Rule 5 and Helis

[Gertie]

I am surprised that leaving the safety of the public to the landowner and pilot is permitted.

It is for most other activities. Where is the accident record that would justify spending public money on yet more regulation?

[eltonioni]

eltonioni, my understanding is that for a landing to be compliant it is necessary to have a 'legal' landing site, otherwise it would not be 'normal aviation practice' and would therefore be subject to Rule 5?

There's no such thing as a "legal landing site". You could land or take off using a garden, farmers field, industrial estate car park, or a skyscraper's roof using a helicopter, aeroplane, autogyro, flying bedstead, giant stunt kite or whatever, and it will all be normal aviation practice. Rule 5 doesn't apply.

PPR is a different thing and that's why hot air balloonists keep a bottle of scotch in the basket to placate angry farmers when they arrive unexpectedly in their crop, or so I've heard

If a particular site is used on more on more than 28 days in a year you should have a planning consent, but that's outside your definition from what you've written.

[Miscellaneous]

I am surprised that leaving the safety of the public to the landowner and pilot is permitted.

It is for most other activities. Where is the accident record that would justify spending public money on yet more regulation?

Don't recall anyone suggesting there should be more regulation. As for asking for evidence of accidents......................!!!!!

There's no such thing as a "legal landing site". You could land or take off using a garden, farmers field, industrial estate car park, or a skyscraper's roof using a helicopter, aeroplane, autogyro, flying bedstead, giant stunt kite or whatever, and it will all be normal aviation practice. Rule 5 doesn't apply.

Yip, that's why I put legal in inverted commas. Rightly, or wrongly I have taken normal aviation practice to mean take off and landing in areas designated for such activity and not at random. Emergencies aside I wouldn't fancy my chances of putting an aircraft anywhere I decided to do so and only having the lack of the property owner's permission to deal with.

Misc.

[eltonioni]

It's either legal or illegal. Your OP asked about Rule 5, not the random use of inverted commas, and Rule 5 says that you can land or take off anywhere. Your own abilities are neither here nor there really.

[Pete L]

BTW, there's no law of trespass in the UK!

That I think has changed:

http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/s_to_u/trespass_and_nuisance_on_land/

Doesn't look easy to construct a set of circumstances under which it would be plausible that the crew of a single helicopter could be arrested.

[JimmyG]

Re the "landowners permission" question, I was told a while back by a well respected aviation lawyer that he can find no legal basis for it. I therefore assume that it is just custom and practice established over a long period. I think it has exactly the same basis as the law regarding trespass (or PPR for that matter).

Would you park your car on somebody's front lawn because you couldn't find anywhere better without asking permission? Would you expect the householder to be happy if you then added that you will be back in an hour or so to leave again? Would you expect there to be consequences? Is there any reason why a helicopter is any different?

[EddieHeli]

Emergencies aside I wouldn't fancy my chances of putting an aircraft anywhere I decided to do so and only having the lack of the property owner's permission to deal with.

Misc.

I guess you've never flown microlights either then. We used to regularly land in a field opposite a pub in the Borders area between Newcastle and Carlisle. Low pass to move all the sheep to one side then circuit to land. Never did find out who the landowner was, but never had any problems and the pub did really nice soup on cold days.
We did it fairly often and all of the locals in the pub knew about us using the field opposite.