... airtest has to be carried out on pilot availabilty when the weather and conditions are not conducive to optimum climb rates ...
.. but that's the whole point .. you're wasting your time and shouldn't even bother turning and burning ... go to the pub and come back when you have nice stable air sitting overhead. Going flying is a waste of time and the data prove not much at all other than we went for a fly ...
Again sometimes this simply cannot be practical, if say the Aircraft is out of C of A....... Now in the old days a year or so back, I could simply self issue a fitness to fly and the aircraft could then do an airtest, ferry to a place of maintenance etc........
But post EASA that is no longer the case...something that is a backwards step as you now have to send off an appplication, the CAA has to look at it and once upon a time forward it to EASA to get signed then it had to come all the way back to me before it could fly........ This is fine in theory, but if it requires several tests over a period of time say to rectify such as the above then it could draw out to months simply to get the paperwork in place. This means you try to get the airtest in before the certificate expires hoping that the aircraft passes even if the day is warmer than you would like.
Fine but at the end of the day what does that achieve? All I can see is it achieves extra bureaucracy and red tape whilst generating several layers of extra pen pushers....They must have modelled it after the NHS....
I could understand it from the point of view we do not want aircraft flying around without a valid C of A all over Europe ..... but again with the ARC the C of A will be continous, even EASA wanting to take the control back from the Engineer certifying it fails, as the only person physically inspecting the aircraft and deeming it to be acceptable is the said Engineer, he then recommends it.
All EASA does is a paper exercise that the responsible Engineer did in the past... A simple system of issuing a fitness to fly by the Engineer would have made more sense, as was carried out in the past......... perhaps requiring a phone call to your local office informing them of the reason for carrying it out so that a reference number to add to the form could be issued by the CAA etc.... this way the ball ache could be taken back out of the system.... EASA would be aware of when tests were taking place and have tracibility of them and the Engineer would simply be signing it on their behalf as was the sae in the past.......