ALEA
This
submission follows a similar line
to the others we have seen.
In part it says:
At page 9:
a. The RRP has failed to produce clear and definitive regulations in relation to aircraft maintenance engineer licencing and aircraft maintenance activities.
i. The resulting confusion and uncertainty is having a disastrous effect on small General Aviation operations as they struggle to comply with contradictory, opaque and complex rules;
ii. In High Capacity RPT engineers are inadvertently breaching the regulations due to large grey areas that have replaced what used to be a clear scope and system of licence privileges.
b. A Post Implementation Review (PIR) of the maintenance and maintenance licensing regulations is required as soon as possible;
c. A review into CASA’s internal processes for regulatory development is essential.
and:
6. Unfortunately, CASA has not fundamentally altered its organisational or consultation structures from those used in the previous prescriptive system. The Standards Consultative Committee (SCC) remains the focus of consultation and essentially has the same long standing mode of operation and consultation. The ALAEA is disappointed that CASA management apparently have not understood the critical necessity for organisational restructure required to realign with the new regulatory environment – even though constantly highlighting the virtues of the new outcome based system.
and:
12. A measure of CASA’s effectiveness (ToR 1) is how it approves and polices the industry it regulates. Unfortunately ALAEA’s experience is that in maintenance oversight CASA’s performance is often substandard.
and:
23. In the ALAEA’s view, CASA has a dubious history of approving overseas organisations and has admitted they are not able to inspect them with the same freedom that that they inspect an Australian facility.
and:
Some organisations had said that they were going to close down because they could no longer bear the stress and financial burden of meeting vague and often contradictory new standards. Aircraft were being grounded late on Friday afternoon over administrative errors and reputations were being trashed.
and:
33.The ALAEA believes that in the context of increasing commercial pressures, and operatorself-oversight responsibility as outlined above, an Australian WPP is critical as both a safety initiative and a measure to restore confidence in Australian regulatory compliance.
and:
40.There are no workplace regulatory protections that allow an employee to fulfil legalobligations placed on an aviation employee by the Civil Aviation Act and associated regulations in the workplace without threat to their employment.
and:
49.One of CASA’s main functions as set out in s9 of the Civil Aviation Act 1988 (Cth) (‘the act’)amongst others is to develop and promulgate appropriate, clear and concise aviation standards. Interestingly, no amendment has been suggested to the Act to better align CASA’s functions with the new outcome based policy of the government.
50.Unfortunately the regulatory reform program for airworthiness and maintenance has notsatisfied the requirement for clear and concise aviation standards. The ALAEA has spent a considerable amount of resources in the two and a half years since the new maintenance regulations were introduced attempting to clarify and define numerous ambiguous clauses within the regulations, manuals of standards and regulatory supporting material. CASA was unable to answer any of our questions in a concise response, appearing themselves to also not understand the regulations they created.
and:
52.Aviation safety regulations as they were read yesterday, if unchanged should mean the samething today and tomorrow and so on until a change is made to them to alter their intent. With the way the current maintenance regulations and support material have been written, interpretation of the intent by CASA officers is in many cases is given with reference to “CASA policy” or “CASA considers” rather than being clear from the regulation. But the CASA policy/s referred to can’t be produced. What this infers is that there are internal unofficial policy/s that CASA officers use to make determinations of regulatory interpretation that may vary between CASA officers and over time.
and:
61. It should also be noted that an 18 month old draft Advisory Circular (AC 145-3-0) that contains training standards directly relating to the Part 145 MOS is still circulating, despite being outdated by the proposed amendments to the MOS.
In short it’s all a dog’s breakfast...
and:
81.The ALAEA has put to CASA on numerous occasions (and has support from a wide sector ofthe industry) that the qualification level for a Category A licence needs to be raised. Despite our numerous requests (and industry support) CASA has not responded or taken action.
I think what the ALEA is saying:
Lets have the US-FAR's