Glen Buckley and Australian small business -V- CASA

[Lead Balloon]

So my "position" with CASA would be that there is no legislation that prevents an AOC Holder using aircraft from different Registered Operators, and it is in fact and always has been standard industry practice.

I agree. An aircraft either has a valid MR for aerial work (flying training) or it doesn’t. Same goes with IFR etc. The aircraft doesn’t ‘know’ whether it’s being flown by the registered operator or by an employee of the registered operator or by a private hirer or by an instructor employed by someone unrelated to the registered operator or by an unqualified hijacker.

I would also argue that the APTA model provided a greater level of operational control. Because we were not paying the maintenance bills, we had less commercial pressure to influence sub optimal decision making.

I don’t understand that logic.

Operational control, in the sense I’m using it in APTA’s context, is about how APTA would be able, legally and practicably, to control access to and the use of aircraft, monitor compliance with the rules around daily inspections, recording of TIS, endorsement of defects and the consequences of endorsed defects etc etc, when APTA is not the registered operator and the aircraft is being flown by people who aren’t APTA employees, and no APTA employee is within cooee of where all the flying activities are happening. (I won’t rehash all the rogue instructor or entire ‘base’ stuff, but that’s the scenario for which APTA had to have a legal and practical answer.)

All aircraft were fully inducted into the one FSM system, with maintenance more rigidly controlled than had been the Members previous experience.

And what would APTA do, legally and practicably, if it found out that, for example, one of these “fully inducted” aircraft was being operated such that only half of the TIS hours were being recorded in the MR by the ‘base’ instructors, and the adult in charge of that ‘base’ told APTA: “I have complete control of my business. Mind your own business.” How does APTA enter the correct TIS after each flight of that aircraft? Remember: On each occasion on which the correct TIS is not entered, APTA breaches a condition of its AOC, and that’s an offence by APTA.