Genghis the Engineer
9th Jan 2004, 07:43
As a less than impartial watcher of the UK-CAA I've been noticing some marked changes in their approach to life.
Two obvious examples in the news this week are the grounding of numerous Shadows (mostly microlights), and the banning of 8 or so foreign airlines. Accepted both are (presumably) on valid safety grounds, but it's a rather more aggressive approach than we used to see routinely where a gradual nudging of transgressors back onto what CAA saw as the straight and narrow was more normal. The rather severe treatment of private Yaks over the last 4 months or so is another such.
Another thing I've noticed in my own dealings with them is an increasing corporate aggressiveness, not only on the usual things like audits, but also on issues like talking ONLY to your approved point of contact at the authority (or they get rather upset) and great insistence on extreme formality in communication with them (ditto).
I deal with enough different bits of the CAA to be fairly certain that this isn't just one or two individuals that I deal with - I get a strong impression of some major change in internal policy and practice going on. Am I alone in noticing this, and if I'm not, does anybody have any inside gen about what's led to this subtle change in CAA's dealings with the world outside the Belgrano?
G
Two obvious examples in the news this week are the grounding of numerous Shadows (mostly microlights), and the banning of 8 or so foreign airlines. Accepted both are (presumably) on valid safety grounds, but it's a rather more aggressive approach than we used to see routinely where a gradual nudging of transgressors back onto what CAA saw as the straight and narrow was more normal. The rather severe treatment of private Yaks over the last 4 months or so is another such.
Another thing I've noticed in my own dealings with them is an increasing corporate aggressiveness, not only on the usual things like audits, but also on issues like talking ONLY to your approved point of contact at the authority (or they get rather upset) and great insistence on extreme formality in communication with them (ditto).
I deal with enough different bits of the CAA to be fairly certain that this isn't just one or two individuals that I deal with - I get a strong impression of some major change in internal policy and practice going on. Am I alone in noticing this, and if I'm not, does anybody have any inside gen about what's led to this subtle change in CAA's dealings with the world outside the Belgrano?
G