With respect, Glen, you didn’t answer the gist of my questions
The typical role of the CFI on the base became the role of Senior Base Pilot. Underneath them lay the instructors, or in the large schools a team of instructors under a Supervisor.
And who was the employer of the CFI and the instructors (and their Supervisor, when utilised) at each ‘base’?
To make the question clearer, did APTA write wage cheques to and make superannuation contributions for all those people each fortnight? If not, what was the source of APTA’s authority and power to control those people’s operational activities? Were they individually the subject of contracts with ‘someone’ which bound them to comply with APTA’s directions?
APTA may well have had visibility as to what was going on, but what could APTA do about detected problems? Let’s take hypothetical ‘Alliance’ base X that’s been approved and operating under APTA’s certificate for a while. APTA then finds out the instructors are in the habit of allowing students to ‘buzz’ their mother’s homes at 500’ AGL during dual training flights. APTA contacts the CFI / Senior Base Pilot at ‘Alliance’ base X and he says: “Get stuffed”. What does APTA do? Remember: APTA claims to bear responsibility for the operational activities at base X and now knows they are being conducted in breach of the regulations and APTA’s ops manual/exposition.
I’m not suggesting that ever happened in fact. But the important question is what could APTA do about it if it did. That was the gist of the White email regurgitating the LARP stuff.