CASA v Fearless Phelan.

[Kharon]

In a nutshell.

The article is here : Dudding the Delegate.


Be warned, it's a long, technical and slightly tedious read. You need to read it though if you intend to read between the lines, that's where the headlines are.

Summary - P Phelan.
1. Numerous grave errors appeared to have been made by Mr Flannery as the delegate, and by CASA staff who have been his sources of technical aeronautical input. If Mr Flannery was duly qualified to make the decisions he has made, both he and his employer were responsible for the material errors which damaged the career, reputation, and financial circumstances of Max Davy.

1. The “decision letter” contains several allegations of serious breaches of the Civil Aviation Act and Regulations. If the regulatory authority really believed such breaches have occurred it clearly had a duty to prosecute the alleged offender. The fact that no such prosecutions were launched, clearly indicates the lack of legal credibility that CASA ascribed to the allegations, and the poor quality of its sources of information.
2. In the recent past, especially following Minister John Anderson’s initiatives to restore a measure of procedural fairness and natural justice to CASA enforcement processes, CASA had increasingly adopted a practice that is designed to circumvent those measures and remove individuals from the industry. A favourite tactic had become the practice of withdrawing “approvals,” which CASA claims isn’t subject to automatic stay, or to review by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
3. Another tactic is simply not to renew certificates or approvals, and then to claim that there’s no reviewable decision because CASA didn’t actually do anything. This practice has resulted in the termination of air operator certificates, and of individual pilot approvals. Sorry Ministers, they’ve dudded you too!
4. Any competent assessment of the allegations against Max Davy thus invites the interpretation that Mr Flannery’s decision represented a gross miscarriage of justice, unsupported by credible evidence, and attributable to incompetently negligent or maliciously selective input from officers at field and/or at district level.
5. By its actions as we’ve discussed, CASA either deliberately and maliciously, or negligently and incompetently, made and implemented decisions based on:

(i) deliberately inaccurate statements; and/or
(ii) inaccurate and therefore incompetent analysis of technical material; and/or
(iii) selective and incomplete applications of parts of the Act and Regulations; and/or
(iv) the subjective opinions of the delegate or other employees based on one or all of the above. – My bold.

Max was one of a dozen similar cases, some of those would say that he was actually the 'lucky one'.

This story should never have needed to be written, but you know that, don't you.

Selah.