Bring Back the Examiners of Airmen
I see the CASA Flight Safety Forums are on the road again.
This time we are to be entertained by a new interactive and fun Game Show complete with brilliant prizes including a flight on Virgin Blue with face painting fun, maybe?) and lots of other fun goodies.
The advertising blurb urges us all to participate to win a prize, or to sit comfortably in the audience and learn why you laugh.
While the organisers are all good fellows and are genuinely interested in getting the flight safety message across, these forums do nothing to change the grubby GA industry.
Do we really believe that a polished stage performance by a government doctor on Aviation Medicine will do anything to help the the young pilot sacked recently in the Northern Territory for refusing to fly a Cessna with oil spewing from a prop seal?
Or the new CPL coerced into flying a VFR charter in cloud navigating solely on a cheap GPS?
I do not think so...
Meanwhile out in the West and at the Archerfields and Bankstowns of our aviation industry, pilots are flying unairworthy and poorly maintained aircraft and being sucked into an unsavoury culture that sacks pilots for refusing to fly shoddy aircraft or quickly dispenses with any safety conscious charter pilot that dares to
record defects in the maintenance release instead of on a piece of grubby paper.
Ironically, those visitors at the Flight Safety Forums are in some cases the very owner/operators who belt young pilots over the ears for desecrating a clean maintenance release, yet are gaily invited by the Forum organisers to enjoy "a great opportunity to network with other pilots and identify key safety issues".
What a waste of tax payer's money.
Far better for the organisers to bite the bullet and invite as guest speakers a few of the GA pilots that have experienced the bitter experience of being victimised or dismissed for recording defects legally or for declining to risk their passengers lives by flying a shonky charter.
That will never happen of course, because the Flight safety Forums are for fun loving pilots to win brilliant prizes.
No way should facts be confused with fun.
In any case, any GA pilot foolish enough to speak out on these issues in a public forum would quickly get a permament DCM (Don't come back Monday) from just about every GA pilot employer.
In days of yore, before favourite Approved Test Officers touted their charms around the flying schools, we had Examiners of Airmen.
These were not "delegates".
They were the real thing.
The Bobbies on the beat.
The local Civil Aviation hit man that would award a pilot rating when it was deserved - and made not a personal cent out of it apart from his salary paid by the tax-payer.
Apart from the fact that the flight tests were impartial - no conflict of interest with operators or aircraft owners with whom an ATO might need to hire an aircraft; an Examiner of Airmen would quickly ground a poorly presented defect ridden aircraft and have no hesitation about filling up the maintenance release where necessary.
Operators would quickly get their house in order when an Examiner of Airmen turned up on the doorstep to test a pilot for his PPL, CPL, instructor rating or what-have-you.
Never happens with an ATO who seldom makes waves for fear of jeopardising his own livelihood.
PPRune and ATSB's CAIR both abound with stories of GA pilots reporting shonky aircraft and operators - and losing their jobs if they whistle-blow to CASA.
Trouble is that our Regulator is seldom to be seen.
A visible presence on the beat is needed.
Until they were decimated by government cost cutting with the few remaining tied to desks and renamed Flying Operations Inspectors, the Eaminers of Airmen of old were often to be seen dropping in on the flying schools, talking with students who they tested, "networking" as it is called today.
Each Examiner was well known.
He got out and around and flew all the flight tests.
The operators kept their noses and their aircraft clean because their local friendly Examiner was always just around the corner.
If defects were on the maintenance release the
Examiner would ask some hard questions and ground the aircraft if a reasonable explanation was not forthcoming.
ATO's would never dream of such perfidy - it might cost them their job.
There are not a few GA pilots out there who should never hold an instrument rating.
A compliant ATO might let him off the hook every
year.
An Examiner would not.
I would rather see my money spent on scrubbing the ATO system and replacing them with more CASA bobbies on the beat in the form of Examiners of Airman, than making whoopee and having lotsa fun and interactive Game Shows which is the travelling road show called the CASA Flight Safety Forums.