Switch to US Regulations.....
 

PLEDGE TO FORCE A SWITCH TO US REGULATIONS IN RESPONSE TO GENERAL AVIATION 'MAYDAY' CALLSenator Rex Patrick - media release 1May22

I'm surprised that this has not had a mention yet... will be interesting to watch.

IF he gets re-elected.. there’s the rub . No win. No Bill
AND the bit about seeing how US regs fit in the Oz context, with our unique air and bureaucratic mind set…..CAsA will love that.
Jono will it into that like a rat up a drain pipe…uh oh.
With Miss Spent and the rusty Iron Ring, could be another decade before the dust settles.
Vale GA.

Interesting that the Regulatory Impact Statements (RIS) that were done by CASA to determine what the cost on industry would be, as a result of the implementation of the new regulations are not publicly available.

The cost to the taxpayer just for CASA to produce the statements would have been significant, and now they aren’t freely available for the public?

Then we have CASA forcing all AOC holders to re-write their ops manuals to comply with the new requirements. I would imagine that most ops manuals would only require minor amendments throughout in order to comply with the new requirements, and not having to use CASA’s home grown sample manuals. It will be interesting to see how many AOC holders have not updated their ops manuals by the deadline in 4 weeks and what CASA’s immediate action will be on them… The traditional CASA Friday afternoon fax - shut shop will probably be replaced​​​​​ by an email!

I totally agree with Rex and his proposal if re-elected,

I’m surprised that the RAAA and AOPA haven’t been vocal on the damage that the new regs are having on industry.

I'm a big fan of Senator Patrick, but this proposal is laughable. CASA will be stocking up on popcorn, already, to watch this play out.

The Bill, if passed by the Parliament, will give the Minister work to do! That'll get CASA worried.

The Minister's got to "conduct an independent review to examine how US Federal Aviation Authority regulations can be translated into the Australian context." That's independent of CASA, so no work for CASA to do there. And, given the importance of the review and its potential results, CASA should probably 'pause' any ongoing work on e.g. medical certification or independent instructor regulations. After all, more work could be nugatory if there's going to be some 'sledgehammer' put to the current regulations.

To whom will the Minister turn? I reckon he'll turn to the likes of the Attorney-General's Department and the Office of Parliamentary Counsel and the Minister's own Department and say: "Make the review happen!" Surely another Forsyth-style review would be practically pointless, given that its recommendations were practically ignored.

I confidently predict that if the review proceeds, the outcome will be good news: The FARs can be translated into the Australian context!

And the even better news is that the way to go about it is the way in which CASA has been going about it for the last decades! Look at this, from CASA's own consultation document on Part 43:Alas, those dot points (and all the stuff around structuring offence provisions) are why the end-product bears little semblance to the FARs. And it's driven by.... Attorney-Generals and the Office of Parliamentary Counsel and the Department.

The only dot point over which CASA has any substantive control is the last one. That's the one where cattle prods and whips should be used to control people with 'bright ideas' about how Australia can do it 'better'.

What so the circa one million dollars that larger operators have spent in the move to CASRs last December will be for nothing? 😳🫣

Don’t think the issue is with the top end of town Stallie, they should be able to absorb the transition costs if they are smart enough. It’s totally a different situation for a VFR operator doing scenic flights/charter and very occasional aerial work flights with pax on board.

The SMS sledge hammer is also in the background, whereby all 135 operators will need to engage a Safety Manager!

Things like the Safety Manager requirement for every 135 operator, and 133 for helicopters, really highlight the issues with these supposedly 'outcomes-based' regs.

A very small operation with one or two non-complex aircraft doing scenic flights and what was previously simple charter work does not need a separate safety manager on the payroll. CASA would say that the intent is for scalable solutions, but you can bet when audit time comes the same paperwork will be needed no matter if you have 2 or 200 employees - risk register, risk assessments, hazard reports, safety committee meetings, incident investigations etc.

This translates to the ridiculous situation where the Chief Pilot is spending a hefty chunk of time and effort ensuring the paper trail is satisfied when the same or better outcomes would be achieved by simply being there, seeing what goes on and taking actions on the spot to ensure the operations runs as it should. Same goes for change management - why would you need a formal documented change management process, auditable by the regulator, to decide to buy an R44 when you already operate a Bell 206? CASA says you do.

For questions like these, I often think of the comparison between what's allowed on the roads vs. in the air. If I bought a 12 seat minibus and started offering pub crawls, why wouldn't I have to employ a safety manager and have a 500 page operations manual? Probably more risk of killing someone that way than in an aeroplane. Or how is it that a petrol tanker and a bus full of people can pass one another at 200 km/h closing speed without having to fill in a risk assessment for every different route they travel on?

There's also the consistency issue - a Part 135 VFR single-engine pax transport flight over a populous area will hit the ground at say 60 kts if the engine fails. A Part 133 rotorcraft doing the same thing would hit at 10 kts or less, but needs to have ensured and documented that there are so-called safe forced landing areas available at all times, when the fixed wing doesn't.

Whether this stuff will really be audited and findings issued is a different story, but the poor Head of Operations of a small operation still has all this administrative burden that is, I reckon, clearly a safety detractor rather than an enhancer.

You've nailed it. If Pip Spence doesn't have the longevity that I sincerely hope she does, you'd be an excellent candidate for her replacement mate.

GA 40+ years ago never had any of this bureaucratic overhead. Today, GA is lying in a coma if it’s not already deceased, murdered by over regulation.

Has any of this bureaucratic overhead significantly improved safety over the past 40 years? I’d be curious to learn what the incident/accident/fatality rates are per 100,000 hours flown in single pilot GA ops then and now.

My gut feel is there’s bugger all difference. But happy to be surprised.

I'd just be happy if they could publish regulations in an AIM/FAR book format. Two columns per page and each page crammed with small font information. Why on earth do we need to publish legislation at 7-12 lines per A4 page. The FAA gets 10 times the data on a much smaller page.

Just look at the FAA ATP licence as a starting point - a single credit card size piece of plastic - that plus your medical page and your GTG.

And no @@#$% ASIC!

The state of Australian Bureacracy Is cruelling on small aviation organisations.

Yep, that right folks, it is upsidedown.
Therefore aircraft have to be retrained to fly in this air and pilots.......................