Survived a fishing trip on a boat without SIDS
I went out on a fishing trip last weekend in a 1948 built commercial fishing vessel. There was no talk about ageing hulls. There was no SIDS programme. It had a whole range of new GPS devices, depth finders and autopilots. None required engineering orders to fit. It had new hydraulic winching gear & a freezer. No STC's, no regulator approval, no engineering orders. The fisherman didn't have an AOC. We didn't need an ASIC to get to the boat. Yet miraculously we survived. We even had a good time.
Compare that with what an equivalent aeroplane would have to go through to mirror our trip flying 1000 ft above us.
Aircraft are often compared with cars, but it seems to me that a better comparison is boats. Both can keep being refitted if the hull is sound.
Why is it that AMSA seem to be able to differentiate different classes of marine use, but CASA seems to want to use an airline cookie cutter on the rest of aviation?