Thank you Stephen.
I think there is something in Commonwealth Legislation going back years that
covers aircraft in distress landings and their rights to alight.
I am not going to spend time researching it. And did that legislation ever
consider aircraft that go aloft with a higher risk of an unexpected landing
place?
I wish I could remember the location of that article that opinioned the
"ground" legal situation.
Hopefully we will all get some guidance, at least, on that.
Regards
Chris (In wet but warm Qld)
----- Original Message -----
From: stephenk
To: Discussion of issues relating to Soaring in Australia.
Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2012 5:06 PM
Subject: Re: [Aus-soaring] Easements in the air
Terry,
my understanding (and it may start an argument, and am happy to be corrected,
in the subtleties or because I may be outright wrong)
Flying over.
That's a no brainer, irrespective of the type of ownership (crown lease,
freehold etc) the property owner doesn't own the air above their property,
except I think as high up as they build (and don't own everything under their
feet either, I think). So all sorts of aircraft (gliders included) can fly
there. Provided they comply with the air navigation laws which are in part
notionally to protect the people below.
Landing out.
Well, I think we actually have no right to do this. On the face of it (IANAL)
it is straight out trespass.
However, it is a grey/complex area as I believe there can be extenuating
circumstances to trespass. An example might be a person trying to escape from a
threat, seeking safety. Maybe a plane forced to land due to engine failure is
like that. Are gliders forced to land? Did we have to pick that particular
paddock? How long do we intend to stay? That's where it all gets rather sticky.
Until there is an actual court case bought against an outlanding glider, we
won't know for sure, and maybe not even then.
All I know is that I haven't flown a glider cross country for a long time.
Two of the last outlandings I went to (one as pilot and one as part of the
crew) started off with quite bad feeling on the part of the landowners. One
because the owner claimed the glider had contaminated a genetically specialised
crop and one because just prior to me outlanding in his field the farmer had
been forced to accept an easement for an underground telco cable through his
property and was generally unhappy with anyone now being there.
Both situations were not fun and enough to make me wary of these situations
for the future.
Regards
SWK
On 24/03/2012 8:52 AM, Terry Neumann wrote:
Dear fellow gliding peoples,
On 21/03/2012 4:24 PM, Christopher Mc Donnell wrote:
Having had an academic interest in easements and rights of way for many
years I found the link below very interesting.
OK - it morphed into an interesting discussion of alternative power
options, (which I was enjoying actually).
However may I raise an issue of glider pilot's rights in a parallel area.
Some years ago I was confronted by a friend - a fellow farmer - who lives on
the other side of the local village. He was somewhat irate and wanted to know
what right a glider pilot had to land on someone's property without their
permission (his in this instance - because it had happened), or to even to fly
over their property without permission. There were reasons for the second
question which I won't detail here.
I was struggling for a solid convincing answer at the time. I actually
wrote an article for AG (yes it's that long ago) about this whole outlanding
business from a farmer's point of view, but after my previous journalistic
efforts which had quite adverse results in one particular instance, I backed
off. It was never submitted. Nor did I offer an answer in the article because
there didn't appear to be one.
I suggest that the concept of a persons "rights" has strengthened
throughout society since that time. So I'll ask it now. Exactly what is our
'right' to fly over someone else's property without their permission, or
perhaps more importantly, to land on their property - again without permission
- when the wind stops blowing?
regards,
TN
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