Elimination of periodic air tests in UK CofA GA aircraft.
As most UK flight testers will know, the UK-CAA has decided to eliminate periodic air tests (mostly they were done about the star-annual) for EASA administered CofA aeroplanes. This seems to be a UK interpretation of an EASA procedure, but is pretty much consistent with the rest of Europe's longstanding practice.
There have been a lot of grumblings about this, and many people are convinced that this is an anti-safety decision. Now I'm sure CAA wouldn't make such a decision if there was evidence to suggest that it was unsafe - but on the other hand the majority of air-test snags never get reported. CAA would only ever see a report either (a) when it's been sorted, or (b) if it's severe enough that it can't be readily sorted requiring Gatwick to be called - a rare occurrence.
So there doesn't seem to be formal evidence as to whether there is, or is not, a problem. Being of an inquisitive state of mind, I'd like to know.
To do this, one would need sight of the private records /logbooks of some of the more busy air-test pilots under the old regime, so as to see..
(a) what they flew?
(b) for each test, what or whether any faults were found?
Would anybody be amenable to opening their records for me to take a look? I'm happy to give credit or anonymity depending upon personal preference, but would just like to get to an answer and put it in the public domain.
I confess that I personally also think that it's an anti-safety decision - I do a fair number of annex II (PtF) annual air tests and have found a fair number of faults not identifiable on the ground, and don't see that a CofA will stop that happening necessarily. I've also seen CofA aeroplanes out of maintenance with problems that would have been picked up on a properly conducted air-test, and anecdotal evidence suggests that I'm not alone. But, I'm more than willing to put my hand up and say I'm wrong - if the evidence is there to do so.
Anybody like to help? I am really only interested in GA by the way - personally I think that the level of oversight of an airliner negates the issue, but if I'm wrong, there's only so much I can worry about at a time anyhow, and I am mostly a light aviation bod.
G