1 of 20
As stated previously I do intend to start outlining my experience with CASA. I am expecting a report from the CASA Industry Complaints Commissioner to be presented today, and the results of that will be informative. I will outline the journey over 20 posts, and label them accordingly, to hopefully make it easier to follow. I appreciate that this will be long and detailed, and perhaps of limited interest. However, if you are an existing business owner,or a prospective business owner in the aviation sector, I feel this is important. I welcome any feedback, and call on anyone to challenge anything I say, and I will provide the required supporting evidence.
A couple of ground rules that I want to lay down before I commence.
CASA operate under the Australian Coat of Arms, and that places the highest obligations on the people that work within that organisation. The Coat Of Arms is the Australian Governments seal of quality. The taxpaying public and industry stakeholders are quite reasonable to have a high expectation of that Organisation. An expectation of good governance, ethics, and fairness is a reasonable expectation.
When I refer to CASA, I am not referring to the 900 personnel that work within CASA. The vast majority of them are exceptional people, and highly professional, and Industry will most likely concur with that assertion. The Organisation has almost no accountability however, and that permits an environment where bad ethics can creep in, and people can act for motivations that are not safety or compliance related. The culture of any Organisation is set from the top, and that is where the accountability must lie.
CASA is required to achieve "clear and concise aviation safety standards". It is a requirement placed on them in the Act, as one of their core functions. It is not a "nice to achieve", its actually a requirement. A recent poll on pprune with over 900 respondents suggested the following. 97% voted that CASA have failed to achieve clear and concise aviation safety standards, 2% voted that CASA have succeeded, and 1% were undecided. That really is a staggering figure. Consider any organisation that had feedback from 97% of its customers or stakeholders, that it had failed against its core function. That alone, should prompt a Royal Commission.
Anyway, that's the end of post 1/20, and I will return with post 2/20. Thanks again for the support, cheers. Glen
By the way KP , my first post contained my correspondence to CASA. If it was the start of the journey, I would concur with your sentiments. It is however the tale end of a 6 month battle which I will outline here. By the time I have finished post 20, and outlined my experience, I would be genuinely appreciative of your opinion.
Last edited by glenb; 11th Apr 2019 at 22:23.
Reason: addition for KP