What happens if I infringe?

Many people believe that every airspace infringement results in a CAA prosecution and that if you do infringe, switching off your transponder may save you. Both these statements are totally wrong.

So, if you are unfortunate enough to be involved in one of the nearly 1,000 airspace infringements that occur every year, what will happen to you?

Firstly, the controller involved will file a Mandatory Occurrence Report (MOR) with the CAA. Depending on the ATC unit concerned they may contact you as part of their own informal investigation.

The CAA will then look at the circumstances involved and decide what, if any, further action to take. In the vast majority of the cases the infringement has been the result of a genuine mistake with no harm done. In these cases a CAA prosecution is highly unlikely. In 2009 there were over 1,000 airspace infringements. Of these * resulted in CAA prosecutions.

You may well still be contacted by the CAA to enable more information on the incident to be gathered and if the CAA feels that you may benefit from extra training or a flight with an instructor then that will indicated.

If the CAA feels you have been negligent, or that the airspace infringement was a deliberate act, then a prosecution may well follow. Switching off your transponder to try to avoid detection will be deemed by the CAA as an act of negligence as it denies the controller vital information in trying to resolve the infringement.