Regulatory reform Australian style cannot any longer be described as an elephant in the room. We must now beware of Rhinoceros charging about the place. Rhino as in lots of money – Sorearse as in the pain inflicted by these clumsy, dangerous experiments in bad law.
Roll up - Have your knee jerk reaction to unpleasant Senate probing in sensitive areas– robustly managed – right here.
NPRM 1304OS – Regulation of aeroplane and helicopter “ ambulance function” flight as Air Transport Operations has been posted to the CASA website for public comment/review at:
The purpose of this NPRM is to advise the public and aviation community of CASA’s intent to regulate, to the greatest extent practicable, ambulance function flights to the same safety standards that are currently applicable to AT operations.
CASA considers that Part 119 of CASR, with its robust operator management systems, should be implemented by (and integrated into) these essential passenger transport services. This policy and change of classification is based on CASA’s recognition that the focus of these operations is primarily passenger-carrying in nature, albeit in a highly specialised manner, and conforms more closely to international norms for the conduct of these operations.
However, CASA acknowledges that, in some cases, applying all of the Air Transport Operations suite of standards to MT flights would not be practicable. Due to the highly specialised nature of some MT flights, some of the rules in these operational Parts will not apply and other requirements that are not characteristic of normal AT operations will be addressed specifically for MT flights.
This NPRM canvasses those areas of the Air Transport Operations suite where additional compliance or relief considerations would be required, taking into account the purpose and nature of MT flights. CASA seeks comment from the public and aviation community on this proposed policy change to MT operations. My bold.
Now I know there are some clever, competent folk who read these threads, perhaps they would care to read NPRM 1304OS; carefully, and provide comment on this excellent thesis, proposing a micro management approach based on the chaos principal. This to be melded into Part 119. The 'aerodrome standards' part, stand alone left to the discretion of the average FOI opens several interesting avenues for 'robust' discussion.
This appears to be a hastily redrafted version of the one produced several years back which created a requirement for the QPS Citation pilot to shoot someone, thus allowing an 'emergency' to be declared, enabling them to then land at the proposed destination aerodrome (if it was not one of the 14 defined as 'allowable'). That's a yarn that always makes me smile....
Please Minister, can we have our marbles back?