Steve Creedy. The Australian 9OCT2015
Charter operators flying bigger planes will have to meet the same safety standards as airlines under long-awaited new rules the aviation regulator says will boost safety for non-scheduled flights.
A rewrite of Civil Aviation Safety Regulations Part 121 released this week for comment by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority will put charter aircraft fitted with more than nine seats or with a maximum takeoff weight of more than 8618kg into the same air transport category as airlines.
A raft of changes include a move to formalise the cabin crew to passenger seat ratio at 1:50 — down from the previous standard of one for every 36 seats — in line with manufacturer recommendations. CASA has been granting exemptions to the 1:36 rule for some time but the move, strongly supported by airlines as an efficiency measure, for many years was opposed by the Flight Attendants Association of Australia on safety and security grounds.
CASA expects safety improvements to flow from areas such as record and document control, better information on non-certified aerodromes, improved procedures for pilots operating different types of aircraft, as well as simplified check and training requirements for flight crews.
There will also be improvements with safety management systems in conjunction with CASR Part 119, which deals with air operator’s certificates.
Other changes include the provision for new technology such as synthetic vision and enhanced vision systems, requirements for underwater location devices and additional medical equipment on some flights and rostering restrictions for inexperienced flight crew.
The authority said many of the changes would formalise current practices or simplify compliance and align “to the maximum extent possible’’ with International Civil Aviation Organisation standards and recommendations.
The move to put charter and airline operations under one umbrella stretches back over two decades and met with resistance in the early 2000s. The aviation authority has more recently come under intense criticism for the way it introduced new rules in areas such as flight crew licensing as well its failure to consult properly with the industry.
However, CASA said this time it had conducted comprehensive consultation on the proposed rules with airlines, smaller air operators, industry groups and unions.
It said consultations in nine working groups had culminated in the proposal, an associated technical draft of the manual of standards and draft acceptable means of compliance and guidance material.
The most recent consultation resulted in changes to the new rules, which are based on European standards for air transport operations, to incorporate standards and rules commonly used in Australia.
A risk analysis had also shown that in most cases the new rules would mitigate known safety risks, the authority said.
“Generally, the application of a rule would not change the outcome but would reduce the probability of the risk being realised,’’ it said.
The regulator says it will consider all comments received as part of consultation process and wants them lodged by close of business on November 27.