First world problems here.
THIS WOULD NEVER HAPPEN IN PAKISTAN !!!
If you are suggesting that we should tolerate anything less bad than what people have to tolerate in Pakistan, I respectfully take a different view. I realise many in the aviation industry have enormous, existential problems to deal with at the moment, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t question CASA about anything.
Would you be happier if CASA required you to provide them a photograph every 2 years under CASR 61.336 and attached that to the medical record?
What would make me ‘happier’ is if fewer of my interactions with CASA involved insults to my intelligence and integrity.
If all this is about safety and security, CASA must ensure that an identical sibling doesn’t show up for his brother’s medical examination. Photo ID and ARN aren’t going to stop that. Surely that requires DNA tests and records.
And CASA must put systems in place to ensure that someone does not ‘sub in’ to do blood tests and ECGs and other tests. Surely that requires an FOI or other bureaucrat accompanying certificate applicants to those tests. But what if the applicant is secretly carrying samples provided by someone else, that can be substituted behind the toilet door? Surely that requires strip and cavity searches.
(Imagine if someone who doesn’t meet the medical standard is flying around out there in a C172. Imagine the damage that could be done! This ID/medical certification issue demands further measures and the collection of more records by CASA. This is about the safety of air navigation, after all.)
I realise that some people get a great deal of comfort - some even feel extra special - as a consequence of all these kinds of processes. It’s all a part of the mystique of aviation. But the processes only inconvenience the law-abiding (and create busy-work for an expanding bureaucracy). The people who want to get around them will always get around them.
What about if CASA decided to revamp the licence similar to a drivers licence and include a photo? Once upon a time the old licences had a picture of the holder inside the front cover......
The whole folder back then could fit in your shirt pocket - not anymore!!
Depends on what outcomes the photo pilot licence was trying to achieve. It wouldn’t guarantee anything.