Keith,
While I may be talking "tosh" and am only an outside observer wrt microlights, perhaps you should pay a visit to Wantage and ask the manufacturer who is having to make structural repairs at their factory to a certain microlight type how is it that aircraft with structural defects are being flown in for repair?
Or better still ask those operators who fly the aircraft in, how they deemed the aircraft to be fit for flight with a structural member disconnected through cracking?
The reason why I am familiar with that case is because I was at an airfield the day they found the crack. I was more shocked to discover that rather than trailer the aircraft to the factory, it was flown there.
It is cases like that that make observers like myself think that the AAIB were only skimming the surface.
The fact that there was a senior member of the BMAA presenting themselves for an instructor renewal flight test and proposing to the FI examminer to fly at a weight above the maximum allowed and then creating a fuss because the FIE refused along with the latest information that "it is up to individual instructors if they want to fly within the maximum weight limitations or not"........all leads me to expect that there are many large instructors out there that take large trial flight people up in aircraft that are above the allowed weights (either seat or MTOW limitations). Thus they are uninsured, illegal and open to claims if something goes wrong even if it is unrelated. The BMAAs "it is up to the individual" is simply not suficiently strong guidance.
---------
The difference to me between the BMAA and the PFA system is that the BMAA is the one where members of the public pay for the ability to fly in a permit to fly aircraft (trial flights). Thus I believe that it should have the more rigerous oversight system in those areas.
If people want to build their own aircraft, maintain it to a poor standard and kill themselves then that is up to them. That is why I see no serious problem with single seat unregulated microlights restricted to class G airspace. However, expecting the paying public to fly in aircraft that for whatever reason may not be what is advertised is a different matter.
-------
Bar Shaker,
I am not a Policeman and thus have no responsibility to report matters to the CAA that have no safety effect on me. However, the microlight industry is not that big and the example I used above is easily checked by Keith if he chooses to do so.
Could the fact that microlighting has been taken from a totally unregulated industry to the current situation of limited regulation present a situation where there are people within the industry who remember the "freedom" of unregulation and try to retain such "freedoms" as much as possible even if it means bending a few rules or doing what outsiders might considder dangerous when compared to the more regulated parallel areas of aviation?
Personally, having spent some time looking at the idea I can't see how one can make money by operating a school in the microlight industry unless corners are cut.
Regards,
DFC