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I suppose as the sector shrinks, CASA will just have to increase its charges to maintain the cast flow.

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--- now requires me to have flight examiner privileges.

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Bad enough that it took FOUR months, but the fee for the move was $1400.
How come that outrageous price says he?
Ah well says the whiny voiced paper shuffler...I HAVE TO MAKE UP MY WEEKLY AMOUNT
And of course if you dont pay, you dont get yr approval paperwork.

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The authority’s audited financial statements show it lost $4.2m in 2013-14, when expenses of $184.9m outstripped revenue of $180.7m.
The loss was down from a $12m surplus in 2012-13.
Aviation regulatory services last financial year brought in $14.6m. The government provided $42.7m and the aviation fuel excise generated $120.10m.
The new fees are already raising the ire of those affected.

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Reported yesterday is a big CASA loss, and the intention to expand CASA charges to recoup the loss of some $25M???

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Flight International, Edition 3-9 March 2015, page 29 has an interesting report by Regulation Reporter, David Learmouth. David’s article is titled:

EASA mends the rules with tighter focus on outcomes

The executive director at Europe's safety agency has overseen a wholesale shift in mindset

If a regulator dismantles its rule making doctorate it is a sign that things are changing, and at EASA they are.

Executive director Patrick Ky took over the EASA top job in September 2013, and a year later he closed the rulemaking department. "If you have a rulemaking directorate," he explains, "the director is judged by how many rules he makes, or how many existing rules he 'improves'." The result, he says, is ever-fatter rule books, the content of which nobody could possibly retain, and the complexity of which becomes "impossible to work with".

When he first arrived, Ky says, he gathered his troops and told them to reduce the existing rules down to the absolute essentials, so they could all see what was really necessary.

EASA retains its power to make rules, Ky confirms, but the way the need for rules is assessed, and the way that they are made and framed, is now different. The rulemaking process now starts with a risk assessment to determine whether a rule is needed at all, and if so what it needs to address. Only then is it framed.

ESSENTIAL.
Finally, the rate of technological progress is such that prescriptive rules involving equipment can rapidly become outdated, so the future, says Ky, is performance - based rulemaking (PBR), with prescriptive rules only where they are essential. Mostly the latter would define capabilities and responsibilities. PBR means that the required outcome of the rule is specified, and the means by which that outcome is achieved is not the main issue. This method has been foreshadowed for years by the approval of rulings on an "equivalent safety" basis, which allows flexibility in the means by which a safety objective could be achieved.

Rulemakers still work at EASA, but within one of the four directorates: strategy and safety management, certification, flight standards, and resources and support. "Rulemakers now only
work six months at headquarters," Ky explains. "Then they are sent out on inspections so they can see what it's like to have to put EASA rules into practice."

But Ky, a noted simplifier, has actually created a new directorate: strategy and safety management, headed by Luc Tytgat, formerly the director of the pan-European Single Sky Directorate at Eurocontrol. Why?

Ky explains: "If we are to go to PBR, we have to establish what the risk is, and to prioritise our resources and action. Luc's task is to notice what is happening out there, to recognise risk and deter mine where action might be needed." There are areas crying out for attention, Ky says, and ground handling, where - in simple numbers - there are more safety incidents than in any other phase of an aircraft's operation, is one of them. And in general aviation, it has started down the long path of working with the sector towards replacing regulation that was effectively commercial-aviation-light with industry-specific guidelines.

Long-serving certification director Norbert Lohl was on 1 March replaced by Trevor Woods, who previously worked on flight standards. Lohl says it was tough in the early days, building a relationship with sceptical national aviation authorities. They were essential, because EASA was so under-resourced that it had to contract out a high proportion of new tasks to the national authorities. About 20 of the tasks still are contracted out.

Woods points out how much is happening on the operations side, especially in human factors and training. EASA is preparing to drive operators towards the application of safety management systems within training departments, and towards the principle of alternative training and qualification programmes, instead of prescriptive syllabus-based recurrent training, plus the application of competency-based training.

TRAINING
Aircraft manufacturers must now provide operational suitability data to prove their cockpit interfaces work. Airlines will be expected to follow the manufacturers' manuals on type rating
training more closely. And work is being done to improve the effectiveness of simulators.

EASA is not blind to the fact that pilots frequently seem to be unable to cope with the unexpected, Woods emphasises, and it is looking for ways of dealing with this.

AHIA: Our thanks to David for use of his report to better understand where our CASA is heading at present.

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