Originally Posted by
Bend alot
Do ops manuals need not be approved by the "regulator" in Canada and are regular audits not carried out on all operators in Canada?
Yes, ops manuals are approved by Transport Canada (TC). However, TC is severely understaffed yet must meet maximum service level times - 90 days for a manual approval - so there are times where mistakes are not caught. This is not the same as saying that TC allows illegal references or procedures though. Despite their reputation, I've found the majority of TC inspectors I've worked with over the years are professionals who wish they had more time to work with the airlines they are charged with overseeing. But when one has thirty companies to oversee over a geographical region larger than Europe, it makes it hard (and expensive) to go see them all, especially when one has other duties thrown upon them by rotating governments.
As far as audits go, you can thank SMS for destroying those. As great as SMS is and can be, one downside is that TC now spends its limited monetary resources on those companies who need more oversight at the expense of "good" companies. This results in some air operators not seeing their TC Principle Operations Inspector (POI) for up to three years. A lot of garbage can get into ops manuals, ops control systems, SOPs, etc in a three-year period that suddenly turns a great company into a problem company, for no other reason than time has passed.