They are linked, but I doubt causally.

The more obvious explanation is the usual one: People disconnected from reality have blown a risk out of all proportion and attempted to mitigate it in an impractical way.

Noble Cause Corruption?
or another reason to take the letter S from CAsA's handle?

The way CASA seem to go about implementing rules is:

1. Publish an incomprehensible NPRM buried in amongst so many rule changes so that the people affected by the change don't know that it is coming.
2. Ignore any comments received or worse integrate them poorly into the original proposal so that outcome is more onerous than it would have originally been.
3. Implement proposed instruments and amendments.
4. Sit back and wait. If done well someone else (in this case airservices) does the dirty work and cops the flack when the rules are followed through.
5. CASA saves the day by issuing an exemption to the new rule.

We are just waiting on 5 to happen here.

I suspect that we are at step 1 with NPRM 1426AS, "Post-implementation review of the legislative framework for Part 139 - Aerodromes".
https://consultation.casa.gov.au/reg.../consult_view/

It sounds OK but what is the devil in the detail??? Will this result in further airport costs of compliance and therefore closures...

Sunfish said: You can comfortably assume that the volume of tourist traffic will remain the same, whether or not details of Marree are published in AIP.

You may be labouring under a misconception. Who do you think “takes responsibility” now? Marree’s already uncertified and doesn’t have a NOTAM service, so it’s effectively been ‘use at own risk’ and check suitability in advance, for a long time.

Marree’s one of many good examples of why Part 175 is an over-kill. I guarantee that Marree’s actual location and actual elevation won’t change much, whether or not those details appear in AIP. If some ‘criminal’ told Airservices that the elevation of Marree is 1,164’ rather than the currently-published 164’, and the erroneous 1,164’ were published in AIP, do you reckon it would rain aluminium? Would you keep trying to land on a non-existent runway at 1,164’ that you can see 1,000’ below you until you ran out of fuel, or would you land on the runway?

I’d probably land on the runway...

I suspect CASA will fight like hell to keep the penalties in place because to remove them would set a precedent for removing volumes more.

The penalities aren’t there because CASA wants them there. They’re there because another part of the bureacracy takes the view that a regulation is not a regulation unless there is a penalty for non-compliance.

The mistake is using a regulation to deal with a problem to which a regulation is not the solution in the real world.

What would an autonomous drone do? Computers are typically fairly bad at situational awareness, and they're going to need reliable ground and obstacle data. Who is going to pay for providing that? The answer might determine whether autonomous flying drone service is ever going to be a profitable commercial concern. (note also that once you have liable data providers in place, the next step can be extending he amount of data that needs to provided)

Some people have wondered why the regulation does not mention if the information is correct at all. If you can be held criminally liable, you're open to a civil lawsuit recovering damages if something actually happens. That's probably why the person responsible must be a senior manager: otherwise the organisation might escape liability.

What would a wedge-tailed eagle do? I’ve had far more near-misses with wedge-tailed eagles and other birds than drones. I’m assuming birds aren’t relying on the AIP to work out where not to fly.

You’re open to civil liability “if something actually happens”, whether or not you’re criminally liable. Vicarious liability of an organisation for the negligence of staff at any level is a settled principle. Your last paragraph therefore does not make sense to me.

TK726 had a runway excursion in Kathmandu in 2015 because of an error in the database. Now imagine small airplanes with autoland in the future. The problem is that the very same database is even today being used by machines and humans alike, and thus needs to conform to the higher standards of accuracy. Thus is the bane of automation.

Oh, and drones have worse situational awareness than birds, but there are less of them, and legal rules, so they're not around planes as often (and havent been around as long as birds, either).

Folks,
Allow me to repeat, for about the fourth time --- THIS IS NOT ABOUT AERODROME DATA PACKAGES, or arrival and departure procedures, or all that sort of stuff.

It is a list of latitudes and longitudes, each for a single position, it might be for an airfield reference point, or a number of other aeronautical positions of significance, or helipads.

To my mind, the most important of all these (and I think they all should stay because there is no good reason to remove ANY of the 2000+) are the EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICES hospital helipads ---- ANYTHING that makes it harder to get patients to Accident and Emergency at the nearest hospital ASAP is an unnecessary threat to human life and limb.

What part of this does Airservices NOT GET!!!!

Remember, knocking all these positions out means they get knocked out of GNSS/FMCS/AvMap/OzRunways/Jeppesen and all Airservices own publications. None of the just mentioned can turn to AOPA etc type airfield directories ---- ONLY Airservices published data.

Ixixly, you mentioned you work in survey --- what do you know about getting a lat and long to centimeter accuracy, to the standards of Geoscience Australia --- which I presume (perhaps a little optimistically) would meet any Airservices/ICAO standard.

I know multiple ways of doing it, from doing a rough check via Google Earth, right through the iterations up to what I would do in verifying the position of land on a title document ---- but what does CASA/Airservices require. Any help with references, please.

Tootle pip!!

Whilst I tend to agree about losing the data, I am a bit perplexed as to how the emergency services helicopters suddenly won't be able to find a hospital.

Let's take an example of YXPD. I know there is a helipad there, a VFR helicopter flies in there fairly regularly. I have driven to the helipad. It is not marked on any charts that I can see, nor can I find any lat/longs to it anywhere.

I will concede I have only looked in ERSA. The only place I can find any reference to it at all is in the Encode/Decode area.

I only looked at that one hospital as it is a local one to me, but I can't recall any of the Perth ones being on the Perth VTC (happy to be corrected on that). May be different over east?

Either way I don't think the data should just be "dumped" but I am not sure it is all about the Emergency services suddenly being unable to find a hospital.

Awol57: The locations ust be erased from the databases that are loaded into the GPS or FMC if they are not "approved" data. "Approved" data we are told must meet certain standards under threat of new criminal penalties for the originator.

That means that the locations will probably have to be manually loaded as user waypoints, probably by the pilot, using data out of an old paper copy of ERSA. How safe is that?

A further complication of this stupidity by CASA/Airservices is that even my Dynon system will "push" airport frequencies to my radios as I fly however it can't do this if the airport data isn't there in the pocket FMS database.

Which begs the question; if airports disappear from ERSA, doesn't that mean that the associated CTAF also ceases to exist? What about the myriad of airports with special procedures? Does all that vanish too? How would a pilot know? Isn't ERSA the primary reference for everything?

And it is not "just" the individual HLS's going. It will be their associated instrument approaches as well. Westmead has 3, 2 GNSS 1 NDB. Merriwa has a GNSS, it's on the list, so is Mossman Hospital and Tully Hospital.

Sure you might be able to find an accident scene and get down in bad weather, but if the hospital approach no longer exists, how do you find the HLS to offload your patient?

From AOPA's newsletter published on Tuesday, 31 October:

The industry scored a big win this past week, with Airservices Australia announcing the withdrawal of AIC H29/17, giving a reprieve to 2,000+ airports that were facing removal from the AIP/WAC. Through the determined work of the RAPAC and AOPA Australia representatives, Airservices have agreed to re-draft the AIC so be more consistent with the intent and requirement of the CASR Part 175. More on this as it develops.

Ben Morgan
Executive Director of AOPA.

The requirements and effects of Part 175 seem to me to be quite clear. For example:

An ADO provides information and the information is published in the AIP. 367 days later the ADO has yet to do a review of that information. The ADO is a criminal, even if the published information remains complete and accurate in fact.

An ADO provides information and the information is published in the AIP. During the following year the ADO does a review of that information, but does not record the fact that the review happened, or its results. The ADO is a criminal, even if the published information remains complete and accurate in fact.

An ADO provides information and the information is published in the AIP. During the following year the ADO does a review of that information, and makes and keeps a record of the fact that the review happened and its results. During the second year the ADO does a second review and makes and keeps a record of the fact that the second review happened and its results, but throws the record of the first review in the bin. The ADO is a criminal, even if the published information remains complete and accurate in fact.

What’s not clear to me is how criminalising the ADO in these cases improves ‘safety’.