CAA - Nothing for your Money
The UK CAA seems to have finally admitted that it is not in the business of providing a service to its customers.
In an article in the July issue of ‘International Flight Training’, Ron Elder, the head of personnel licensing in the CAA’s Safety Regulation Group loses his temper at those members of the aviation community who have the audacity to ring up his staff for information. To quote:
“I am thoroughly sick and tired of all these calls on the simplest of matters which are all established in the public domain…. We are swamped with these phone calls and Emails and it is getting worse by the day”.
The article goes on to say, “Mr Elder told IFTN that he has a team of three people permanently engaged on dealing with phone calls and Emails, and if it were not for sickness and other reasons it would probably really needed (sic) seven people to deal with them all” (whatever that means – are 57% of CAA staff on sick leave at any time?).
Elder then adds “I just don’t know why people need to call us on such simple matters. They have the website and there are many publications carrying the information. Why does anyone have to ring us to ask how to obtain a PPL? All they have to do is go to their nearest flying school or go down the library to get the information. It’s not as if the information is hard to come by”.
What an incredible show of arrogance, and proof of just how out of touch these self-important idiots really are. Whilst I can imagine that there are many nuisance calls, most enquiries would come from people who don’t regard their questions as being in any way trivial. If you were Joe Public and had no idea of the industry but wanted some impartial advice, who better to ring than the regulatory authority? Or would the local librarian suffice?
No doubt, working in personnel licensing must be a thankless task, but this supremely arrogant response to the ‘problem’ seems incredibly telling of the general attitude at the CAA when it comes to their clients. And no wonder it takes hours to get through – there are only 3 people answering the damn phonecalls.