Tachometers and Flight Logging

[Clinton McKenzie]

Start putting the owner on trial for why a plane busted a minima, why a pilot busted flight and duty limits, why an aircraft went past maintenance. The owner will hire and pay staff that wont put him in jail and the industry cleans up.

There was a whole lot of fanfare when this section was added to the Civil Aviation Act:

28BE Duty to exercise care and diligence

(1) The holder of an AOC must at all times take all reasonable steps to ensure that every activity covered by the AOC, and everything done in connection with such an activity, is done with a reasonable degree of care and diligence.

(2) If the holder is a body having legal personality, each of its directors must also take the steps specified in subsection (1).

(3) It is evidence of a failure by a body and its directors to comply with this section if an act covered by this section is done without a reasonable degree of care and diligence mainly because of:

(a) inadequate corporate management, control or supervision of the conduct of any of the body’s directors, employees or agents; or

(b) failure to provide adequate systems for communicating relevant information to relevant people in the body.

But.... read on:

(4) No action lies, for damages or compensation, in respect of a contravention of this section.

And .... despite the thousands of strict liability and other offences in the aviation law, it is not an offence to breach s 28BE(1).

The law with most 'teeth' in this regard would be WHS law. Look what happened in the Outback Ballooning case.

[43Inches]

The first wording of that ACT allows them to get away with it. The court has to first prove without doubt that the company failed to take reasonable steps. Simple things like saying the Ops manual said don't do that, when behind the scenes it was clear to employees that breaching the Ops manual was expected of them, one is hard proof, the other is speculative. If the Directors/owners were on trial first that they are responsible for their employees no matter what, like the OHS situation, then we would see much greater push from them to do the right thing. 3 Pilots are caught busting duty limits, there is no doubt there was a lack of oversight and therefore management is responsible and must suffer the most penalty. An aircraft is flown well beyond maintenance limits as above for pure greed, no doubt the ownership was involved and must wear the highest of the penalties.

That last option (4) basically says that if you fail to prove they took reasonable steps in criminal court you can't then take them to civil court for recompense, which is ridiculous.

If the CFI/CP keep wearing the blame because of the position, the owners keep employing less than capable puppet CFI/CPs that do what the owner wants without involvement. If the Owner ends up facing the courts every time the employees stuff up, they will either pack up or employ people of the correct morality for the job so they don't.

The same is starting to happen in other businesses, where the 'accredited' person is not the owner, so they are positioned to take the fall when things go wrong. We are seeing a number of transport industries where accidents are increasing because of this.

[172510]

Originally Posted by Lead Balloon

we should enter “time in service” as defined in the regs as “time in service” on maintenance documentation for the aircraft we fly.

I agree with you. Yet after having been through the Cessna 172 Maintenance Manual I couldn't find a definition of "time in service".

[Lead Balloon]

That’s because the Cessna 172 Maintenance Manual is not the regulations. Regulations are legislation made by legislators. The Cessna Maintenance Manual is a manual published by Cessna.