I have abstracted myself from this thread because this subject always ends up in a bi-lateral discussion between myself and nosig. Today I am glad to see we have a wider audience.
Couple of points.
LL I empathise with your frustrations but castigating the SRG as "CAA are mainly Pilots and only care about Pilots" is not helpful. JAR-OPS has contributed to significant changes in attitude within the authority and auditing has evidenced the difference between operators with good operations support and those without. However old attitudes die hard and pilots still have to pick up the mess created by poorly trained ops staff. The work load burden on pilots that this creates is a threat to air safety, in my mind a serious one. The real blame for this is not pilots but senior management in the shape of Accountable Managers. Their complete ignorance of most matters JAR has lead them to take "cost effective" measures like the out sourcing of ops quote "all they do is send off computer flight plans, anyone can do that". The resulting mayhem that this policy caused resulted in this operators demise. Ask yourself how many AM's out there have had formal training? How many of them know JAR-OPS 1.175(h)?
NS and TBE. I am working on a scheme to provide training for G-OPS staff in accordance with the ICAO 7192 (D3) syllabus. I will bring this upto date though the basics need no change. I will attend a meeting soon to finalise the plans. As for applying pressure - try getting the co-operation of your flight ops management by getting pilots to stop supporting Ops - it must be the other way around.
I suggest that we (post holders) get together with all the FOI's and discuss our case. I think we will get sympathetic ears especially now that EU-OPS and EASA are involved. Please join me with your support. Get out there and start spreading the word - change is going to happen.
Rgds
EM