Eye in the Sky II

This is in follow up to Thursday's post. The CC will be discussing this issue at its meeting tomorrow morning here in VLC. Further info that any team may have will be appreciated.

In the meantime, Challengers received yesterday this communique from ACM after CC chair Alessandra Pandarese wrote asking for an explanation:


...regarding the helicopter flying over the Port and the Race course, it has been verified that it was chartered by the Ministry of Infrastructures (Ministerio de Fomento) and the Ayutamiento of Valencia with the production company MSL to get images of the coast and the port's infrastructures.

Due to all this, we would like to take the opportunity to clarify the airspace situation:

The approach path to Valencia's airport crosses the race course area, thus being a busy airspace, and restrictions cannot be placed beyond that agreed for official race days. However ACM has spoken to the helicopter companies we work with and have informed them of the sensitivies involved when filming the teams training and infrastructures. They have agreed to keep us informed whenever one of their helicopters will be chartered to get images of the port and the race course area, information which in turn we will pass on to the teams. We hope you understand that such collaboration can only be extended to the companies we work with and that we cannot be notified of all the airspace activity.

Finally on behalf of [ACM's] Julian Hocken, please find below further information on the rules governing the airspace:

Race day restrictions are set out in the Carta de Acuerdo between V07 and AENA (copy attached), and procedures in our own Air Operations Manual.

[Click here for the "AENA_carta de acuerdo America's Cup" - ingles.pdf.]

Outside official racing days observance of the Rules of the Air (ICAO Annex 2) and good airmanship should be enough for our purposes.

In this case key to the Rules of the Air are the Low Flying Regulations (Rule 5)

(i) Flight over Congested Areas

A congested area in relation to a city, town or settlement, means any area which is substantially used for residential, industrial, commercial or recreational purposes.

An aircraft (other than a helicopter) must not fly over a congested area:

+ below a height that would allow it to land clear of the area and without danger to people or property if an engine fails; or

+ less than 1,000 feet above the highest fixed object within 600 metres of the aircraft, whichever is the higher

A helicopter must not fly below a height that would allow it to land without danger to people or property if an engine fails. Nor (except with the written permission of the relevant Authority) may it fly over a congested area at less than 1,000 feet above the highest fixed object within 600 metres.

(ii) The 500 ft rule

An aircraft must not fly closer than 500 feet to any person, vessel, vehicle or structure.


One of the questions that will be asked at tomorrow's CC meeting is why, if the helicopter was filming only "to get images of the coast and the port's infrastructures", did it overfly a number of Challengers including hovering at length above Mascalzone Latino Capitalia Team? According to an interview that ran on the Eurosport website yesterday with MLCT chairman Vincenzo Onorato, at the time of the incident Masclazone's yachts were training twelve miles offshore. Another question will be why the event authority was not informed of such an extensive helicopter operation over the PAC; or, if they were, why did they not advise the teams of the operation and instruct the heli not to overfly teams?