CASA $1,000 Useless Compass Check
Readers of this site may remember years ago when I complained about AD Instrument 8 which was an Airworthiness Directive that required routine checks on things like the airspeed indicator, the compass and the fuel gauge.
I started a campaign to remove this AD and it was agreed by CASA that only items required in other leading aviation countries would be put over to a CAO.
CASA issued a Notice of Proposed Rule Making and from what I can remember it had lots of submissions from the avionics industry that makes money from these ridiculous checks.
I understand we now have CAO 100.5 which results in some of the most onerous and expensive checks in the world, including every twenty-four months a compass check on privately-registered helicopters.
You can’t just tow a helicopter to do a compass check – you actually have to hover it. What if you had to pay a pilot to travel to the maintenance hangar to fly the helicopter to do the compass checks? The overall cost is about $1,000 and this has to be done every twenty-four months.
Of course, every time I taxi along the taxiway at Bankstown I know the exact compass heading and I can tell if the compass is faulty or not. So the $1,000 is a complete misallocation of money – other than for the maintenance industry who no doubt makes a fortune from it.
It also appears we have a forty-eighth month fuel gauge check.
Neither of these checks is required in the USA for privately registered aircraft.
I would like to hear other comments in relation to this.
Remember – if your aircraft happens to be in Birdsville and it is not concurrent with a one-yearly maintenance check, it could mean flying the aircraft to Adelaide or Longreach to have the check done. Imagine the cost!