"The purpose of the proposals is to provide clear and consistent regulations for licensing flight crew without significantly increasing industry costs, but they do incorporate proposals for systemic changes designed to improve aviation safety."
Pity they don't follow their own spin. Until they devote a little time to training their own enforcers, inconsistency will reign supreme. Ten different FOI's ten different opinions, therefore ten different operators conducting operations differently.
If CAsA cant get "Consistency" in their own interpretation and enforcement of the regulations they write, then the biggest thing they could do to assist the industry is to provide generic operations manuals, approved at the highest echelon, that FOI's cannot fiddle with.
That would go a long way to removing inconsistency, and relieve a lot of CP angst, everyone would be operating on the same page. We are all supposed to be complying with the same regulations, to the same standards.
Why should everyone have to be different?
I believe the Ag boys had great success with generic operations manuals under Byron, who would skin an FOI alive if they tried to tamper with it.
The arrival of the skull put paid to that when the rogue FOI's were let off their leads to run rampant through the industry. Might explain Air Ag's anger and frustration today?
Its always seemed to me to be completely inconsistent that many of the costly checks we are required conduct are not common across the industry. For example, a 20:11 check with one operator should be acceptable to another, same for proficiency checks.
I know of one operator who has been inflicted by their FOI with pilot induction requirements that cost upwards of 20K just to employ a pilot for a simple piston twin, and that's for a person current, qualified and experienced.
These sort of impositions and costs are simply unsustainable for the small businesses that GA operators are and do nothing to improve safety.
"Whilst there is a strong case for introducing better flight crew training requirements to improve safety, CASA accepts that the cost of flight training is already high. To contain costs there needs to be a reduction in requirements not directly contributing to safety to allow for additional safety targeted measures. In addition, Australia benefits from aligning flight crew licensing requirements closely with international standards."
I'm not at all sure that we have "Aligned" with international standards.
I have certainly never experienced anything like Part 61 and 142 anywhere else in the world.
These two parts alone positively encourage commercial operators to export their checking and training overseas.
I believe that without the government subsidy of Vets, flying schools in Australia would simply vanish.
Travel around the country airports and count the paint peeling signs for the Galaganbone Aeroclub or the Kickatinalong flying school, empty, but for the spider webs and echo's of memories past.
Contrast us with NZ. How is it they can elucidate a clear, plain language rule set for pilot standards also called part 61 in eighty odd pages,bout the same as the US.
Why does it take our regulator 800 pages of legalise plus a MOS which is supposed to explain the legalize, but in effect makes it about as clear as mud? .
NZ aviation is thriving, their safety record is "World Class" their regulations are being adopted across the region.
Australia is just an international Joke, a pimple on the ass of the aviation world.
If, as I suspect our regulator believes safety is entirely dependent on the volume of regulations, why is our safety record worse than the US? Why is our industry all but dead, when it could be contributing so much to the economy of this country?
Last edited by thorn bird; 18th Oct 2014 at 02:53.
Reason: Had to check with Frank if Terry was sober