Unfortunately the old Chopper I knew admitted he did it, in writing, so if anyone was about to go down the slippery slide, they are probably going to find that admission.

Three things need to happen...

The regulatory side needs to be stripped from CASA.. Make them work as enforcers of the law.

Enforcement needs to progress through the CDDP as a normal criminal matter.

The Power of the AAT to ignore the normal justice procedures (in all matters, not just aviation) needs to be curtailed.

IIRC the AAT was set up as a stepping stone to try to alleviate use of the courts time and resources, to try to get matters solved before. These days it appears they have grown the ability to over-ride the courts and make their own way through the muddle.

A law stating that it is a defence to declare to the AAT that you regard the charge as criminal matter, and that you wish it heard as such and force it back into the criminal system should be enacted.

In the criminal system, some charges are not normally handled by some courts, although that court might be your first appearance. I.e a charge normally handled by the county court will be initially heard at a magistrates court. The courts limited jurisdiction is announced to you as the defended and you are offered a denial so you can goto the higher court. People pleading guilty will invariably accept the terms, leaving the county court open for the appeal.

In the AAT your next place of help is the High court, you've already spent 'thousands' 'defending' yourself.

Sorry but the AAT is nothing more than death by bankruptcy, and sooner its 'powers' are curtailed the better

Jaz
Exactly:ok:

you're missing the plot aren't you?

aviation regulations are all about trying to achieve a safe working environment.
where does criminality come into it?

you've really got it wrong there.
if the aviation laws are all about codifying a safe approach to flying where do you get off with all this nonsense?

if you take off in an aircraft without a maintenance release it is 2 years in prison.
this is typical of the utter tosh masquerading as australian law.
a maintenance release won't keep you safe. if you think it will you are a dill with limited experience.
haven't you ever experienced an "administrative annual" resulting in a maintenance release that has no basis in fact?

the previous is only one example of the tosh in the regulations.
the regs occupy so many pages because they are full of bull****.
you can believe all this CAsA crap as much as you like ...but it will not keep you safe.

Not commenting on any particular cases under discussion, but you've got to have some form of regulation or there'll be people doing all kinds of dodgy crap without any comeback if anyone gets hurt, and in our increasingly litigious society if they don't write the rules in legal speak to take out loopholes, then they won't work.

It seems many people won't accept that CASA could possibly do anything good whatsoever, and the only solution is to sack them all. What do you replace them with, though?

Replace them with the FAA Son, USA home to the reality shows, airplane repo, the wild wild west lives on........

......your goddammed mother fcukin sure as hell right it does.

The land of the free and the home of the brave, where the average speed camera lasts around three days before some bastard shoots it out. Exactly what should happen here.

Yeh ha, No speed Cameras or breath testing here son, Federal court ordered them down or disabled and "against the constitution" entrapment of the population not allowed need reasonable cause to be pulled over.


Any VH airplane's still flying down there or is it lights out ???

So no breath testing, but they do that bull**** walk the line thing to see if you're over or not?

4 Holer, Any of you guys Stateside wearing seatbelts in your cars yet?

They got gun racks instead! And banjos. I hear banjos......

I like the 'walk the line' test. At least it puts the onus on the driver to prove he/she can hold his/her booze. Practical law enforcement.
Instead we have an arbitrary limit imposed by a machine. At .049 you are safe to drive but at .050 a little switch trips in everyone's brain and we all become totally incompetent. That whole approach to the law is typical of aviation regulation.

You mean that horrible arbitrary limit supported by solid science and decades of research?

WAC - You mean that horrible arbitrary limit supported by solid science and decades of research?
Invoking the great god, science, that'll shut everyone up

If everyone is affected exactly the same, how come the anaesthetist is always interested in one's alcohol consumption? If you don't want to wake up half way through the procedure, it is probably better for once to admit to your real intake, not the one you tell the CASA medico.

Arbitrary limits in law, and aviation in particular, are everywhere. Take the windscreen heat inoperative bird impact speed limitation below 8000 feet AMSL which appears in so many flight manuals. Not AGL, but AMSL. Go figure. Science has obviously determined that birds have altimeters calibrated to sea level, or get so dizzy at 8000 feet that they never venture higher. On that subject, oxygen limitations. Pilots who fly regularly in the Andes do not always bother with it - despite the requirement in the AFM - even though they may be sitting on the ground for an hour's turnaround at 12,000 feet. Not many Twin Otter pilots bother with it at similar levels in PNG either. Even the smokers seem to be quite tolerant at those altitudes, yet science tells us they should be seriously hypoxic. But if I tried it - even as a fairly fit non smoker - I KNOW I would be useless. On the other hand, at .050 BAC I am still quite functional, notwithstanding any science. Years of practice ...... or a 'functioning alcoholic'?......hmmm.

You might feel, functional, you may even appear functional to a casual observer, but testing will show significant degredation of reaction times and motor skills. These numbers are not pulled out of the air at random.

Statistical analysis is used to determine risk profiles and set standards. I bet if someone cares to dig they will discover a sharp drop off in bird strike risk somewhere below that 8000 limit. Doesn't mean risk is gone above, but means someone has determined the numbers are now low enough to reduce the risk profile and standards.

How is walking a straight line in any way an objective measure of alcohol induced impairment? It's just another bogus "standard" like lie detectors that they seem so fond of in the US. At least the great god science should have some objective evidence to back it up as opposed to anecdotes and self assessed gut feelings.

Flapping wings relies heavily on oxygen consumption which varies with atmospheric pressure so AMSL is a better general measure of where you'll find the birds than AGL, unless they're soaring.

MEA. The science says nothing of the sort. it's called acclimatisation - just ask any mountaineer or performance athlete. Such rules are by their nature there to endeavour to cover everyone. How would you measure your tolerance to altitude o any given day? Wait until you feel hypoxic? What about when you have a cold or minor lung infection?

As to alcohol, you might feel okay but have you objectively tested your cognitive ability or reactions? Again, what happens when you're tired or unwell?

Some of the above appears to partly support my argument. That is, cognitive ability and tolerance to the effects of alcohol - or altitude - vary between individuals and even within the same individual on different days. Yet, rather than applying a practical test, we impose a fixed number.
Not saying that walking the straight line is the be-all and end-all of tests, but the cops at least have a starting point when they pull over someone suspected of DUI and decide how far they are going to press the issue. Our system cuts us no slack whatsoever.

Re the birds. Do you reckon a birdstrike is more likely over water at 8000 feet or over a mountainous area at 18000? (not talking the Australian 'Alps' but proper mountains). I have seen birds at high levels that would pose a far greater risk to a cold windscreen than your average seagull down low. Plus those pesky high flying Canadian Geese that most definitely are not soaring at flight levels over the tundra. They are flapping at N1 Max Cruise. The below 8000 ft limitation was unlikely to have been imposed as a result of any statistical analysis or assessment of whether birds could only flap their wings in the lower atmosphere - more likely someone simply did not get the words in the original certification standard right, and it has remained ever since.
I could go on with arbitrary numbers in aviation. Maximum altitude for flap or gear operation anyone? And why the same number for completely different aircraft types? These are certification standards which must be demonstrated by test, nothing more. The aircraft builder may test beyond those standards. Or may not. What dire results occur if you exceed it by 500ft? 1500ft? Not saying that anyone should deliberately exceed any limitation, but an understanding of how and why a limit is derived is sometimes useful.

Alcohol and altitude acclimatisation are entirely separate fish - you can't equate one with the other. How do you tell how affected someone is by alcohol without having an individual baseline to compare with? They might fail your subjective test stone cold sober.

Surely the 8000ft rule isn't about protection from all birdstrikes but to reduce risk. Hitting a large bird at whatever speed is going to be nasty, heated screen or not.

CASA spends millions chasing Milton Jones aviation business
 

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