Clarification of a few matters
I just want to make clear a few points at this stage if I may.
If you refer to the initial notification.
There was, and never has been an allegation by CASA that we did not have full operational control that I am aware of. It was only ever an argument that the structure was unlawful. Once the Ombudsman found that it was not illegal, CASAs stance changed somewhat.
It became "CASA has to satisfy itself that an Operator has operational control". I agree 100%. An AOC Holder must have operational control. Of course they must.
CASA having to satisfy themselves that we have operational control is very different from CASAs determination that we did not have operational control (an allegation never made).
In order to determine that we did not have operational control would require some evidence, anything at all. That could be training records not full up to date, pilot recency not fully up to date, unairworthy aircraft being dispatched on flights, not fully and strictly adhering to our CASA approved procedures specified in the Exposition ( Operations manual). Something, absolutely anything to support the decision to reverse an approval that CASA had previously approved.
You will note that CASA has never said that we did not have full operational control, and i challenge them to do so. Remember, this business was fully CASA approved, disregard the name change of the Company only, that same Company had been doing the same thing for a decade. That is delivering multi base, multi entity training. It grew rapidly with the approach of the new legislation, as I knew it would.
In order to prepare for the legislation I invested hundreds of thousands of dollars, and worked with 10 CASA employees developing and massively improving all systems to be ready for the new regulations, as I was.
I appreciate that the recent comments are based very much around operational control.
I had been flying since 1982, and employed in the industry since the mid 90s. I was a Grade One, MEIFR instructor for many years. I operated in that multi base, multi entity structure for many years. Over the years that model improved substantially and the increases in technology made that task far more effective than it had been a decade earlier.
Lets look at one topic only and address "operational control"
Flight and duty Times.
In order to do this I want to make a comparison.
CASA have led the Ombudsman to believe that CASA had never permitted such a structure. There is no doubt that is blatantly false and misleading.
Lets consider Aero Club "A" that wanted to join APTA. Aero Club A had been operating under the AOC of another AOC Holder the day before with full CASA knowledge and approval.
When we considered any new member there was an extensive CASA approved preliminary inspection in our procedures. That procedure highlighted a significant deficiency with flight and duty times. The CASA accepted system to date had been manually entered and written, flight and duty times. They were many weeks behind schedule, and appeared to have some discrepancies. Significantly, there was no way to check the impacts of the past flight and duty times prior to departing on a flight. If there was a breach it would most likely only be picked up well after the breach occurred. As the acceptable method was a written method, and instructor would have little difficulty in adjusting those times, to ensure the breach disappeared. CASA would check those flight and duty times annually during an audit.
Under APTA, those flight and duties were promptly bought up to date and all historical information transferred into the APTA flight and duties, of which every pilot at every base was incorporated into the one system. The system automatically populated the times and would prevent an instructor signing out. The system also had a predictive capability, where all lessons had lesson times with buffers. It would alert the instructor if there was trend towards a breach.. There could be no fudging of flight and duties because the instructor had no control over times, dates, duration etc. In effect, a breach could not happen and in fact i don't believe that we had any breaches in the last 20,000 hours of flying. Consider also that CASA checked Aero Club As flight and duties annually. Under our system, CASA was provided full access, so CASA personnel could simply log in and check all flight and duties in real time, as well as all maintenance issues, training records, overdue flights, pilot qualifications etc etc etc.
The point being, I maintain that i had operational control, and that it is incumbent on CASA to determine that we did not have operational control, and to provide any evidence at all to support such a substantive determination
Cheers. Glen
I am still awaiting CASAS release under FOI of my request for our submitted request for our applications for both AVIA and LTF. Mr Aleck claims that CASA first became aware in October 2018.