A Quick "poll" if you have a moment. Much appreciated
 

As I found on the weekend...

What lights do you need on an aircraft for day VFR? How about night VFR or IFR?

What lights do 99% of GA aircraft have?

Now read CAR 196.

As far as we could figure out from CAR 196, all aircraft (excluding RA) must display (even in the middle of the day) the three navigation lights (red/white/green) and two red strobes (because a single fin-mounted strobe doesn't get you the required viewing angles). In the US (at least based on literature from Whelen) you can apparently use either a red or a white strobe, and of course many planes in Australia use this approach - white strobes on the wingtips meet the required viewing angles and can be neatly integrated into the navigation lights, negating the need for a red strobe (particularly under the fuselage). However, from CAR 196 these planes are not legal.

Quite apart from being confusing (is there actually a rule that you can't put diagrams in a legal document?) it'd be much simpler if we just followed the US approach - which appears to be what everyone actually does despite what CASA says.

Unless this has just come into effect ,something doesn't sound correct here. As 90% of the single engine GA fleet wouldn't have 2 red strobes. What they have is usually 1 red beacon (a flashing red lamp not strobe) on the fin or top of the fuselage. Some aircraft also have white strobes on the wing tips but probably less than 50% in total. Plus ofcourse nav lights.

my vote is: neither clear nor concise.

They have been re-writing the regulations to make them clearer and more concise for decades - a project that has always been 'soon to be completed' since the early 1990s. I think the last statement to the recent senate review was there was only 5% left to do.

In those decades the volume of regulations has been "concisified" into a plethora of extra documents, it went from CARs and CAOs into CARs, CAOs, CASRs, CAAPs, (many of which are now individually larger than the original documents they were meant to concisely replace) and they have also been simplified to the point where you need a PhD in law to understand if you have exceeded your flight and duty times.

Rather than do a survey, hand your lawyer friend copies of the CARs, CASRs, CAOs and AIPs - he/she may need a wheelbarrow - and ask them to quickly find, if under the law as it stands now, can a student pilot who last had a dual check 15 days ago, be sent solo? If they are struggling, guide them to CASR 61.115. Then when they think they have the answer, tell him them they also need to look up all the exemptions to the regulations that have had to be made when it was realised the changes were too hastily drawn up without an understanding of the implications and show them "Civil Aviation Safety Regulations 1998 CASA EX46/18 — Dual Flight Checks before Solo Flights (Student Pilots) Exemption 2018". Then show them how many of these exemptions there are.

Then ask them: "how a humble flying instructor (without legal training) can keep on top of all these regulations and exemptions?"

CASA have a regulatory system that focuses on adding more and more convoluted regulation with a focus on forcing compliance and finding individual culpability and resultant punishment to improve safety.

Instructors are required (by CASA) to do Human Factors Training (under threat of $10k fine if not complying). That compulsory training strongly stresses the need to develop a safety culture that encourages self reporting of failures without fear of retribution, that fosters openness about safety failings to find underlying systemic issues and to continually enhance safety.

This seems to me to be ludicrous. CASA Left Hand: "Be open and honest and don't fear punishment for failure. That is the safety culture we want"
CASA Right hand: "If we find you didn't follow a regulation buried inches deep in volume 5 of the CASR, you will be fined and sanctioned"



rant over. Simple answer - count me in the 80%! :)

Definitely NOT clear, and NOT CONCISE.

Just try to read any CASA do. and you'll soon give up from pure 'fatigue'...….

No CHEERS..Nope...NONE at ALL!!

No way clear, no way concise. How can 250 pages describing ONLY pilot licences plus 650 pages of associated "standards" be concise $#%@%$@!! That's just Part 61 for pilot licences - haven't got near an aircraft yet.

Not clear, not concise. = FAILED.

There is nothing clear and concise about anything that CASA controls or has indeed touched. Medical status class 1 until our revered regulator works out how to take that away as well.

neither clear nor concise, complexity way past the fraudulent level......................

The regulations are "Clear": Clearly we are all criminals! The regulations are concise as in 'to the point', the point being only Military and Airlines should be flying!

You know the regulations are completely incomprehensible when you ring CASA for an explanation and even the guy who wrote the original regulation cannot understand it! Their comment was "it was fine until it got sent to Legal" (this actually happened!!!!)

So, no, the current regulations are not clear and concise by any normal meaning of those words.

I vote not clear and not concise

As do I and anybody else who has had any but the most superficial experience of aviation law in Australia.

Advise your lawyer friend that the various aviation "laws" are on a par with the tax regulations for size and complexity, then refer him to the Rule of Law Institute of Australia to explain what that means.

Finally, advise him that the informal policy of CASA , not to be found in any mission statement, is that:" The aviation law is for the safe conviction of pilots and engineers**" ---- the present form and complexity, rigidity and prescription of the regulations never did and does not have anything to do with aviation "safety".

Tootle pip!!

** Statement to the Program Advisory Panel (PAP) of the CASA Review, by CASA lawyer giving testimony to the panel, around 1997.

Definite no from me

The poll results are as expected so far.

@Glen: I'm not sure how much (objective) weight asking ppruners will carry. Perhaps you should physically go to Aspeq test centres and ask candidates to the CPL air law (and those to the RPL and PPL tests too) the very same question. Ideally you'd have a form with relevant questions.

the poll
 

Thankyou so far, for your involvement. I can assure you that this will all be leading to something, so please keep the responses coming. Cheers. Glen

Classic example is the lighting requirements for pilot activated lighting and the need for alternates under various circumstances. Who dreams up of this garbage? I've flown in the USA to airfields with pilot activate lighting and there's none of the complications that our system requires.

I no longer give a f#c$ about the new CASA regs. I have been flying over 30 years and the aircraft flies the same now as then. Teaching someone how to fly is the same. So I simply get on with the job the same as always and ignore most of the bull$hit.Tick the boxes on the new crap forms but do the job as before.

about as clear as mud. Absolutely, positively, without question, not concise.

I have never known an industry to be so meticulous about regulating alcohol intake, whilst at the same time, being the cause of alcohol intake.

Clear and concise? I don't think so.

An acquaintance, who works for our Cherubs Against Sensible Aviation, has just purchased a share in a single engine piston......and is now learning first hand the delights of the regulations for maintenance. He is PPL, so won't learn the true joy of trying to run a (profitable) aviation business under the cumbersome weight of red tape.

excerpts from Australian flying magazine:

The Federal Government released their manifesto Planning for Australia's Future Population last week, a large part of which is effectively a policy of investing in the regions to restrict the relentless march of capital-city suburbia. It talks about new roads, new rail infrastructure and jobs growth among many things. Out of curiosity, I searched the document using the term "aviation" and got NO RESULTS FOUND. Searching again under "airports" found reference to Western Sydney, a rail connection to Tullamarine, and Hobart Airport. That's it. Our industry and community gets no other mention in this tome, which can be taken squarely as a pitch for votes in the May election. Such scant mention of aviation in a policy that boasts about "better connecting regional Australia" tells the aviation community exactly where we stand: nowhere. Despite the rhetoric of successive ministers it is clear the government believes aviation plays no part in the future of Australia other than as gateways to and from the capital cities. How can a serious government honestly believe it can connect regional cities by ignoring the most efficient way of doing it? It is a depressing norm that aviation always gets the rhetoric, but not the action. This time we've even been excluded from the rhetoric, an effect of not representing enough votes to make politicians sweat at night.


Perhaps the goverment would have done well to consider Ken Cannane's position on jobs in the regions. The head of AMROBA last week outlined how he believes regulation is stifling the industry's potential to generate jobs. His plan is allow small operators in flight training and maintenance to function without having to abide by the heavy regulations that load so much cost onto businesses without returning even a reasonable increase in safety. According to Cannane, the industry decline co-incides with the death of the Department of Aviation and the rise of the Civil Aviation Authority and the CARs in 1988. The CAA became CASA in 1996, which it does appear only exacerbated the problem. In short, not all the functions and responsibilities of the DoA were picked up by either CASA or Airservices Australia. One of these was simply looking after an industry that reported employs 200,000 people in this country. Cannane is a firm believer in the concept of independent flying instructors and LAMEs as a way of taking general aviation back to the regional airports and therefore catalysing the process that turns small into medium and results in the very jobs the government says it wants to generate.

State of the regs aside, how can you take 100 responses simply from PPRuNe members to be representative of the 30,000+ (?) licensed pilots in Australia???

Piston Broke, if I get 30,000 replies I would be ecstatic, and I will get the kids to run the percentages. If 30,000 pilots voted one way and all 900 CASA staff voted the other way. That would be 97% against 3%, if my maths is right. By the way, I reckon that about 850 of the CASA staff would be as fed up with it as much as we are, they have to work with the same rubbish as we do!!!

Folks,
I am staggered that there are (at 23.44 on 26/03) eleven people who voted YES??
Who are they ---- lawyers??
Or trolls??
Or smoking No.1 Good S---t.
There has to be some reason for such deviant behaviour.
Tootle pip!!

Several years ago I was involved in writing a Part 142 Expositon for a medium sized flying school. There was much back and forth with the CASA FOI as I tried to meet each of the 450 tick box items he had to sign off before we gained approval.

When one piece of feedback came back to me stating that nowhere in the document had I mentioned that the Flying School’s facilities had ‘climate control’ I knew there was something grossly wrong with the system. The cost of that Part 142 Exposition (in addition to a Training Managanent System and Staff Training and Checking Manual that had to be written as well) I estimate would be somewhere in the vicinity of $50-75k. And that manual did nothing to improve safety - all it did was explain the procedures the flying school currently operated under. And I fear all it will have done is create additional burden every time the school has an audit.

A fun fact - the new manuals totalled about 30,000 words. That equates to about 1500 words for every aircraft the school had....for no discernible increase in safety 🙄

hawk_eye,

your post goes a long way to explaining why those little aero clubs
that used to be scattered around the "kickatinalong" towns who
perhaps, if they were lucky, trained a dozen pilots a year, are no
longer there.
I occasionally watch the odd Tube videos of pilots out and about
their country sides of their countries, having fun with their flying machines
doing all sorts of fun things that would simply not be allowed here, or be
made so expensive nobody would bother.
I believe that's a part of why the industry is so much in decline, the
regulator has taken the fun out of it.

@Sunfish: congratulations on your 7000th post!

Again, the state of the regulations aside:

You clearly won't get anywhere near 30,000 responses because only a small percentage of pilots and other licensed parties would be PPRuNe members.

As it is, the topic has had over 3000 views but only 152 have taken the poll. That in itself says something i.e. perhaps only those who have had issues or have an axe to grind have voted. Maybe you should have had a third option "Don't know or undecided" to cater for all those (I suspect the vast majority) who have had little or no involvement interpreting the regs..

The current 152 responses is only 0.5% of the 30,000, so you can hardly say that is a representative sample, and trying to extrapolate that to CASA employees is another matter.

FWIW a friend who works in the federal area of transport and security has said if you think the CASA regs are difficult to interpret, have a look at the various Acts and Regulations related to aviation and maritime transport and facilities security.

So the 2848 people who did not vote are the majority scared silly by CASA goons? Can't really blame them but as a Pilot group we all need to stand up to these idiots in Fort Fumble and just say no, NO, NO WAY IN HELL, F#CK NO!!!

LeadSled;
As of now, 1614 CSuT on 27/3 there are sixteen who voted YES.
Re your question as to who they are, may I venture the opinion that they could possibly be CASA Lawyers smoking No.1 Good S--t.:E

That is the only reason I can think of anyway!:confused:

NO writ large.

Only people like Carmody, Smart Aleck, P Gobsome, A Anustasi and few other criminal employees, who have had their arses covered by CAsA would posit that the Rotten Regulator is doing a good job.
Well, they think they are....while 'busy' faarking an industry with an ever continuing avalanche of strict liability criminal BS. And they even go beyond their legit safety remit, with regulations about commerce
IMHO Cretins Against Sensible Aviation are a national disgrace.

As others have said , just ignore all the crap as best you can and get on with it.
Its no safer now than it was 40 years ago, in spite of a fright train load of regulations and paperwork.
Jobs and Growth...yeah. THEIRS
Way passed the time for CAsA to be told to Foxtrot Oscar.
Oh for some political testicular fortitude, someone,? somewhere?....anyone ???
Keep banging that Judicial Inquiry drum.!