I put in a response to CASA. It wasn't as good as I would have liked as I didn't have much time. I like to put the response together and think about it for a few days before submission but I only found out about this rule change in the last few days and so only had a few hours to formulate a response.
The text is posted below for your dissection.
Dear Glen,
I write to you to express concerns about the proposed change to the CASA’s Fuel quantity requirements(CD 1508OS). The proposed rule as currently written violates the principles of a just culture, contains errors, impacts other rules and regulations in unintended ways and will have doubtful safety benefit. The rule changes should either be abandoned or implemented with significant revisions.
The proposed rules have the effect of making it a 50 penalty unit ($9000) offence to not have the fixed reserve intact when landing at the arrival aerodrome. They also make it a 50 penalty unit offence not declare an emergency when the predicted fuel available at landing will be less than the fixed reserve. The current rules require that you not plan to use the fixed reserve but if required due to circumstances it is available for use. They also only involve the commission of an offence if the action is unsafe. The proposed penalties are out of proportion with the seriousness of the offence and the rules are arbitrary. Further the requirement that a pilot declare a mayday is self-incriminatory and so it is likely that any CASA enforcement action against a pilot who did declare a mayday would fail.
The new rules are not consistent with the ICAO provisions. Clause 2.2.3.6 of Annex 6 of the ICAO provisions required 30 minutes fuel for a VFR flight by day as compared to the 45 minutes required by the new rules. Table 1 in the new rules should be amended to reflect the ICAO rule.
The rules, as written, reference “aerodromes”. It appears that CASR Part 139, CAR 92(1) and CAAP 92-1 make the distinction between aerodromes and “Aircraft landing Areas”. This creates some perverse situations in the proposed rules. For instance rule 6(2) in the new instrument would require an aircraft with low to overfly a suitable ALA to land at an “aerodrome” otherwise a pilot would commit an offence. While it is likely that this is not CASA’s intention it shows sloppy legislative drafting and poor forethought of how the new rules would work in conjunction with the full set of regulations.
The proposed rules have consequences for a significant number of other airspace users. For instance, CAO 95.4 doesn’t exempt a motor glider form CAR 234. The current regulations only require that a flight be operated safely and it therefore doesn’t prohibit a motor glider operating with not fuel at all. This may occur for instance when the glider is launched by a conventional tow to altitude and then soars on thermals in the same manner as a glider without a motor with the motor stowed. The new rules would make this an offence. Many gliders, especially those with sustainer engines would not would be realistically be able to carry the reserves as proposed by the new rule and yet are able to operate safely. This is only one example of many of the broad consequences of the rules as proposed for powered hangliders, powered parachutes, ultralights and others.
The proposed rules are solely focused on prevention of fuel exhaustion and do not address starvation. The ATSB statistics(ATSB – AR-2015-082) from the years 2005 to 2014 show that “Fuel related incidents” are responsible for approximately 2.6% of all General Aviation accidents and serious incidents(table 32). The data doesn’t distinguish between starvation and exhaustion events, nor the cases where the existing rules were not complied with. The ATSB publication, Starved and exhausted: Fuel management aviation accidents(AR-2011-112) indicates that the vast majority (by a 3 to 1 ratio) of fuel miss management accidents are related to starvation, not exhaustion. In the period of that publications statistics (2001 to 2010) there were no fatalities or serious injuries due to exhaustion but 10 fatalities and 18 serious injuries due to starvation.
The proposed changes will not reduce the level of starvation incidents or cases of non-compliance. A more detailed analysis of the data would enable an estimation of the effectiveness of the proposed new rules in addressing safety issues. Without such an analysis the safety justification of the proposed rule cannot be substantiated and therefore the safety benefit of the new rules is dubious. CASA should publish the safety case justifying the rule change before implementation.
For the above reasons, the rules as currently written, should not be implemented without significant further refinement. Given the likely limited safety benefit that these new rules would bring, it would be difficult justify allocating CASA’s limited resources to this task while so many other areas are pending.