Glen Buckley and Australian small business -V- CASA

[glenb]

Dear Dr Aleck

Dear Dr Aleck,



I refer back to the initial notification from CASA dated 23/10/18 CASA ref f14/9540 and attached.



In that correspondence, CASA proposed to reject the addition of Latrobe Valley Aero Club to be added.



Immediately prior to Latrobe Valley Aero Clubs application to join APTA, it had been operating under the Air Operator Certificate of another organisation for a protracted period of time. This was done with the full knowledge and support of CASA.



I felt that the APTA concept, provided a number of improvements over the other system provided by the previous Authorisation Holders where there was a poor relationship between the two organisations, no dedicated safety department, and as you would be aware we had designed a system referred to as Flight School Manager. This gave us high levels of oversight, and in fact I suggest that nothing in Australia to date had provided such levels of oversight. You will recall that we also provided CASA with access to the FSM system, so for the first time ever in Australia, CASA could access all aspects of operations immediately rather than conducting an onsight inspection. This included Flight and Duty records, predictive maintenance tracking, all maintenance issues, and in fact every aspect of flying school operations. Unlike the previous arrangement with the other authorisation holder, we also had staff on site that were under the direct employment of APTA.



For clarity, can you please outline why the other Authorisation Holders oversight had been permitted, although our system was not acceptable to CASA.





Thankyou in anticipation of a response, as requested by the Commonwealth Ombudsman,



Respectfully, Glen Buckley