Originally Posted by
Mr Proach
Doesn't the situation described by GF above support the case to create an interactive APP/Program. It is evident, the reliance on scrolls of legal script to provide "rules" in a timely manner is futile. As incredible as it is, this system nullifies the very purpose of it's existence. The creation a 'Parts" APP/Program (whatever you want to call it), should provide the lay people with appropriate up to date guidance and free up the CASA's people to do worthwhile things whilst the legal drafters are taking a ride with "MAJOR TOM" assembling words of "???" that only have real value to their own-kind.
It's difficult to know where to start, Mr P. I'm guessing you haven't been involved in aviation in Australia for long. Not a criticism - just an observation of the naivete your questions and comments disclose.
You're probably labouring under the reasonable misconception that the "very purpose" of the aviation regulatory regime in Australia is safety. That's supposed to be its very purpose and there are undoubtedly many people in CASA who earnestly believe that the ever-increasing volume and complexity of the regulations and manuals of standards and directions and exemptions and approvals and whatever, is causal of ever-increasing levels of safety. The six figure salaries they are being paid year after year after year probably - hmmmmm 'encourages' is probably the right word - encourages them in that belief. They are of course deluded, but while ever Parliament keeps throwing taxpayers money at them, year after year after year, why would they believe or do anything different?
Incredible as it may seem, the "very purpose" of the aviation regulatory regime in Australia is to insulate politicians from any responsibility for an aviation tragedy. CASA is a political insurance policy. The price we pay is the inexorable strangling of general aviation by the regulatory Frankenstein's monster.
Few people understand who Frankenstein is in this metaphor: Frankenstein is the major political parties who created the monster then abdicated responsibility for keeping it under control.
(Airport privatisation and an incompetent bureaucracy that's failed to administer the Airports Act to achieve its stated objects has been very damaging, too. I listened to some bureaucrat the other day in front of a Senate Committee. She's apparently currently responsible for the administration of the Airports Act and will therefore be some SES Band something or other on a six figure salary. She said it was in the interests of Airport owners to have a good relationship with the lessees of property on the Airport. So here we have a person who isn't on 'planet reality' pretending to administer the Airports Act. She doesn't know and probably doesn't care that many Airport owners couldn't give a toss about their relationship with aviation lessees and are happy to foster an acrimonious relationship: they want us all to f*ck off so they can get on with milking a public asset by erecting DFOs and warehouses on every square inch. The runways and aircraft are pesky inconveniences in the way of property development spivs. They're the people with huge wadges of money and therefore have the ear of many a politician.)
Your proposed App has to be programmed by someone who understands the entirety of the regulatory regime. Act, CARs, CASRs, CAOs, MOSs, Exemptions, Directions etc, etc, etc. I reckon there's only one person on the planet who could come close to pretending to understand it.
If you think the App could be programmed by someone sitting at a table full of CASA 'experts' and asking them what the rules require in a particular set of practical circumstances, good luck with that. You'll need to schedule a decade or so - make it three. You may have heard about Westwind VH-NGA that ditched just off the coast of Norfolk Island. CASA's Flying Operations Inspectors were split around 50/50 on the question whether the pilot was obliged under the rules to divert at an earlier point in flight in the then-prevailing circumstances. That's the CASA flying ops brains trust all applying the same rules to the same factual scenario and coming to diametrically opposed views on whether the pilot was obliged to divert. Imagine how many opinions you'd get on a complicated question.
Extraordinarily happy to be proved wrong. Very happy to volunteer to do some Beta testing on the App.