I’m a relatively rare visitor to this site but I see that my name has come up lately in the forum and I’d like to make a few points clear.
While my industry contacts are reasonably confident that initiatives recently taken by the Director will be followed by others with the same potential to clean up the mess, I am in doubt that many in the industry or in CASA will ever understand the size and scope of the misconduct and incompetence that has damaged so many businesses, careers, and lives, and so degraded the regulator’s industry and international standing.
Notwithstanding any reversals achieved by the Director’s current and future initiatives, it needs to be understood that CASA sees itself exposed to untold litigation which would be triggered by any admission of responsibility for wrongdoing – and will therefore be averse to resurrecting old issues. This leads to a focus on the “bright new future” image at the expense of injured parties, and an unwillingness to revisit the past. Certainly the perception would be that any attempt to redress them would be an admission of wrongdoing, which could expose the regulator to major lawsuits. This will offer little comfort to (among others) the present or former owners of Aerotropics, Air Bush Charter, Air North, Aquaflight Airways, Arcas Airways, Cape York Air, Crane Air, GCA Australia Pty Ltd, Midstate Airlines, Ord Air Charter, Schutt Aviation, Skytech Aviation Services, Sydney Seaplanes, Uzu Air, Whyalla Airlines, and Yanda Airlines – along with numerous individuals apparently singled out for special treatment.
I assert that I am well aware that some operators and individuals may be less than fully compliant, may be bad businessmen, or suffer from other deficiencies. I am also aware that many of these have never received regulatory attention. (It is a measure of corporate attitude that when I made this statement to a former public affairs official I was told that it was my obligation as a member of the “aviation community” to disclose anything I knew!)
However, because of the awesome power bestowed on a CASA “delegate” and the negligible oversight of resulting activities when the wrong kind of individual is appointed, it has really only been necessary in the past for a “delegate” to form an opinion that an individual should be hounded out of the industry and it’s as good as done. The penalties that can be imposed on a certificate holder by (for example) a licence or certificate suspension will normally be incalculably more severe than a the outcome of a prosecution at law – and the perpetrators well know it.
For example, I recently did the industry a disservice by pointing out in an editorial that individuals within CASA can simply shut an operator down by unreasonably withholding or withdrawing a chief pilot approval. That has been increasingly the course which some such individuals have taken, because (unlike suspensions or cancellations of certificates) the “delegate” is fully empowered to withhold or withdraw an approval without reference to any other individual. It would be interesting to compare the acceptance of a highly experienced chief pilot nomination by a major airline – a single telephone call I have been told – with more recent events in which a delegate clearly stepped outside his own area of expertise to obstruct the acceptance of a chief pilot, thereby throwing an operator of a large number of aeroplanes and a major employer of pilots into chaos and causing the loss of major international contracts the operator has serviced for years.
I would also like to respond to comments by the regulator which accuse me of various violations of a journalist’s obligations, see
http://casa.gov.au/media/2005/letter05-01-11a.htm and
http://casa.gov.au/media/2005/letter05-01-11.htm:
The content of the two letters to are similar and the following remarks apply in the main to both.
The material for the article was collected from a number of well-known industry identities with strong backgrounds in regulatory development, most of whom did not wish to be named because they hold various CASA approvals and certificates which are essential to their businesses. However because the material was filed in mid-October to a 10 week lead time, following a call from DOTRS I was concerned that something of a material nature might have changed in the interim. So I phoned the CASA media relations manager who made some inquiries, rang back, and confirmed:
• "Nobody in CASA has raised this issue yet, it was just raised by a person from the department";
• "There has been no change beyond the normal NPRM process, the only thing that has changed is that Bruce Byron announced in late November that a 'regulatory advisory panel' would provide an additional step in the consultation process and the maintenance NPRM will have to go before one of these panels. However that's not designed to delay things, it'll pretty much run in parallel with the other process anyway. Apart from that there has been no other change. The establishment of the panels isn't designed to put anything further back."
• "The panel however may of course come back and say it's all a load of [inaudible] and we want it changed."
• "From the point of view of DOTRS, we haven't announced that the maintenance suite NPRM process has been halted or suspended, or anything at all at this point, the NPRM stands, comment closed in December and the comments will be examined. So subject to input from the panel, nothing has changed at this point."
• [A CASA official] just told me it's continuing as per schedule, and Bill [McIntyre's] absence hasn't changed the schedule at this juncture.
• "On the basis of that I don't think that anything has changed, and [DOTRS] may have jumped the gun a bit. So if whatever you've written at this point is a statement of what's currently out there, it is still valid."
I don’t wish to thump my chest too much but the following are relevant
• My industry background comes from 45 years of (mostly commercial) flying, and senior flight operations and head office management roles with a major regional airline.
• I don’t write this kind of material from my imagination, but from observation, and from the thousands of contacts I have at all levels of all aviation-related industries, who trust me to reflect their situation and opinions. The fact that I have become to some extent focused on regulatory affairs is due to the vast volume of related documentation that reaches me because it is appreciated that people who understand the issues, believe I report accurately on these events.
• People who believe I am biased against CASA as an organisation, have probably spent too much time listening to one another over a cup of taxpayer-supplied coffee, and not enough time listening to the industry which is their raison d'etre. Even if a government organisation is doing the best job in the world, it has a problem if it is the perception of its client base that it is not performing according to its obligations. I'm actually pro-CASA, and have a lot of friends within the organisation. I acknowledge having a regulator is inevitable, just like death and taxes, but CASA will never be able to deliver on its obligations unless the many individuals within it who have created the mess it's in are identified and neutralised.
• Among other issues industry is urging the strongest possible continued pressure on the "maintenance suite" issue because people in CASA are (unbelievably) still saying all that's needed is a bit of "tweaking around the edges." This is called "denial," a phenomenon still quite evident around Northborne Avenue. I would like to make the point that most of the denials contained in the letters were unexplained and non-specific rejections without supporting argument.
• The material was written about three months earlier, and in the intervening period there wasn't any announcement that suggested anything had changed.
• Contrary to statements from DOTRS that "the regs have now been recalled," CASA has confirmed that the "maintenance suite" of draft regulations has not been withdrawn.
• In evaluating the maze of draft legislation, I rely not on my own very limited expertise in legal drafting and rule development; I draw on industry people, either with coalface experience or with strong backgrounds in regulatory development and intimate knowledge of the processes and mistakes since 1966. My commentary on the implications and consequences of badly drafted legislation, which moves Australia further away from international standardisation, intelligibility, interoperability, simplicity and effectiveness, is not something I have dreamed up; it is an accurate reflection of the mood of a very concerned industry.
• Since becoming aware of an apparent campaign to discredit my material, I have taken the trouble to explore with three individuals who know far more about it than I do, the labyrinth of draft legislation. They have satisfied me that the tenor of the quotes and comments in my articles is consistent with the situation that currently obtains, and with the mood of the industry with very few exceptions. One exception we have identified is understood to be an applicant for a position with CASA.