Pirker case settled

[pvolcko]

http://www.team-blacksheep.com/docs/pir ... lement.pdf

Hate that it came to this. Paying a settlement to avoid the cost of further defending yourself is a horrible facet of many civil legal systems.

Also hugely unfortunate that the FAA changed direction and used their "interpretation" of the 2012 law designed to protect model aviation from regulation as the basis for proposing radically more stringent regulations upon it, both commerically and recreationally.

[murankar]

I read that this weekend. Its sad that he had to settle at this point. This is almost a win for the FAA at this point. This could be a preaidence setting case, so watch out.

[pvolcko]

If the statement with the settlement from Pirker's lawyer is to be believed (and I have no reason not to believe it), that was actually one of the reasons they decided to settle: the case would no longer have any precedent setting merit. The 2012 law that the FAA recently "interpreted" and asked for comment on was all done after Pirker was fined. So whatever ended up happening with his case, the result would have no precedent setting effect since all cases after it were based on the 2012 law and the regime of law that will fall out of the "intepretation".

The only precedent that can be said to have been set in this whole thing is that the NTSB ruled that model aircraft have to abide by one particular regulation having to do with unsafe flight paths that put property and people in danger. However, there was no finding as to if this particular class of aircraft squared against the regulation, which is aimed at full size passenger aircraft. The NTSB kicked it back to the administrative court to make that that finding and it was settled before the question was answered. given that the judge gave a complete pass to Pirker in his initial judgement, chances were good it would have gone our way. But the cost outstripped the potential reward to keep the case going.

[murankar]

The one thing that is still bothering me is that Pirker is not a US citizen. At least thats what I gathered from the article. If that us the case then the faa broke protocal by not handing the case back to the country of residence. Of course that's if I read the artical right.

[pvolcko]

He was conducting the flight in the US. You're telling me if a Canadian pilot, flying a US registered commercial airliner screws up while landing in Miami (say a near miss that is his fault) that the FAA would hand the case over to the Canadian version of the FAA? Or that if a US pilot screwed up flying while in Germany that Germany will hand the case off to our FAA? I'm sure they'll inform the other org of the violation so that the pilot gets the incident recorded in their country of license/permit, but that country is still going to conduct an investigation and level a fine or press for arrest if it comes down to it. If it is a minor infraction maybe they hand it off. But for putting property and lives on the ground in danger? Not bloody likely.

Maybe I'm wrong. I have a hard time believing that a country is expected to hand over handling of such a case to the authority in the pilot's resident country, regardless of where the infraction occurred or severity of the claim.

[murankar]

I thought thats what I read, I could be wrong. I saw a link to the press release (if you can call it that) on facebook. I want to say it was either RCFLI or AMA. keep in mind that the airspace at the time was not being regulated by the FAA or should I say the hobby was not regulated by the FAA at the time of the incident.