My contacts with CAA now tend to be with the Airworthiness side of things, and PLD.
It has been very, very obvious for at least 2 years that there is a complete management failure starting at the very top.
This was brought home at a Safety Management conference about 18 months ago which was addressed by both the Chairman and the CEO of the CAA.
The Chairman, one of those Quango Queens who lunch their way effortlessly from one job they know nothing about to another, lectured about 200 very senior industry executives about how important safety is, based on her brief contact with chocolate bar manufacturing problems.
The CEO addressed us all on much the same topic, in the manner of a primary school teacher trying to keep the kids on her side by being just as smiley and fluffy as she possibly could.
I think many of us, watching this performance, were wondering just how either of them could bring order to the organisation, which by that time was clearly dysfunctional with time-serving incompetents out-weighing the dwindling number of good, motivated and honest staff.
We now know that it has since simply got worse. And it will not get better until the top management, from the Chairman downwards, are swept out and replaced with people who (a) understand the industry and know their stuff backwards, and (b) are ready and able to take control properly and weed out the deadbeats ruthlessly, and (c) understand that the CAA is a service provider to EASA and to the industry.
If we decide to leave the EU, there is even less of a case for staying inside EASA than there is now. But to leave we need a CAA that can regain the clarity of purpose and prestige that it has lost, and that will never happen under the present leadership.