ATSA Licensing

[Spitoon]

Connex, in your last post you have documented very clearly why some units are not as good as others at dealing internally with competence.

I don't disagree that having someone from the CAA visiting the unit largely removes the personal element from any unpleasant discussions but they only visit occasionally. The rest of the time it's up to the unit managers and staff. This requires a professional attitude from both managers and staff - the age and experience of the examiner are irrelevant. No-one gets respect for being in a particular post, they earn it by doing their job fairly and well.

You suggest that someone who disagrees with what a local examiner says ends up thinking “what the **&£$** does he/she know about it anyway?”. The same is more true of a CAA examiner – believe me, I speak from experience!

You seem to make a distinction between monitoring continuing competence and an annual competence check. At units in the Local Competence Scheme, the annual check is done by someone from the unit - I think it's quite rare these days for a CAA examiner to do it at anything other than a very small unit.

If we are going down the route of local competence checking – and from what I can see of the new controller’s licence, this is going to become the norm – what becomes more important is that the unit management are competent to do their jobs. It would be nice to think that the CAA would check them out once in a while – but, of course, there’s a flaw in all of this. Unit managers don’t need a licence so what can the CAA do if someone isn’t up to the job!

I guess all this isn’t really relevant to your original question, but having given it some thought I needed to get it off my chest! I stand by my point that good unit management makes local competence checking a reality, poor unit management makes it a personality-ridden fudge that brushes ‘problems’ under the carpet.

I once worked at a unit where the boss truly managed the unit, set standards to be followed by LCEs and everyone else. Not everything was wonderful but you knew where you stood. Unfortunately, after being in the business for many years and having worked at a variety of units, I’ve only seen it once.