casa - The mc-comick view

[Sunfish]

Looking at the ATSB summary 2000 -2011 accidents or incidents in GA caused by airframe failure was 4.6% ot the total.

McCormick has fallen into the trap of looking for low hanging fruit. It is easy to swan around looking for corrosion and those CASA people must remain employed.

I wish ATSB would do the analysis better and see if there is any correlation between aircraft age and structural failures that were actually preventable by better maintence practices or increased maintenance schedules.

My guess would be that training offers much better opportunities for actually lowering the incident and accident rate, for example the rates for privately piloted helicopters are horrendous.

[Avgas172]

Like OA my C172H has around 6000 hours, always been hangared and has had many times more dollars spent on it than Cessna charged for it in the first place, it is currently going through the SIDS program and I'm confident it will still be flying a long time after McComic has departed for the world of tails and hooves (I believe it's hot down there). The comparison of a 52 Chev sitting in a farmers paddock quietly rusting away and Victor Bray's 52 Chev blasting down the quarter, is as applicable as the photo's from CASA in their blurb and my 172H.

[004wercras]

Avgas172, now you're talking!! Bray is a legend. I spent many a cool Ipswich night at Willowbank watching Victor push the envelope
As a teenager i would hear the big man working on his engines from almost 2 km's away on a Sunday morning and he would then allow me to hang around his workshop and watch and learn.
Later I spent 5 years work on my ZD Fairlane. Full nut and bolt rotisserie restoration down to the last flake of paint. That car was better than the day it left the blue oval showroom, even the doors closed better than an 'off the factory floor' version back in 71.
Pity Victor didn't take an interest in aircraft

There are GA aircraft out there that have been maintained, massaged, restored and in a condition better than a European fashion models breasts!
We are talking aircraft that would exceed any safety/mechanical/maintenance condition one could conjure up in a CAsA back room legal department.

CAsA's methods and wisdom actually reflects its leaders quite well - Old, outdated, out of touch and worthy of a rubbish bin.

[Clearedtoreenter]

How many GA accidents in Australia have been caused by structural failure in normal service? The ATSB would know and should have been consulted before McCormick opened his yapper.

Well, isn't that the key question. Potentially the government should be asking their agency that question. It seems they are wasting so much of this country's hard earned doh on this and potentially making a whole tax paying industry unviable on the basis of some very spurious risk assessment. That's if they are doing any risk assessment at all. C'mon CASA, show us the data! Oh what, there isn't any?

[RatsoreA]

A simple enough idea...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but McCormick is essentially a public servant, right?

And are we not 'members of the public'?

As members of the public, do we not have the right to question our public servants? They are here to 'serve the public' after all?

Why are we not lambasting him personally with emails, letters etc asking why he went off half cocked, spouting this sh!t to the world?

The rest of the general public (non-aviators) are hardly going to take an interest in this subject, so there won't be much in the way of correspondence giving him a pat on the back!

However unlikely it is that change will be effected, it has zero percent chance that it will happen if we just sit back and take it.

As much as I dislike the greens, when ever some tree gets lopped down, there is always a group on the news protesting it, sometimes only small, but they are still getting their crackpot opinion across!

Just because he is in a position of authority, doesn't automatically make him right.

Viva lá revolution!

[Oracle1]

Revolution

No revolution is complete without a guillotine

[004wercras]

Oh well, while the industry is being buggerised, becoming too expensive and restrictive to operate within, businesses are going bust and pilots are earning crap salaries our friend Mr Skull pockets $500k per year, an annual bonus of around $60k plus superannuation of just over 15%. This by the way excludes the use of his corporate credit card, daily away allowances and business class travel and 5 star accommodation.
I guess that is worth thinking about don't you think?

[owen meaney]

RatsoreA,
Civil Aviation Safety Authority - Feedback to the Director

[RatsoreA]

owen meaney,

Yep, seen it, filled it out!

But completly slipped my mind to post it here!!

[dubbleyew eight]

How many GA accidents in Australia have been caused by structural failure in normal service?

the thing is that aircraft are designed to a design target that accommodates the stresses likely to be seen in flight. You don't just build an aeroplane.
to keep it light enough to fly it has to be designed so that it can handle the likely stresses. The encapsulation of these needed strengths has been in FAR23, the american design standards, for decades.

Light sport aircraft has a supposedly simplified design standard managed by the ASTM people. I was shown a copy of this and it beggars belief. the section on tailplane loads isnt even legible or complete. the sections of FAR23 that it was extracted from are legible and complete.

so you have to wonder whether the people in CASA who sanction all this stuff even remotely understand the design process at all???
if they don't understand the design process how will they ever understand the maintenance realities???
has the CASA of today been dumbed down to a totally clerical and lawyer staffing???

where is their competence????????

[004wercras]

Dubbleye, congratulations and a chocolate frog is your reward!
You have worked it out son. The person sanctioned with light sport aviation oversight has never flown a plane for a living or turned a spanner. A long term bureaucrat, yes man and lawyer who has hidden below mounds of desk documents for decades. So you are damn straight when you speak about competence (or lack of). It is farcical that these individuals area making the rules.

[parabellum]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but McCormick is essentially a public servant, right?

Not sure how it works in Oz but in the UK they deliberately took the function out of the Civil Service, (Board of Trade), and set up the CAA as a separate agency charged with regulating civil aviation. A requirement was that they become self funding, through fees, rather than by tax payers money, this way the user pays but not everyone else as well. CASA could well be a similar such agency, they certainly charge like a wounded bull!

A golden opportunity was missed when they set up CASA, it should have been CASA and Airport Car Parks, aviators would never have had to pay another fee!!!

[Up-into-the-air]

casa just do not get it!!!!!!!!!

Not here parabellum!!

Here is the best news I have seen lately [hahaha]:

Dear Industry participant

CASA has undertaken a periodic review of its cost recovery arrangements in accordance with the Australian Government Cost Recovery Guidelines, July 2005. The review is now available for public comment and CASA would like to extend to you an invitation to read and provide us with feedback on the Cost Recovery Impact Statement – Periodic Review at the link below:

Civil Aviation Safety Authority - Fees

There are no new fees or increases to existing fees. Further clarification on when regulatory services will attract $190/hourly rate is provided.

All comments can be directed to [email protected].

Closing date for comments is Friday 30 August 2013.

Craig Jordan
Chief Financial Officer

Be nice if any of us could earn $ 190/hour.

No wonder casa gets the regs wrong - CAO 100.5 live on !!!

How about some directed comments peoples!!

[Creampuff]

Well there it is in the CRIS, in all its horrible splendour: The estimated cost of the regulatory reform program.

Table C, under the heading “Standards Development”, against the line item “Safety Standards”, FY 12-13: $18,077,908.

$18 million or so, times how many years?

[004wercras]

Money not well spent. Oink oink

Yep, $190.00 p/h. Understandable when we are funding a bloated bureaucratic department.
The FF 2013/14 plan gives you a breakdown of how deep the trough is, but as an example, yes just one example, The Skull has a salary of approx $500k per year, annual bonus of around $60k, superannuation of 15.75% plus daily away allowances stretching into the hundreds, 5 star accommodation, business class airfares and a very generous and robust corporate credit card!

So $190.00 p/h is the average cost recovery needed to fund the CAsA circus and its out of touch salary structure. And they get bonuses for f#king everything they touch!

[Kharon]

Of Cat houses and Catamites.

Get more bang – for YOUR buck. A quick survey of the local Cat houses shows that the real professionals can earn as much as $1500 per hour. I mean if you're going to be a star in the in the oldest, great game in history, you should be properly recompensed for time and labour; it's only fair. I guess the only difference is the average house special worker is honest and upfront about how the money is made, what they do and what they are. Better value for money too of course.

I do hear on the grapevine that the real specialities are horribly expensive and reserved strictly for the top dogs; I guess feeding any sort of 'habit' becomes expensive..

[Old Akro]

So $190.00 p/h is the average cost recovery needed to fund the CAsA circus

CASA costs $173m pa to run
After public holidays there are 249 working days per year.
CASA employs 808 people.
Therefore the average cost per person - including everything including the pot plants - is $107.48.

How is the remaining $82.52 justified?

[004wercras]

The extra $82.52 could be made up from;
• Consultants
• Maintenance of the Brisbane basement worm farm
• Replacing level 3 smashed office furniture and plastering and painting walls
• Adhoc trough indulgence
• Avian water for the pot plants
• False teeth, Zimmer frames and adult nappies for their more senior staff
• Internet fees for all the time they spend on Poohtube watching videos of naughty Chopper antics and GA planes busting altitudes by 2.5 feet

There truly is a pot at the end of the CAsA rainbow!

[LeadSled]

This is particularly so when the CASA Schedule 5 (which I assume was developed way back when CASA Airworthiness staff were helpful people) is utilised.

One Eye,
You give CASA credit, when none is due. Schedule 5 is largely FAR 43, Appendix D copied, plus a few bits of OZ bulldust, such as:

Schedule 5, para 2.7

Unless otherwise indicated in the table, where the table requires a thing to be inspected, the inspection is to be a thorough check made to determine whether the thing will continue to be airworthy until the next periodic inspection.

I have been around the aviation business in particular, and life in general, for quite a long time, this is the only time I have come across a situation where mandatory clairvoyance is required by regulation.

And make no mistake, we have cases on record where CASA has prosecuted a LAME after an serviceability well in to to 100 hours on an MR.

As to the criticisms of Schedule 5 (it disappears in the new GA maintenance suite, as far as I can see, despite comments by Mr. McCormick that FAR 43 works -- I wonder does he know what his minions are doing??) common in CASA, that is because Schedule 5 is not allowed to work properly, as FAR 43, Appendix D, works.

Tootle pip!!

[Up-into-the-air]

casa is out of touch with the Aviation Industry and so is mccormick

The casa annual report needs some careful looking at - casa fails to give all the data as to how abd the pilot community relly is and does not reveal this with any useful analysis.

I found the following to be of interest, which has gone to the analysis of the 2013 annual report:

CASA medicals ? No explaination for huge change in 2013 | Assistance to the Aviation Industry