Again, Glen, I’ll just predict what I reckon CASA will say, and why.
CASA does not need to make any “allegation” about anything when considering whether or not to grant an authorisation. One of the main points of the 13 March 2019 email was that CASA was not then satisfied that APTA did have operational control over all of the ‘alliance’ ‘members’’ activities. Part of that email said:
As a matter of operational control, and integral to the very object of the authorisation[s] involved, CASA must be satisfied that all these considerations have been, and will continue to be, satisfied by the authorisation holder.
To the extent aspects of an authorisation holder’s [read APTA] safety-related functions under the civil aviation legislation might be conducted, for and on behalf of the authorisation holder, by and through separate and independent legal entities [read ‘alliance’ ‘members’], contractually engaged by the authorisation holder for those purposes, CASA would need to be fully satisfied that:
[…blah blah blah…]
In assessing this contract [these contracts], CASA will have regard to the way in which the specific operational activities for which APTA will be accountable, as the authorisation holder, can and will be carried out by the contracted entity, and the bases on which full operational control can and will be maintained by APTA under those arrangements.
…
It was up to APTA to satisfy CASA that APTA had full operational control, not CASA to show that APTA didn’t. Again from the 13 March 2019 email: “[D]emonstrate to CASA’s satisfaction that a particular shortcoming or deficiency does not exist.”
Having visibility into a computer database does not confer authority to operationally control as a matter of law or practicality. And I reiterate that a computer database depends fundamentally on the stuff manually input to it.
I’m sure that you and I and a bunch of like-minded people could set up a flying school tomorrow and, as a matter of objective fact, the flying training activities would be conducted safely and the pilots trained to the requisite level of competence. But herein lies the rub: It would all be in breach of regulatory requirements. And I say again: I’m not defending those requirements; I can’t change them. I’m just trying to prepare you for what I reckon will be the arguments made and the flaws in them.
If I had to bet my bottom dollar, I’d say that this is just the usual right hand not knowing what the left was doing in CASA. One part of CASA was busily authorising the variation of AOCs - not just APTA's - to cover flying training at different locations, without having a proper understanding of the implications for legal and effective control when some of the people, premises and aircraft involved were not the AOC holder’s. Another part of CASA had a holy sh*t moment. That other part contained the bulk of adults actually in charge.
CASA’s ‘Plan A’ was to claim that the APTA structure is simply impermissible under the civil aviation legislation. That plan crashed and burned when someone competent and with integrity apparently read what the legislation actually says. The civil aviation legislation does not prohibit an AOC holder from utilising personnel who are not employees of the AOC holder, or premises of which the AOC holder is not owner or lessee, or aircraft of which the AOC holder is not the owner or registered operator, in the conduct of operations under the AOC. (But those arrangements raise the legal and effective control issue…)
So CASA’s ‘Plan B’ was effectively as described in CASA’s 13 March 2019 email. That email imposed a task that could have gone on forever with unlimited costs. That drove you to despair and broke.
But the elephant in the room remained (and remains) that variations to APTA’s AOC had previously been granted to authorise these kinds of arrangements, without CASA having made ATPA go through the process imposed by the 13 March 2019 email. Thus CASA wants to keep up the pretence that it did not become aware of the details of the APTA structure until late 2018 and that the structure was novel. (The 13 March 2019 email uses the language: “the novelty of the approach APTA proposes”.) The truth is in my view that CASA was at least on constructive notice of the details, from – at the latest – the point at which CASA considered the first variation application to cover an additional ‘base’. That’s the process during which the gist of the 13 March 2019 email should have been explained to APTA. And it should have been explained to any other AOC holder who ever wanted to conduct activities utilising personnel who are not employees of the AOC holder, or premises of which the AOC holder is not owner or lessee, or aircraft of which the AOC holder is not the owner or registered operator – all which activities occur, frequently. But CASA doesn’t have the corporate integrity to admit the earlier mistakes.