One more day...
Hope you don't mind BL but since we're into '
share and share alike'..
..thought your post from RAA forum was well worth regurgitating?? Kind of put's perspective on history, politics, the current malaise & future choices/actions by industry stakeholders of GA if certain actions/decisions aren't made
:
Firstly: We are the only ICAO signatory in the world, whose National Airworthiness Authority DOES NOT have immunity from prosecution in the course of their normal affairs - thank you the Balmain pig PM, Paul Keating. As a result, CASA has had a degree of ****-covering since 1988. Secondly, the several attempts to introduce "and foster" into the Act have all failed, thanks to luddite fools in parliament or the senate. This is a matter of record. Thirdly, Dick Smith did (and still, I suspect, does not) understand the link between "airworthiness" and engineering judgement; so Keating - via Brereton - used him to gut CASA of most of its engineering heritage. Since then, with the exception of Byron, Ministers have been appointing fighter pilots to direct CASA. In parallel, since Anderson's era, our NAA has abused its discretionary authority, flouted the constitution, and exhibited a culture of arrogance that began to lose the credibility of supporting expertise in the late 1970s.
Currently, CASA officers are trained in their responsibilities under the Administrative Decisions Judicial Review Act 1988, but completely ignore their KNOWN responsibility towards natural justice, when directed by the head fighter pilot. There is no system of internal checks and balances, because CASA has neither the economic resources nor, it would appear, the moral resources* to successfully implement systemic change to the culture. It must be made clear that, at any point in time, CASA has (and has had) a significant number of highly motivated, well educated, and highly capable people, of high personal probity and good intent, who find themselves virtually paralysed in any attempt to reform or improve, due to the pervasive nature of the post-Anderson culture. CASA firmly believes that it has a near-divine responsibility to tell people what they can't do in the interests of safety, and that appointment to a position in CASA automatically imbues the appointee with moral authority, irrespective of the actual expertise. Within this culture, the few persons I have experienced who are persuing personal agendas have virtually no limits on their ability to negate the positive efforts of the most of CASA, most of the time.
*The structure and methodologies of CASA do not allow the officers any discretion to speak of, in allowing their personal probity to inform them in matters of regulatory judgement; I have a letter stating that CASA has a team of lawers to guide officers in making each regulatory judgement. it's not a lawer's bloody job to make engineering judgements, but this is the outcome of Paul Keating's all-embracing comprehension of the economics of management of hardware.
Now, CASA is - pointlessly, because Australia is very much not the US, OR the EEC - trying to emulate those NAAs, but at the same time do not have the corporate guts to recognise that the bulk of aeronautical expertise in Australia is in private industry, and can be used as a resourse to fulfil our ICAO obligations. because, as a member of CASA Engineering Services said to me (in personal conversation), "you can't trust pilots". John McCormack said to me, personally, face to face, in a room full of the operators of Approved Aircraft Maintenance organisations (LAMEs to a person), "what do these guys know about airworthiness? Nothing!". He was a fighter pilot (Mirages), so he knows.
We have a few career politicians, who have been exposed to CASA for so long, that they realise that the furphy of CASA's untouchable expertise is a Furphy; and we have a few relatively young, generally independent MPs, who are sufficiently iconoclastic to consider that CASA may, indeed, be somewhat less than perfect. Well, if they fix the frigging laws, so that CASA people can do their bloody jobs without looking over their shoulders all the time; admit that Australia deserves an aviation industry, and include "foster" as a prime directive in the CAAct; allow the reformers in CASA to work, under a director who (like Byron) was never a fighter pilot; and outsource airworthiness as the FAA so successfully has to DERs (who are members of the FAA when DERing, even if not employed by the FAA - make THAT work in Australia!)... then, in about3-5 years, our industry might start to recover.
Otherwise, we need to really work the trans-tasman bilateral, and move our industry to New Zealand.
Of politics & aviation - Too little..too much??
Interesting article out of the States...
:
Congress to the Rescue?
The role of the legislative branch in aviation regulations is a troubling one.
By Robert Goyer / Published: Jan 28, 2014
How do you feel about Congress stepping in and telling the FAA how it should regulate aviation activities? Well, that probably depends on how you feel about the subject they’re weighing in on.
While it’s difficult to come up with hard statistics on the subject, industry observers believe that over the past few years Congress has taken a more active role than ever in mandating aviation regulations from the Hill, with little interference from the President when it comes time to sign them into law.
Over the past several years Congress has weighed in on pilot duty time, pilots’ rights, required experience for airline pilots, contract towers, FAA furloughs, drones, Part 23 regulation, fat pilots and a number of other issues.
Whether you agree with Congress’ views on the individual issues is not the point — we agree with some of its actions, like the Pilots’ Bill of Rights, and disagree with others, like the new ATP requirement for airline pilots. Regardless, the question is still this: How far should Congress go in writing aviation regulations?
It’s not an easy question to answer. For one, as the branch that doles out the dough for federal spending, it is smack dab in the middle of the FAA’s business. Which programs get funding, which ones don’t, which ones get more than their share and which one’s get the shaft, is all in Congress’ power and within its constitutionally delegated duties.
Still, the issue is similar in nature to juries deciding fault in aviation accidents. How can 12 lay-citizens be expected in the course of a couple of weeks to develop a sophisticated enough understanding of aviation issues to render a fair judgment on who was at fault for an accident that was likely so complex that veteran investigators would disagree on the root causes? The answer is they can’t be expected to be good judges, but that’s the system we’re stuck with.
The same could be said for Congress. How could 535 non-aviation professionals (with a few exceptions) be expected to create laws requiring aviation regulations that make sense in the complex aerospace world in which we live? The answer again is that they can’t be, but that’s the system we’re stuck with.
Of course complicating the matter is the fact that the FAA needs a babysitter. The agency is so entrenched and unresponsive to the needs and rights of the industry it regulates that Congress often has to step in to set the bureaucrats straight.
Read more at
Congress to the Rescue? | Flying Magazine
Hmm think I'd prefer the Yanks conundrum than ours...
