AIRSPACE
DON’T KNOW I
What you
Ever wondered what happens if you’re ‘invited’ to attend the new Airspace Awareness course after an airspace bust? We went along to fi nd out
don’t know about you, but I’ve always thought that Speed Awareness courses were a good idea if you got tugged by the police for being over the speed limit
— after all, who wants to end up in front of the beak with all the hassle and costs that incurs for a small infraction of the law? So it’s always seemed a bit odd when
it comes to fl ying that some inadvertent airspace busts potentially faced a fi ne and hefty court costs. There had to be a better way. Since last August the CAA has approved
a ‘Airspace Infringements Awareness’ course run by GASCo (the General Aviation Safety Council) which some pilots who have infringed controlled airspace could be asked to undertake as part of any licensing action rather than simply being placed
32 CLUED UP Summer 2018
at the mercy of M’Lud. To fi nd out what they’re like we went to the Chartridge Lodge, a hotel and conference centre near Chesham (rather appropriately, BOAC’s training centre in the Sixties), on a very wet March Saturday morning where a group of 12 pilots had been brought together to ‘fess up and, hopefully, learn from their experience. As you’d expect this is a delicate matter
— few of them want to be there, most are mortifi ed that they are and one or two, if we’re honest, are a tad aggrieved at having to attend; having listened to some of their accounts it’s easy to understand why. One pilot for example was preparing
to land at an airfi eld and had to widen his circuit for traffi c reasons and unwittingly infringed another Aerodrome Traffi c Zone next door. Another pilot, not on
this particular course, was fl ying the Manchester Low Level Route in contact with Manchester but, due to a line of thunderstorms, had routed slightly further east than planned and inadvertently infringed Barton’s ATZ without even realising it. So with those sort of thoughts and emotions in mind, the whole course structure has been set up with an easy, laid-back approach, though there’s a touch of steel in the velvet glove right from the outset — you can’t be late for the 10am start apart from force majeure (an M25 closure was an acceptable on this particular day…), you have to engage with the course rather than simply sitting back with your arms folded, watching the clock and waiting for going-home time (3.15pm on this day, since you ask).
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