Canadian pilot posts ILLEGAL flight into US on OLC

2G wrote on 7/26/2019 5:45 PM:
On Friday, July 26, 2019 at 2:28:57 PM UTC-7, Eric Greenwell wrote:
2G wrote on 7/26/2019 12:57 PM:

Remember, if you get into a dispute with these folks, THEY will be deciding what "intent" means, NOT YOU! Chester, IMO, is skating on thin ice with these flights. He said he was vague about his flight plan, which will be potentially viewed by authorities as being evasive. And if he were forced to land in the US for ANY reason he would clearly be in violation of the law, and be at a very real risk of having his glider seized and a stiff fine imposed. You knuckleheads seem to think that you can violate the law and, if caught, you can talk your way out of it with something ridiculous like "declaring an emergency." Well, THINK AGAIN! These officers hear this crap every day from real criminals and are well versed in the law. Eric had a very close call on this, and only a comment by his wife to a customs officer at the border saved him running afoul with authorities. This is SERIOUS BUSINESS! Unlike most of the rest of you, I actually have Chester's best interests at heart.

Tom remembers my incident correctly, but I don't think it's relevant to Chester's
flight. My situation was very different, because I contacted no one before or
after flying across the border (my bad - ignorance over 35 years ago), nor did I
contact anyone after I landed. Had I contacted the FSS at any time while flying
(and perhaps even after landing), customs would have been notified by the FSS, and
all would have been well.

Chester made sure everyone knew his intent before and during the flight, and
conducted it with the cooperation of ATC. He was flying a motorglider (I wasn't),
and could reasonably expect to return to Canada without landing. If ATC believed
he was operating illegally, they could've requested he land, but they didn't.


The only problem here is that you are dealing with two separate agencies, the FAA and the CBP. ATC's objectives (FAA) and duties are very much different from CBP, and it will be CBP that you will have to deal with (as you did), not the FAA. What it gets down to is: are you willing to throw the dice about how a CBP officer is going to react to a possible illegal landing (and something they never encountered before and have no understanding of)?

In my case, I dealt with neither the CBP or the FAA. It was US Customs that was
upset I had entered the USA and landed without permission or clearing Customs.


--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1
- "Transponders in Sailplanes - Dec 2014a" also ADS-B, PCAS, Flarm

http://soaringsafety.org/prevention/...anes-2014A.pdf