UK Offence Report

Prohibition on flights

regulation 4 of The Yugoslavia (Prohibition of Flights) (No. 2) Regulations 1999

This offence was read from the text as made, and no revised version was available, so a later revocation could not be ruled out. Check the current text at legislation.gov.uk.

What the provision says

4 Save where article 102 (Restriction with respect to carriage for valuable consideration in aircraft registered outside the United Kingdom) of the Air Navigation (No. 2) Order 1995 is contravened, any person operating an aircraft which takes off from or lands in the United Kingdom contrary to article

1 of the Council Regulation shall be guilty of an offence under these Regulatons.

Text as made, from legislation.gov.uk. © Crown copyright, reused under the Open Government Licence v3.0. This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.

Who it binds, and what has to be proved

Binds
a person
Conduct
contravening a requirement of the instrument
Fault element
Strict liability
Burden of proof
No statutory defence — prosecution proves everything

The prosecution must prove that the conduct happened. This is a strict liability offence as drafted: the provision uses no word of intention, knowledge, recklessness or negligence, so there is no need to show that a person meant to do it, knew about it, or was careless.

Intention, knowledge and carelessness are irrelevant to guilt. They may still matter a great deal to sentence.

The provision states no defence, so the prosecution bears the burden on every element of the offence.

Classifier’s reasoning: no word of intention, knowledge, recklessness or negligence in the offence or its provision; other provisions of the same instrument use a mens rea word while this one does not (the Cundy v Le Cocq contrast).

What would breach regulation 4?

These are illustrations, not law. They are generated from the provision’s own words to show the shape of the offence. Whether any particular conduct is caught depends on the full text, on any amendment since, and on the facts.

  1. Doing the thing the provision prohibits under the Yugoslavia (Prohibition of Flights) (No. 2) Regulations 1999, whatever the reason for doing it.
  2. Where the requirement is a positive duty, letting the time for performing it pass without performing it.

Penalty

Mode of trial
Either way — magistrates’ court or Crown Court
Maximum fine
£5,000
Maximum prison (summary)
Not determined
Maximum prison (on indictment)
2 years

expressed as the statutory maximum (the prescribed sum): the same words mean £5,000 in England and Wales and £10,000 in Scotland.

Sentencing

Offences of this kind are usually sentenced under the guidelines below. This is a mapping by subject, not a finding about this provision, and the links go to a search of the Sentencing Council’s own site.

Prosecution figures

No published per-offence figure was found for this provision, and it could not be matched to a Ministry of Justice offence code. Offences created by statutory instrument very largely do not have one. Absence of a figure is not evidence that the offence is unused.

Status and lifecycle

Current status
Status not determined
Made
24 November 1999
In force from
20 December 1999
Extent
Not stated

How this was established: read from the text as made; no revised version available, so later revocation could not be ruled out.

What the instrument is for

(This note is not part of the Regulations) — the explanatory note published with the instrument, © Crown copyright.

These Regulations specify the sanctions that may be imposed where the following provisions of Council Regulation (EC) No. 2151/1999 imposing a ban on flights between the European Community and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia other than authorised flights serving the Republic of Montenegro or the Province of Kosovo. Those provisions are those set out— a in article 1, which prohibits the take off from or landing in the United Kingdom of— aircraft operated, directly or indirectly, by a Yugoslav carrier aircraft registered in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia civil aircraft operated for commercial or private purposes if it has taken off from or is destined to land in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. b in article 5, which prohibits the participation, knowingly and intentionally, in related activities, the object or effect of which is, directly or indirectly, to circumvent the provisions of articles 1 and 2 of the Council Regulation. These sanctions do not apply where article 102 of the Air Navigation (No. 2) Order 1995 is contravened. Council Regulation (EC) 2151/1999 superseded Council Regulation (EC) No. 1064/1999, which prohibited any civil aircraft being flown to or from anywhere in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and exempts from the previous ban flights by Montenegro Airlines, whose fleet carries Yugoslavian registration, and non-Federal Republic of Yugoslavia airlines operating to the Republic of Montenegro or the Province of Kosovo.

Read the full note and every offence in this instrument

Other offences in the same instrument

How this was identified as an offence

Everything above rests on the judgement that this provision creates a criminal offence, rather than mentioning one. That judgement is made by rule, from the words of the provision, and this is the rule that made it — with a confidence of 0.92.

Basis
the provision says a person is “guilty of an offence”
Confidence
0.92 of 1.00

A provision that states a penalty for an offence created elsewhere can read very like one that creates an offence, and the rules can mistake the one for the other. If the text quoted above sets a penalty for something made an offence by another provision, treat the classification on this page with that in mind, and read the instrument.

Check the source