CASA NVG Ops

[Capt Under Pants]

Just read the approval of EMQ for NVG ops in Queensland in todays Australian newspaper. Nearly threw up after reading the comments from CASA saying they are striving for safety innovation!
Its amazing how CASA spruke themselves up over this when they were the obstacle for so many years, and still continue to give operators grief over NVG use. If only the true history and facts were published.
Despite this, well done to EMQ. May be, just may be we will start moving forward instead of laging behind the rest of the world.

[rotordriver]

CASA has been ridiculous with their past attitude to NVG use. Finaly a bit of light on subject. haha :ugh:

[Torquer]

CASA has struggled with this issue for a number of reasons;

1. Lack of internal personnel with the requisite experience on NVG's. Case in point, neither of the current project staff have extensive operational or instructional experience on NVG. That makes it difficult to assess external advice or suggested regulation as the internal staff has no background from which to guage the suggestion.
2. The requirements for aircraft to achieve NVG compatibility have been adhoc and predominantly based on rumour and conjecture.
3. Previous advice on this subject has been based on experiences that are almost a decade old. Not pointing fingers, but some of the pushers for this capability in civil aviation have never actually used the stuff in real operations.
4. A dearth of knowledge on minimum training requirements to achieve competency in the subject. Without clear direction or advice, CASA have floundered and taken advice from poorly informed personnel.

There are people and organisations in Australian aviation that are more than ready to be NVG capable. The fact that EMQ is the only one with tacit endorsement so far says more about their government backed assistance than technical competence in this area. And trusting ex-military instructors is not always a good thing.

[topendtorque]

And trusting ex-military instructors is not always a good thing.

A strongly pointed finger!

Are they all inexperienced dunces from that area?

[Torquer]

Are they ALL? Certainly not. Like any job, there's always a couple of tyrekickers out there. With NVG, because of the lack of civil experience with them, if ex-mil staff are employed, then there's a leap of faith taken by the company in question that this person isn't leading them up the garden path. In some cases, there is going to be companies led up unlit paths. In the majority of cases, this may only end up in embarassing dead ends. In some cases, with poor examples set by those trading on reputation rather than competence and experience, these paths can lead literally, to dead ends.

These are delicate times for the future of NVG operations in AS civil aviation. It will only take one serious incident or event in the short/mid term time frame for CASA to baulk at licencing additional companies. It's one aspect of flying that has to be done right, first time, every time.

[topendtorque]

Are they ALL? Certainly not. Like any job, there's always a couple of tyrekickers out there


Glad we got that sorted out.

Given that the military have the quaint view that the day is made up of 24 hours (half of which are dark) and that they must be proficient for the full 24, then I guess just a couple of them may know about this high falutin' NVG stuff.

Especially their ex instructors????

just a silly question.
tet