Pitts
Next time you are walking through town and come across a nice-looking brick wall then go and stand so that your toes are just touching it. Now engage it in conversation and you will be amused at the lack of dialogue. This is what you get when you try yelling at any arm of government. And in a way it is as it should be. You win by force of argument and with evidence. There will be an opportunity for both at the conference next month.
Wherever systems rely on honesty and integrity in order to function then there will be opportunities for fraud. We should not be surprised, the rewards can be great indeed - a license, a rating - a career!!
Not that the risks are great either, the two flight instructors that I worked with in recent years were both sacked by their previous employers for falsifying their qualifications/logs but are still gainfully employed, as instructors, with other reputable companies. He who cheats wins it seems.
Of course situations like the German Wings incident and the Glasgow dustcart incident will throw a spotlight on the problem but I doubt that we will seek greater oversight of ANY of our systems that rely on the 'applicant' telling the whole truth. We will simply wait until after the accident then throw the book at the wrongdoers - assuming they are still around.
We need to focus on replacing the checking of 'qualifications' with the checking of 'competence'. If you say you can do it then show me - I'll believe it when I see it.
Then we get on to the question of how we do that and then we will need to get into another discussion.
G