Chris 2303, #37
“CAA … Surely they bear some responsibility”
Responsibility, yes. But life is grey; what is responsibility, why or how to proportion responsibility.
With hindsight every ‘player’ could intervene, but it is difficult to identify slow change or specific outcomes before hand.
The CAAs’ tasks are equivalent to those asked of operators and pilots; understand the situation and select a course of action, awareness, workload, monitoring - all as in the safety notice.
Decisions follow awareness. Following the introduction of A320 it was suggested that the type should have a specific instrument rating; it was the exception. Nowadays that technology is the norm, the exceptions are legacy aircraft.
Who identifies the significance of this difference and decides on a course of action; probably the authorities, but that should not exclude everyone else.
New from old is easier to judge - adapt to the new; however, new back to old is retrograde, more difficult to justify, it depends on assumptions that the standards of human performance are maintained, and those which are currently trained still apply to the older technologies.
We have same-type differences ratings upwards, but retrograde … …
Thus everyone should continuously review the assumptions in operation, old and new; that is what the safety notice asks …, but who asks the CAA.