Who makes decisions in CASA?
My claim against CASA is primarily my claim, and hopefully something good for both CASA and industry can come from it. One thing I hope results, is a review of, "who actually makes decisions?"
In the case of my business, consider this. I built it over years with CASA personnel. Those personnel were predominantly from a flight training background. Their input over those many years was knowledgeable, professional, and well intentioned.
You may recall, I was notified by CASA of a change of my CASA oversighting team from CMT 2 to CMT 3. You may recall I had concerns about a person on that new team, and I sent two written requests to the CASA Regional Manager seeking a one on one ON THE RECORD meeting with the Regional Manager. That meeting proceeded. My concerns were brushed aside, and I was moved under CMT 3.
The members of the new CMT team, CMT 3 (containing the CASA employee I had raised concerns about) then begun their relentless reversal of policy application and initiated restrictions on my ability to trade.
Interestingly, all of the people that decided to work so tenaciously to bring APTA down, none of them had any flying training expertise. Their is no doubt that they were respected subject matter experts in their respective fields i.e. cabin crew training, aircraft maintenance, navigators etc.
Mr Crawford, being the senior executive in CASA responsible for CASAs chosen course of action must have drawn on someone from within the organisation that was a Subject Matter Expert (SME) on Flying Training, Part 61, Part 141 and Part 142.
Which person in CASA would be the CASA SME that Mr Crawford drew on for guidance. Perhaps their wasn't one. Perhaps emotion overtook good governance.