Folks,
CASR 91 ( and all other regulations being drafted) Drafting Style.
It should be noted that there are a number of acceptable legislative drafting styles available for Commonwealth legislation.
The highly prescriptive style represented in this CASR Part 91 draft is the style preferred by CASA, with the FAA or NZ style specifically rejected.
This was not always the case, and is not the industry preferred, but in recent years, industry input has been rejected on this issue.
Of much greater concern to me are the numbers of strict liability offenses where a measure of pilot or crew judgement is called for. In normal criminal law, in theory at least, criminal intent must be proved for a criminal conviction.
There is no need to prove intent in a strict liability offense, only the physical elements of the offense.
Any so called offense should never be strict liability, and in theory can never be a strict liability offense, where a judgement is called for on the part of the person accused of the offense.
Despite the horrible drafting style, there is actually some good stuff in this lot, including greater authority for the PIC.
Re. 30 minutes fixed final reserve, this is ICAO, and has been a feature of many airline fuel policies for many years ---- the change came about after a number of fuel exhaustion accidents with large aircraft.
I would suggest that our lamentable record of fuel exhaustion accidents in commercial GA would be addressed by this measure, it is already a feature of many more recent GA Ops. Manuals/FCOMs.
Those of you with a rudimentary understanding of "orders of accuracy" in anything to be measured will understand the reason for a Fixed Final Reserve --- the reserve that means there is a reasonable expectation that the engines will still be running when, on the day, all the +/- stack up against you ---- despite your calculation, howgoesit, gauges, flowmeters etc.--- all of which are subject to measurement error.
Tootle pip!