A thoughtful post
First Principal. Unfortunately, I haven't (yet) seen Wal's post -that's not an easy mag to find here in the West Island. Good to know the 'ol bugger's still hard at 'em!
Regrettably, and despite the frequent rhetoric from the Puzzle Palace, it has been my experience and that of many of my colleagues that CAA's approach towards misdemeanour is
definitely punitive in stance and nature. They still want someone to hang. The latest public 'points rating' system for operators and individual pilots is a classic example, but just a symptom of a trend that has been developing for many years. To a (large) degree, this can be put down to rampant political correctness and the current governments trend towards creating a comprehensively 'nanny state'. Don't forget, the current director could easily be mistaken as merely a
politically acceptable and expedient appointment -not necessarily the person
best qualified for the job or even best suited to manage the administration and development of aviation in NZ.
However, the 'drift' towards ever-more punitive action has been apparent for years. The regulator wishing to appear 'proactive' in public (media)? Reckon so.
Originally Posted by First Principal
...wary of anything that would promote a more prevalent 'them 'n us' attitude between the wider industry and CAA.
Has always been there, reckon it always will be -to a greater or lesser degree. Perhaps less visible of recent years as a consequence of CAA's proclivity for simply using legislation to bludgeon those they don't like out of industry.
I would recommend caution and circumspection making use of the incident reporting system... some operators have been known to use it to 'blame-shift' -file 1st, get your version of events across, the other party is left to defend a pre-existing mindset when CAA question them over the phone or in person. I can provide organisation names, dates and details of some I know of! Again, don't lose sight of the points rating system -these incident reports regardless of severity are recordable. NEVER file against yourself, unless it ABSOLUTELY unavoidable. You merely create a rod for your own back.
NZ used to have a world-class anonymous incident reporting and dissemination system in
Icarus c1990's... can't remember all the reasons for its withdrawl, although I'm pretty sure funding had a lot to do with it, at a time that CAA had a lot of influence over where the funding went... that too was supposed to prevent scurrilous prosecutions whilst ensuring wide dissemination of pertinent safety information.
Personally I reckon that while CAA are carrying on like this, industry
needs to return the favour. Instead of just lying down and taking 'by order of the Director' actions, they all should be challenged through the courts, forcing CAA to justify and defend their actions and prove the actions are appropriate to the situation. Used to be a time AIA would have led the charge in support of industry -now I'm not so sure.