Creampuff:
Mr Skidmore could be the nicest guy and the most experienced pilot on the planet, but he has zero experience or expertise to know how to kill the regulatory reform Frankenstein. Geoff Boyd and many others will be able to describe the monster and the damage it's doing, but none of them has any experience in the dark arts of real government.
I'm afraid Creampuff is exactly correct. This gentleman will come in with the best of intentions, occupy the high moral ground, armed with the weapons of truth, decency, intellect and honesty, and then the Grima Wormtongues of the iron ring of senior managers will start their work: sapping his will, slowly poisoning him until he either becomes their creature or falls on his sword.
My guess would be, if the rumour is true, then even now CASA senior management will have their minions going over every facet of his career and private life, looking for dirt.
To put that another way; for there to be any hope of meaningful change in CASA, the new Director Of Air Safety needs to be a Machiavellian bastard with a long knife, not some shining Knight on a White horse with a claymore.
To put that yet another, more sanguine way, metaphorically speaking, we would need to see a row of severed management heads on pikes outside the CASA offices to be convinced that anything good was happening inside.