Fed Sec, if I as a LAME read an EA in hold for something like the above and decide I wont sign out a RTS where do I stand given we know how qantas feels and that CASA are either impotent,completely under staffed, dont care , or stand shoulder to shoulder with qantas on this ??
Will I be bent over and reamed for trying to exercise my judgement of safety in either refusing to sign off initially on the EA once issued or refusing to sign a RTS upon reading the hold items during turn around?
The problem that we face in the industry is that a combination of different laws and powers (or lack of) that particular bodies hold, conspire against us when we want to do things safely.
CASA have approved Qantas to issue EA's and change change procedures as they like. When you are given an EA that says for example "we are waiving the dual inspection requirement" or "we will defer a mandatory safety check" or "we give you a one off approval to certify for a task that you are not trained on", you can legally do what is instructed no matter how unsafe you think the practice is.
Qantas are now issuing these authorities like footy cards and we have written to CASA for them to intervene. They always, and I mean every single time we have written to them, sided with the airline and allowed pratices that we say are unsafe, illegal and dangerous.
Supporting the orders for staff to carry out unsafe practices that in many cases are illegal, are workplace laws that can subject LAMEs to fines if they do not do as they are ordered by their bosses who in many cases are not LAMEs. When things go wrong (such as a towing accident at Avalon) the LAMEs are still held accountable as the overall person in charge of particular maintenance procedures.
The mix of laws, unqualified managers demanding that LAMEs take responsiblity for functions that they say are unsafe and CASA who couldn't give a rats ar$e what Qantas do will lead to accidents.
We will be getting these issues out there in the public and hopefully rectified before it is too late.