"CASA chief executive Shane Carmody said they believed it was “appropriate to establish a regulatory baseline that provided clarity regarding an appropriate minimum safety standard”.
Err don't those standards already exist? Private pilots are trained, tested and licenced under regulations and standards CAsA enforces.
Is Mr Carmody trying to say they have no confidence that their regulations and standards make private flying safe? If not why not?
Maybe he should stop beating around the bush and say he believes "Private flying is Unsafe in Australia".
What other countries have specific regulations for community service flights?
A little bit of scratching around the web revealed some interesting Data.
Angel flights, or their equivalents, seem to be worldwide phenomena, more so in the USA and Canada.
I guess that would only to be expected considering their GA industries are valued and have not been regulated out of business by rapacious regulators.
The ethos in the USA and Canada being foster and promote, educate and consult backed with sensible easy to comprehend regulations, rather than the regulate and prosecute approach which applies in Australia. They’re also safer than we are!! Goodness how do they do that?
In Canada over 12,500 Angel flights are conducted every year, without incident. Considering the atrocious weather conditions they have to contend with, a remarkable achievement.
In the USA there are various charities throughout the country that conduct Angel Flight type operations,Angel Flight being by far the biggest organisation.
Angel Flight USA and its affiliates conduct over 34,000 flights every year, all over the country.
Angel Flight Australia conducts around 4000 flights per year.
Wikipedia list only six accidents worldwide since 2008 of Angel Flight aircraft, two of those in Australia.
These statistics would suggest to me that there are some fundamental flaws in CAsA's risk analysis processes, if they actually have one.
By its reaction to two accidents is CAsA admitting they have no confidence in the standards they set? perhaps its an admission their oversight of those standards is deficient? Or maybe a knee jerk reaction to two accidents which all the regulation in the world would not have prevented, but perhaps a bit of communicate, collaborate, educate not over regulate might have.
Bob Katters quote of the week
“CAsA HAS DOWNED MORE AIRCRAFT THAN THE RED BARON”
Little video for you in a country where General aviation is valued and utilised.