Technically part of Europe.
There’s nothing inherently dangerous about an untowered airport, or anything inherently safer about towered ones. In the US and Canada, untowered airports account for a majority of takeoffs and landings.
Also keep in mind that untowered doesn’t mean not talking to ATC.
Someone here fucked up severely, but keep in mind that the deadliest aviation incident ever happened in Europe at a towered field (Tenerife).
- it was over 40 years ago (1977).
- it occured in exceptional circumstances (the Tenerife airport was overloaded because Gran Canaria airport was closed due to a terrorist incident).
- having a tower didn't help a lot because of thick fog. They didn't have ground radar either, but that probably wasn't unusual for a "provincial" airport in 1977.
Little bit of trivia, but on Sully’s famous flight he didn’t quite read back his takeoff correctly. You need to state your identifier AND runway and, IIRC, he only read back “cactus 1549 cleared for takeoff”, omitting the runway. Totally unrelated to the flight, just a little detail which the movie got right (I checked the liveATC audio).
A major cause of Tenerife was that the KLM captain was under the impression that clearance had been granted and the Pan-Am had left the active runway. And that his fellow crew who had been listening were afraid to speak up. A lot of improvements have resulted from that terrible accident.
We reviewed it in flight class, they were always using accidents to explain why rules are so important.
It's technically true but when saying something doesn't exist in America, I think raising Hawaii as an exception is still valid or at least interesting.
The reference to "Europe" was likely more about political Europe than geographical Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii: “It is the only state outside North America”
No. Not by this European and it's almost universal to be specific when you talk about these things. That some would say "Europe" but really mean "the set of countries which are part of the European Union" is so rare that I can't recall anyone doing that (except people from outside Europe. That does happen sometimes).
"Europe" to Europeans means the geographical area called Europe.
I'd say it's even rare in France to say "Union Européenne" instead of just Europe, unless it's in a quite formal context.
The citizens of St. Barts are French. Are you claiming they aren't European? Tell me, do they become European when they visit the Metropole? Does this quality vanish when they return to the Caribbean? I'd love an explanation!
This entire thread is a response to a claim about Europeans, and I took pains to draw out that distinction. Yet here you are talking about Europe. Why?
People born there? French kids of French parents.
If St Barth had different demographics, there might be a more meaningful debate to be had about this. It’s not exactly the melting pot you might expect from an old colony.
I have heard it used on a context where the speaker only means Western and Central Europe, and not Eastern Europe.
I'm just saying the word "Europe" is in practice very often used, within the EU, as a synonym for European Union and I certainly didn't think that would be controversial. On the other hand, in my experience I've never heard "Europe" being used to exclude Eastern Europe, although I've certainly heard it used to exclude the UK (by British persons most often).
And Saint Barthélémy or Réunion island being "in Europe" certainly doesn't mean in any way that Switzerland isn't, I don't think my comment had even the slightest hint of that.
You were responding to a comment that claimed ""America" is used by US people as a synonym for the country, not the continent." (rightfully so, from my 6 years experience in the US). You responded by making a point that, similarly, Europe is used as a synonym for EU. Which many Europeans claimed it is absolutely not typical (rightfully so, as EU citizen). And now you're saying that the term "Europe" actually does include other, non-EU countries... Quite confusing, to be honest, what your point here is.
> I'm just saying the word "Europe" is in practice very often used, within the EU, as a synonym for European Union
Absolutely disagree, it's not common at all. People say EU when they think EU. It is quite common to refer to oneself as European, though, not Europunionan or whatever, when one is thinking of EU citizenship. And perhaps this is what you had in mind.
I don't even understand clearly what we are arguing about. The term "Europe" has different meanings depending on context and speaker, as this thread seems to evidence clearly. All I'm saying at the core is that it's really not exceptional to consider overseas France as part of Europe, and this is actually done all the time here in France.
Regarding the use of "EU" vs. "Europe" our experience clearly differs, but I have to take offense at your claim that my experience is wrong, having lived most of my life in several countries of the EU myself.
Just as another datapoint, look at Wikipedia's disambiguation page for Europe[0]:
Europe may also refer to [...] European Union, a European political supranational entity that excludes Russia and several other eastern European countries.
I've heard people try to use Europe in the context of EU, but typically it requires a clarification because someone misinterprets what they say or it's actually incorrect due to the hold-outs of Switzerland, Norway, UK etc. I heard it more a few years ago than I do now, these days people tend to specifically refer to EU, and Europe more refers to Schengen or the geographical region.
If someone says a European holiday, or it was designed in Europe, or someone is from Europe, the listener doesn't expect Reunion or Serbia, they expect somewhere roughly between Czechia and Spain. Including others under the Europe umbrella would be purposefully deceitful from the speaker's side, or trying to make a political point.
Then again, perhaps this is a central European perspective.
Hawaii is more like Malta in EU, a full member state.
People in Saint Barthélémy are just regular French and EU citizens who live far away from the mainland. The territory does have some degree of autonomy (more than other overseas départements) but still less so than a US state relative to the US federal government.
In that, most French territories would have a status maybe more comparable to a county within a US state (afaiu the US system) than to a US state within the US. The whole comparison is a bit sketchy but France isn't a federal state and only New Caledonia and Polynesia have local legislation, all the rest of the country is very unitary in political and administrative aspects.
For instances, when there was all the talk about Barack Obama's birth certificate, it wouldn't have disqualified him as a candidate to claim his birthplace was in Puerto Rico. (See also John McCain, who was born in the Panama Canal Zone, which had a similar status to Puerty Rico, but distinct from American Samoa.) It would have disqualified his candidacy if they were able to prove he was born in Kenya or American Samoa, which would have made him not a natural born citizen, even though his mother is a US citizen, which would have Barack Obama a US citizen at birth, regardless of where he was born.
St Bart's, like New Caledonia and Polynesia, is an EU Overseas Country/Territory, and a French Overseas Collectivity. St Bart's isn't as close politically to France as French Guiana or Martinique, which are both French Overseas Regions, and EU Outermost Regions.
So I would compare places like French Guiana or Martinique to places like Puerto Rico, Guam, and the US Virgin Islands, and places like St Bart's, New Caledonia, and French Polynesia to places like American Samoa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_member_state_territori...
« Europe » by default means the EU where I'm from. There's no standard.
And the majority of those takeoffs and landings are probably tiny planes, which I presume is easier to do adhoc coordination for
Ad hoc coordination does not mean “swerve out of the way if someone shows up on the runway”. It means announcing intent to land on the runway well in advance and coordinating with other planes using the airport over the radio.
If you have a bunch of GA active, odds are that 95% of the pilots are only SEP rated and PPLs. I think US pilots are generally a lot more experienced. GA is so expensive here and GA is often banned from busy areas so there's not many ways to get this experience. I saw some vids of people just flying up to LAX in their 172.. In Europe this would be unthinkable. They'll refuse and reroute you to a local small airport.
In our area they were really strict on announcing all intent to traffic, but it was probably because we did have a tower at certain hours so that kept it on our minds.
Air traffic control (at least in the US) has the purpose of ensuring separation of air traffic. That is, to help ensure that aircraft do not hit each other, by coordinating when there could be conflicts. They do not primarily exist for (or were not at least created for the purpose of) helping aircraft fundamentally navigate and or avoid non-aircraft obstacles. Or controlling an aircraft's every permissible action in the air.
So, if an airfield has little traffic, in general or such as in off-hours, there may be no tower, or the tower may be unmanned. Aircraft then are responsible for coordinating themselves by announcing their activities, and taking the observation of the airport conditions into their own responsibility.
It may be you believe that because European airspace is a bit denser, and in general the airports with scheduled commercial service are busier because of the density. But as others noted, there are uncontrolled/untowered airports just as in the US.
In fact even when a private jet would come in after hours the tower would be active. It was really for all kinds of commercial activity.
I'm not saying that Europe is better at this than the US but I do think it makes sense to have someone watching especially to ensure separation of traffic as you say. Especially with something as big as an A320.
In this case especially a tower assigning an active runway would have prevented the Beechcraft approaching from the opposite direction.
I have to say also that GA is not as big as in the US and that makes GA pilots in general less vigilant and experienced with proximity to airline traffic so that's another factor.
There are many airports in the US, Canada, and elsewhere that receive a couple of commercial flights a week and it's not really feasible to have a control tower.
A tower only allows more efficient usage of the runway without a bunch of distributed coordination over a general radio frequency.
If you read German, you can check out the magazine Pilot und Flugzeug, it reports frequently about rather insane regulation in Europe (for general aviation).
Part of this is because of the strict regulation. Most pilots only do VFR because getting IFR rated is so expensive and not really interesting from a hobby perspective (no nice views, you can get the same experience in a simulator). Some would do special VFR but it's generally frowned upon.
Also, GA aircraft are generally not welcome at major airports unlike in the US where airport access seems to be viewed more as a right than a favour. So the processes around them tend to not be understood very well. This is another reason nobody opts for IFR ratings, there's not much you can actually do with it anyway, they're not going to let you land at Amsterdam with a Cessna 172 :P They definitely wouldn't carry avgas either.
So, basically we have a whole continent full of "sunday pilots" in terms of GA. And I think the strong legislation and thus costs are part of the cause for that.
PS I've never flown in or even visited the US so perhaps my understanding of the GA landscape there is wrong. But AFAIK it's really used for personal transportation there, which is kinda cool IMO.