are certainly cases where the CAA lost.

I wonder how many of them there were.

There certainly seemed to be mostly plead guilty in that list.

Thank LA.

So the implication of that is that the CAA never won a case in court that they had to fight.

The person either pleded guilty or the CAA lost the case.

I take this from the fact that there were no successfull prosecutions in the list other than with guilty plea.

Like MJ, I wonder how many cases the CAA lost? Do you know, or even have an idea of it?