Vag:
Sunfish
AOPA in the US has a significant difference to AOPA here and many parts of the Australian GA community. It does not scream abuse at the regulator or anyone else who seems to disagree with what seems to me to be an "entitlement" attitude.
In many cases the attitude expressed is also based on hear say. For instance, have you ever had a personal dealing with a CASA person? Do you have personal experience or just PPRuNe as the basis for your views? What have you done to "market" GA to the wider community?
If we as aviators are to be seen as credible to politicians and the public, we also have to be prepared to listen and negotiate on the basis of facts,not emotion.
Unfortunately the available evidence, for example the Forsyth review, indicates that rational fact based argument has utterly failed to change the behaviour of the regulator or its products except at the margins. This is not a criticism of CASA. CASA can only do what it’s “owners” will give it permission to do and that does NOT include meaningful reform.
We need to go back to first principles. One of the oldest evolutionary traits in our branch of the primate tree, right next to the fight or flight reflex, is a healthy fear of falling from height. In addition, we as humans are not very good a judging risks. In particular, we have a tendency to confuse the ease of imagining a certain risk with its actual probability. That is why we worry excessively about children being abducted and sexually assaulted by total strangers instead of worrying about them taking off a seatbelt while driving. Which risk translates into more injured children?
Similarly with aviation. I am not the first to point out the public’s fascination with air accidents. Now consider Government. Its primary job is to protect people from risk. An obvious risk is that perceived risk associated with aviation. You and I know that compared to cancer, heart disease and suchlike, the risk of sudden death in an air crash is minimal, as an old acquaintance the scientist Clive Coogan put it; “it’s about as likely as being nibbled to death by a duck”. However the public doesn’t want to know this. Furthermore the Government, overworked as it is, sees no return in trying the impossible task of educating them otherwise. Such an educational program is even more problematic when one considers the likely media and public reaction should we have a major aviation accident resulting in heavy loss of life.
Hence my observation that as far as the general public is concerned, aviation regulation cannot be too strict and any relaxation would be as electorally popular as prison reform. There is no incentive whatsoever for a government to undertake aviation regulatory reform - the general public will look on in horror and the media will crucify the government of the day when an accident occurs -“they changed the rules, and now this happens!” That will be the cry from the media when a Qantas B737 gets into trouble.
So given that the government has no incentive for reform and, of course thanks to the iron law of institutions, neither does the Department of Transport, how is reform to be achieved? You can fiddle at the margins by rational fact based argument with CASA but that is not going to produce the needed quantum leap to the FAA style laissez faire approach required. Indeed, CASA has just foreshadowed shackling the UAV industry with the same chains the rest of aviation now wears - licensing operators and registering all UAVs over 250 grammes, with annual registration fees to boot! How is that going to help the economy? Reform isn’t going to be internally generated which is perfectly natural, and it is silly to expect CASA to try and make a case for reform even if they had that desire. They will run into that same set of barriers we do with the added risk that their unwelcome overtures would result in budget cuts.
That leaves the only avenue open is the one of giving the politicians a bigger incentive to do something about reform than the incentive to do nothing. In time a major air crash or three might give them an incentive, as it has in the case of the aged care industry, but I think we should not wait for that. It’s immoral. Instead we should focus on giving politicians the greatest incentive possible - electoral self preservation. Please note that such efforts would need to be bipartisan. We want both sides of Parliament equally afraid of an aviation lobby group.