aroa asks:
Why TF has NOTHING been seriously done about fixing [CAR 206] over all these years…
These days, when I observe some ostensibly stupid situation with an ostensibly ‘no-brainer’ solution, I immediately attribute the situation to one primary cause: politics. My presumptive position is usually supported by subsequent analysis.
There is a ‘no-brainer’ solution to fixing CAR 206, but it’s politically unacceptable.
Fare paying passengers stepping on to any aircraft make the reasonable assumption that the standards applicable to the operation are the same, whatever they are stepping on to and wherever they are going. Most fare paying passengers wouldn’t have a clue about whether they are stepping on to a charter aircraft or an RPT aircraft, and most passengers wouldn’t know that different standards could apply, depending on the classification of the operation and the size of the aircraft. Most fare paying passengers would be surprised, if not alarmed, if they knew about the distinction and its implications.
The distinction was essential in the past, for technological, geographic and economic reasons. The distinction is no longer essential, especially in a country that feigns first-world aviation status.
The ‘no-brainer’ solution is to remove the distinction between charter and RPT, at least in respect of operations involving fare paying pax.
Dick Smith attempted, while Chairman of CASA, to make the distinction and its implications clear to fare paying pax. Dick had his head kicked in by, guess who? Those obstructionist bureaucrats in CASA? No. It wasn’t CASA. Ask Dick who kicked his head in on this issue.
If just one tenth of the amount of money wasted by incompetent government bureaucracies in Australia in the last 20 years had instead been invested in regional aviation infrastructure and flying machines, maybe Australia would now have lots more GA aircraft that were designed in the 1980s rather than the 1940s, more regional and rural airports that don’t look like moldering sets from movies about WWII, and fewer regulatory Frankensteins like CAR 206.
Unfortunately, not even one hundredth of that wasted money is going to be diverted to aviation.
Why not?
Politics.
Only the ‘J curve’ counts in Australia. Outside the ‘J curve’, Australia just ‘protects’ the ‘industry’ by maintaining the different standards. Operations relating to activities like coal mining outside the ‘J curve’ are very important, but they generally happen in real time, in the real world, against standards set by insurers and other people with real money at risk.
Cost savings in the aviation sector haven’t gone back to investment in aviation. They’ve gone to important stuff – you know, the stuff that governments think is important.
Unfortunately, lots of people in GA will continue to divert their energies to blaming CASA, arguing with CASA, and fighting amongst the various ‘representative’ organisations.
Why? Because those people either don’t understand that metaphor about monkeys and organ-grinders, or don’t know who the organ-grinders are.
As to the people who presume to implicitly criticise someone in CASA who’s attained a PhD, I’d observe that although it’s demonstrably possible for an ignorant illiterate to operate an aircraft as safely as it can be, the effective performance of lots of other jobs depends on, or is at least enhanced by, higher standards of education.