The regulatory reform process is another thing that came through from this. The air ambulance operation, like the RFDS operation—which also has some emergency aspect to it, certainly for the helicopter emergency services—highlights that we have a category of operation here which has traditionally been put into the air work category, and that is clearly not adequate for all operations in terms of either their planning requirements or the aircraft equipment. To put them into a higher category such as regular public transport or even charter would unnecessarily, in fact prohibitively, restrict their ability to respond and operate in emergency situations to unprepared airfields. There is a very clear case here for industry to have a voice and a role to work with the regulator to establish a new category of operation that provides the guidance required around equipment standards and configuration of the aircraft but also provides the flexibility the operators need to perform their mission in a structured manner.
[Bolding added.]
NO.
There is a very clear case for
THE GOVERNMENT– NOT CASA - to determine what standards apply to the various classifications of operations.
The reason classification of operations remains the stinking detritus at the centre of the running sore that is the regulatory ‘reform’ program, is that successive governments have expected a regulatory authority to perform a political function. Consulting with industry merely produces a bunch of irreconcilable priorities – essentially, cost versus safety and benefits versus dis-benefits. The decision as to what safety risks and other dis-benefits will be traded off in return for what benefits is a
POLITICAL DECISION, NOT THE REGULATOR’S DECISION.
“To put [aerial ambulance] into a higher category such as regular public transport or even charter would unnecessarily, in fact prohibitively, restrict their ability to respond and operate in emergency situations to unprepared airfields.” No sh*t, Sherlock.
And precisely the same logic applies to any classification system which, by definition, results in different standards and therefore different levels of safety.
CASA IS NOT THE APPROPRIATE ORGANISATION to decide where those lines are drawn and, thereby, whose life will be at greater risk in return for what benefits.
If a future government of which Senator Fawcett is a part continues to abrogate its responsibility to make the rules (and accept the political consequences of the trade offs that must inevitably be made in those rules), the “new” aerial ambulance classification will go the same way as classification of operation reforms generally: nowhere.