The reason pilots in Oz gets so annoyed is that that it doesn’t stop at one stupid rule. They come up with them time after time after time.
If it were one stupid rule people would cope and get on with it. But no sooner is one rule promulgated, complained about, sorted out than another appears.
And some of the rule changes are so obviously brain-dead that they should never have seen the light of day.
Non-Oz list members may not be aware but about a year or so back it became illegal for pilots to clean dirty windscreens. Only LAME’s could do it. This came about because they changed the rules to one where pilots could only perform tasks which appeared on a list of allowed tasks. And you guessed it cleaning dirty windscreens was not on the list.
One CASA official in the NT actually said to a journalist from Autralian Flying magazine that he considered an aircraft with a dirty windscreen was unairworthy and that the pilot was not allowed to clean it. He had to get a LAME out to do it, even if he was out on some dirt strip in the middle of the NT. He further stated he was prepared to enforce that rule in his area.
I think that it got sorted out but only after a lot of complaining.
MaxNG - Duty of Care is a bandied around term that doesn’t apply to CASA – the courts have deemed that it applies to the pilot!
Red Wine - The problem of acquiescing and getting an MA rather than complain is the every MA costs time and money (not just the $40 or whatever to CASA – my LAME’s time costs money too so to get the "required training" etc will end up costing a lot more) and further encourages the nit-picking and “I make the rules”ethos that seems to pervade CASA.
Last year it was an MA to clean windscreens, this year an MA to put the duals in a Robbie what next year?