Is CASA a liability to an aircraft industry?

[fly_tornado]

I've noticed the Abbott gov has taken to giving plum jobs to ex ADF we might end up with an RAAF old boy flying the top desk. Could be time for a decent officer's mess at CASA!

 

 

[Oscar]

A lot of RAA-class aircraft are required to carry a permanent and prominent reminder of the emphasis on reducing liability, in the form of the placard that stares one in the face saying:

 

WARNING

 

PERSONS FLY IN THIS AIRCRAFT AT THEIR OWN RISK

 

THIS AIRCRAFT IS NOT OPERATED TO THE SAME SAFETY STANDARDS AS A NORMAL COMMERCIAL PASSENGER FLIGHT

 

CASA DOES NOT SET AIRWORTHINESS STANDARDS FOR EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT.

 

While this is informative - it provides a warning to any occupant who may not be aware of the standards under which the aircraft operates and thereby make an 'informed' decision about flying in that aircraft, it is per se NOT in any way effective in improving the actual safety of the aircraft concerned. It may be useful in reducing the incidence of injury or worse to 'innocent bystanders' but it has precisely zero effect on the aerodynamic, structural, equipment reliability or maintenance standard of the aircraft.

 

If you are required to have this placard displayed, failure to do so incurs the same penalty as failure to maintain the aircraft properly.

 

If that doesn't tell you where CASA's priorities lie, I can't think of a better example.

 

 

[turboplanner]

Right at the start of this thread, that's exactly what was being asked. The nub of the problem is that neither the Pollies nor the CASA management recognise that what aviation in this country needs, is the recognition that the functions set out in S9 of the Civil Aviation Act,

Sorry, I missed it.

 

We are talking along similar lines, I'm in favour of dismantling CASA and ATSB and reconstituting a Department of Civil Aviation with its own Minister separate from the cars, motor bikes, trucks, ships, shopping centres and councils.

 

Unless you do that you can't get on top of misuse of separate powers usually in the name of "safety"

 

Your idea of splitting up CASA isi problematical - you can see what has happened when ATSB got angry enough to start trying to pull CASA in line - they don't have the powers, and now many people simply see ATSB and CASA "at each others throats" as if they were equally guilty.

 

I've previously given the Victorian TRB example as a precedent, and this has worked well, eliminating two multi-story towers of coffee drinkers to be offloaded from our tax burden with no loss of safety, in fact a big improvement (lowest road toll in 90 years).

 

A by-product of directly working to an Act, directly under the control of a Department is that any bright ideas for change have to go out to the public for consultation, come back to the department direct, rather than in sanitised form, and have to go through both Houses of Parliament in open debate, and that's a great safety valve.

 

I agree with Oscar's recommendation that if you have a sound idea you should make contact directly with the Minister because although at Federal level you may get an indirect reply, the Minister will see it.

 

Notwithstanding the postage sized picture painted of Ministerial Advisers, it's well worth taking them seriously, and if they engage in discussion, providing hard evidence for them to work with rather than just a whine about what the world is coming to - they get that every day in the newspapers.

 

I would prefer to have a face to face discussion with a Minister every day, but with time I have become wiser, and leant that one of the roles of the Ministerial Advisor is that he/she can say what the Minister thinks and wants without some prick walking out of the Minister's office and going to the newspapers with a private conversation. So you can put your cards on the table with a Ministerial Adviser much more comprehensively, and discuss what ifs, and "if we did this, how would you feels" without exposing the Minister.

 

 

[turboplanner]

A lot of RAA-class aircraft are required to carry a permanent and prominent reminder of the emphasis on reducing liability, in the form of the placard that stares one in the face saying:WARNING

 

PERSONS FLY IN THIS AIRCRAFT AT THEIR OWN RISK

 

THIS AIRCRAFT IS NOT OPERATED TO THE SAME SAFETY STANDARDS AS A NORMAL COMMERCIAL PASSENGER FLIGHT

 

CASA DOES NOT SET AIRWORTHINESS STANDARDS FOR EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT.

 

While this is informative - it provides a warning to any occupant who may not be aware of the standards under which the aircraft operates and thereby make an 'informed' decision about flying in that aircraft, it is per se NOT in any way effective in improving the actual safety of the aircraft concerned. It may be useful in reducing the incidence of injury or worse to 'innocent bystanders' but it has precisely zero effect on the aerodynamic, structural, equipment reliability or maintenance standard of the aircraft.

 

If you are required to have this placard displayed, failure to do so incurs the same penalty as failure to maintain the aircraft properly.

 

If that doesn't tell you where CASA's priorities lie, I can't think of a better example.

AS you correctly say, this has no effect on the aerodynamic, structural, equipment reliability or maintenance standard of the aircraft.

 

It is there for financial protection reasons.

 

I've posted my own experience with this previously so I'll just keep it abbreviated.

 

1. One of our speedway clubs organised a "family night", a spectator was injured, and successfully sued us on the grounds that he wasn't told a family night could be dangerous for his child. We immediately recommended Motor Racing disclaimers at all 105 racetracks around the Country.

 

2. Sometime later a person was injured, and didn't claim because of the disclaimer clause on the programme. A relative or friend got Four Corners involved a couple of years later, and we had to pay out because we had not advised the injured person that he had the right to sue if we were negligent. The last time I checked the programmes then spelled this out.

 

So the RAA plaque is currently the rough equivalent of stage 1, and warns someone they are not necessarily going to get airline safety, so it gives them an option of walking away.

 

In general terms this is likely to reduce the payout by CASA, RAA, the Pilot, the owner of the aircraft, and the owner of the land in a public liability case, but probably not by a lot.

 

There is a case in NSW which runs contrary to this, but this would have an effect only in NSW if it ever reaches full maturity.

 

 

[DrZoos]

Submissions can be made at:

 

http://www.infrastructure.gov.au/aviation/asrr/submissions.aspx

 

Here is my submission its my opinion only and im sure things will not be agreed . I only had 40 min to write it so its better then nothing.

 

Its short and sweet for the ADHD politician.

 

The Major Problem – CASA is The Rule Maker, Police, Judge, Jury and Executioner

 

The disgraceful failures of CASA and the ATSB in the Pel Air highlight the structural problem of having an enforcing body that plays the role of rule maker, police, judge, jury and executioner. What this case should highlight is the complete Authoritarian bastardry of CASA even in the face of a Senate enquiry CASA and the ATSB refuse to admit they make mistakes.

 

If this is how belligerent they are to a Senate enquiry then imagine how imposing and completely unworkable the situation is between CASA and small business or individuals.

 

CASA has become a money wasting behemoth that must be obeyed and thinks that they are not even answerable to senate enquiries, let alone industry or society. CASA listens to no one.

 

Solution

 

CASA needs to be split into 3 separate entities.

 

It needs to have a regulatory body that complies with international standards and sets the rules and educates and has a mandatory role of “Promoting Aviation”

 

Then it needs a completely separate body that has the role of enforcement, prosecution and investigation.

 

Thirdly it needs to have an area that oversees punishment or enforcement disputes like a tribunal where both sides can be heard and the business or individual has a right to present evidence and be heard by an impartial decision maker.

 

Problem Number 2 – Casa Stifles Innovation And Business And Makes Recreational / GA Flying Unenjoyable and Almost Intolerable For Many

 

Because CASA current role has no role of promoting aviation, CASA only focuses on regulation. They know the safest way to administer aviation in Australia is to make the rules so overwhelming that the absolute minimum number of planes and pilots fly. Less planes and less pilots in the air =less accidents. Set more rules and make the rules harder to comply with and less people fly.

 

The problem with this is it only affects the smaller end of aviation. It kills small airlines, small commercial operators, GA and Recreational forms of aviation. If CASA is allowed to continue down this path the only form of aviation left in this country will be Major Airlines. This is a major concern, because GA and the smaller end of the aviation provide essential transport and services for the country areas. The more burden on the smaller end of aviation the more it hurts country areas.

 

The Solution

 

The same part of CASA that sets the rules must also be made responsible to meet targets for the promotion of a vibrant and thriving aviation sector. Particularly GA and Recreational Aviation which is a primary target affected by the current CASA.

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

........I've previously given the Victorian TRB example as a precedent, and this has worked well, eliminating two multi-story towers of coffee drinkers to be offloaded from our tax burden with no loss of safety, in fact a big improvement (lowest road toll in 90 years)........

IMHO safest road toll ever claims over recent years (say last 5-10) have very little to do with regulation and enforcement and very much more to do with new technology being added to vehicles. Emergency Brake Assist as one example, and other non symmetric braking applications as a second example of technology that has become mainstream and saves lives.

 

Latest vehicles that have forward looking radar (which isn't actually radar, but rather ultrasonics and or cameras...but don't tell the marketeers that!) that can detect alert and finally if no appropriate driver action can then autonomously act through braking to avoid some types of collision will significantly reduce collisions and death toll. We should all see reductions in insurance premiums for cars that have such technology fitted. It used to be only luxury mega$$ cars had these fitted but now anything with adaptive cruise control has some or all of this technology fitted. Ford Kuga, and Ford Mondeo are examples within the Ford range where such technology is available at a slight increase in cost. Give it another year or 2 and it will be as ubiquitous as air-conditioning or normal cruise control has become where every model of car has it.

 

Some will argue that such "assistance" is contrary to driver enjoyment, but in my opinion as an IT guy, these technologies don't loose momentary concentration which even the best drivers will be unable to say doesn't ever happen to them... I've personally been saved by EBA and was just astounded at how short a stopping distance can be achieved when the car tosses me out as the driver and takes over....I avoided what I though were sure thing rear enders by me.....fortunately there wasn't anyone travelling behind me because without this technology in their car a rear ender by them into me is probably almost a certainty......

 

Andy

 

 

[turboplanner]

We've been discussing some of those issues in a road safety group Andy, ans I'd love the statistics to be analysed today to see if we could get some figures on just what the ADR's mean in saving Australian lives. I think it will be providing quite a large underpinning of the good results, but we don't know how much of the population who drinks and drives has been captured, and we don't have behavioural figures and we also don't have the figures relating to the billions of dollars spent on road design over the last four decades.

 

To give you an idea of road design in that periods, in the beginning we had to make around 50 changes to cab joints and reinforcements to get a US truck cab to live out a full life in Australia. Today we can put them straight into service in US specification - a significant saving for Australians.

 

 

[Dafydd Llewellyn]

All excellent stuff Dafydd, but can you imagine this government being seen to add yet another authority to the bureaucracy?

It does not have to be a public service authority; in fact it had better not be, because one of the problems CASA has is that a public service officer cannot be dismissed due to incompetence. The Program Advisory Panel set up by Sharpe for the Review of regulations 1996, was a mixture of industry people, with the CASA CEO (then Leroy Keith) - who had in fact initiated the review - as a member with power of veto - which he almost never used. None of the industry members were paid. It does not need to sit around all the time; it's more like a Senate standing committee, I imagine - it meets when it feels it needs to. It had a total of ten members; and with peripheral working parties, that sufficed to get CASR Parts 21 thru 35 plus the transitional and miscellaneous arrangements (CASR Parts 201 & 202) into law. The process costs money, but the steering organisation costs are relatively trivial.

I do not see any way to turn the current CASA mess around; and it won't stop there - there are parties within CASA now who are pretty much making up the rules as they go along, on the basis that no industry player can afford to successfully challenge them. That has to stop.

 

 

[DrZoos]

In regards to the roads. Some rules have helped in recent years. Eg: the reduction in hooning from the confiscation of hoon cars, the laws brought in to reduce powerful vehicles for P Platers (eg Nissan Skylines etc), night curfews and passenger limits for young drivers, and the huge number of hours now required for L Platers, plus the graduated licence system. But education of young drivers is also helping. In NSW The audit on this topic concluded that the RTA’s licence testing and regulation has been generally effective in ensuring the safety of young drivers. There has been a 51% reduction in crash and fatality rates involving young drivers over the last decade, more so than for drivers 26 years and older.

 

 

[Oscar]

Submissions can be made at:http://www.infrastructure.gov.au/aviation/asrr/submissions.aspx

Here is my submission its my opinion only and im sure things will not be agreed . I only had 40 min to write it so its better then nothing.

I might have used slightly more circumspect language (a message such as: 'the organisation has recklessly squandered its corporate intellectual capital' means the same thing to a lot of people as: 'it's driven out everybody who can walk and chew gum at the same time'.. which was what the Morris review more or less stated upfront) - but the points are clear, unambiguous, the response needed is laid out - and I certainly don't disagree with the problem or response statements! The thing is - if enough people are saying essentially the same thing, even if in different tones, the impact becomes magnified because it can be seen to extend widely. There's absolutely no harm in diversity of approach if a bulk of people are on the same message - in fact, that reinforces the impression on the Minister that this is a sector-wide issue that needs his attention.

 

Well done, that man!

 

 

[Gnarly Gnu]

The disgraceful failures of CASA and the ATSB in the Pel Air highlight the structural problem....

As Oscar suggests this could have been toned down a bit to be taken seriously. Also you start on a subjective note. As much as I think CASA are a ship of fools I happen to generally agree with their decision in relation to the PelAir pilot that ran out of fuel. Perhaps a more obvious and objective example would have been the Robinson fuel tank fiasco where several people died whilst CASA did nothing much.

 

 

[Chocolate]

Where I have seen departments lose their regulatory functions by splitting to a new dept, the regulatory mob go over the top with prosecutions in a very short time in my experience. this seems to be the case due to completely losing touch with the industry they are regulating as they get completely caught up in 'process' and lose touch with the outcomes of their actions. just saying thats my experience of 27 yrs public servant. they bite the hand that's feeding them, who then bite and snarl back and so on. So although being a lawmaker, as well as the police for those laws,is dangerous territory we are talking about people...they are better off being in near vicinity in the one organisation and somewhat moderating each others excesses, IMHO.

 

In regards the act specifically saying they can be sued, I worked for two depts that specifically had individuals /dept could not be sued. The multiple CEOs of bth in 27yrs were just as driven by avoiding being sued /blamed / paying out restitution as casa in my small amt of experience with casa.

 

The part of the industry I have an interest in is the small business end. .the less than 5 employees, one or two aircraft AOC. The current set up is a ludicrous amount of over regulation. And the time wasting ongoing compliance is a small business killer. Income for Recreational pilots owners to help cover costs is just seen as a complete no go area, which makes no sense to me. Lots of recreational pursuits have small business operators as part of the scene..why not rec or general aviation.

 

One pax joy flights, the mustering the properties next door stock, nearby property waters checks, the half hour photo jobs......do they really need the production of aoc, ops manual, chief pilot, damp, safety mgt system, exposition (whatever that is), haamc, fatigue mgt plan, all to be reviewed by casa at $165 an hour (min outlay $10,000 and add another $10000 -$15000 if you get someone else to write them).

 

All sorts of dodgy behind the scenes stuff is being done due to ths over regulation.

 

A transparent risk management approach and some firm limiting parameters around common tasks would go a long way to reviving a vibrant recreational and gen aviation small business aviation industry IMHO.

 

The casa project discussion paper on cutting the red tape for joy flight s was a great start in the right direction. Currently its shelved for god only knows how many years. No timeline able to be given from talking to the project mgr. (who sounded harried and overloaded with wrk. My sympathies to him).

 

Look at any gen aviation business ...they mostly started with one person and one aircraft / enginerr and worked a second job slowly building the business. That is currently not possible IMHO. Shame about that.

 

Submission from me to the enquiry? The tealeaf reading cynical ex public servant in me says its all about cost cutting the salary bill at casa / atsb. Lots of re structuring ie loss if high end big salary jobs in the offing.

 

 

[DrZoos]

Chocolate you need to stop making so much sense here and whack in a submission along exactly those lines. You make some great points.

 

 

[Guest ozzie]

Apply for the job Chocolate

 

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

Here's my submission to the Truss enquiry. I haven't sent it yet but I have been living with this callous indifference to my safety for so long I want to get this off my chest.

 

Submission into enquiry into CASA

 

An important thing to realise about CASA is that they are not really interested in the safety of no-account people like myself. I'm a glider pilot and an RAAus pilot and the most dangerous thing I do in flying is forced on me by CASA and/or Airservices. CASA can't escape responsibility for Airservices safety failings without having made an effort to rectify them.

 

Both these organisations are regulation-enforcers and they have shown no interest in making my flying safer. They attract, retain and promote bullies and the government gives these bullies obscene amounts of power to make my flying LESS SAFE.

 

Here's the proof of what I'm saying and what I've lived with for 40 years.

 

In a single-engined plane or a glider, ALTITUDE =SAFETY. There is no doubt about this, an extra thousand feet of altitude can make all the difference between coming down among the houses or landing at an airfield in the event of an engine failure, or in the case of a glider, in the event of having to fly through the sink of a rainstorm.

 

For 40 years I have been flying gliders and more recently RAAus planes to the East of Gawler. In obeying the callous and dangerous height restrictions as enshrined in maps issued by the bureaucracy, I have been forced into paddock landings which were otherwise quite unnecessary.

 

This would have been a bit more acceptable, if I had even once in 40 years seen another aircraft in that airspace, but the fact is that the nearest airliner is about 50 km away and I have never seen one of them or anything else, except for the occasional Perth-Melbourne jet at 30,000 plus feet. In the meantime, I am restricted to 4,500 feet by a callous "safety" authority. Let me say this again: The airspace I have been denied is UNUSED.

 

Once , after a forced paddock landing, I rang to ask what other traffic had used the airspace I was effectively denied by those lines on the map , and I was told that they didn't have to answer to the likes of me.

 

It would be quite easy for a real safety authority, in many situations, to give "the likes of me" an extra thousand feet to significantly enhance our safety and to do this without even the slightest compromise on the airline routes. They could refine the airspace maps to achieve this, but they would have to have some small interest in my safety to bother.

 

There are many such examples. just ask any near-city RAAus group and you will get similar stories. There is an example of a general-aviation flight which killed a party of overseas people for this very reason. They were from Europe, and were babes in the woods when it came to Australian airspace nastiness, and they apparently didn't know that the maps only gave them a tiny margin of height over the point they hit the mountain between Canberra and Melbourne. These were people killed by our "safety" authority. You can check this incident out for sure, although the official history will have been modified to protect the authorities who caused it.

 

So please don't be influenced by the idea that if you don't agree with the CASA line you are "against air safety". The opposite would be more likely.

 

I would be prepared to come personally if required by the enquiry.

 

In summary, I have operated safely for over 40 years despite, not because of, CASA. If they had half their powers, they would be half as bad and I would be safer.

 

regards, Bruce Tuncks

 

 

[soilmaster]

As Oscar suggests this could have been toned down a bit to be taken seriously. Also you start on a subjective note. As much as I think CASA are a ship of fools I happen to generally agree with their decision in relation to the PelAir pilot that ran out of fuel. Perhaps a more obvious and objective example would have been the Robinson fuel tank fiasco where several people died whilst CASA did nothing much.

No doubt Westwind ran out of fuel. It is the mechanism behind the scenes that CASA takes, the likely influence on the ATSB report [e-mail evidence of iterference and direction to change report], the ineffective AOC and CAR 217 training, no 20.11 training, the missing docs on the actual weather, the failure to retrive the Voice recorders and so on.

 

I have no doubt of the outcome by the pilot of a "splash-in" could likely be avoided if CASA had done their job properly, rather than getting involved in [what I believe to be] a striaght up coverup of the facts.

 

Please explain to me why CASA offered the PelAir Chief pilot a FOI job??

 

 

[Bob Llewellyn]

Consider this: " governments gradually employ more and more ambitious elites who capture a greater and greater share of society's income by interfering more and more in people's lives as they give themselves more and more rules to enforce, until they kill the goose that lays the golden eggs"You would think Ibn Khaldun knew about CASA, but he wrote this nearly a thousand years ago.

Personally, I think that if CASA were abolished, we could have a dynamic aviation industry, but alas as a country we are too stupid to consider this. We have Jabiru despite, not because of, CASA. Could it be that you would be better off developing new aircraft in a less over-regulated place?

Firstly: We are the only ICAO signatory in the world, whose National Airworthiness Authority DOES NOT have immunity from prosecution in the course of their normal affairs - thank you the Balmain pig PM, Paul Keating. As a result, CASA has had a degree of arse-covering since 1988. Secondly, the several attempts to introduce "and foster" into the Act have all failed, thanks to luddite fools in parliament or the senate. This is a matter of record. Thirdly, Dick Smith did (and still, I suspect, does not) understand the link between "airworthiness" and engineering judgement; so Keating - via Brereton - used him to gut CASA of most of its engineering heritage. Since then, with the exception of Byron, Ministers have been appointing fighter pilots to direct CASA. In parallel, since Anderson's era, our NAA has abused its discretionary authority, flouted the constitution, and exhibited a culture of arrogance that began to lose the credibility of supporting expertise in the late 1970s.

Currently, CASA officers are trained in their responsibilities under the Administrative Decisions Judicial Review Act 1988, but completely ignore their KNOWN responsibility towards natural justice, when directed by the head fighter pilot. There is no system of internal checks and balances, because CASA has neither the economic resources nor, it would appear, the moral resources* to successfully implement systemic change to the culture. It must be made clear that, at any point in time, CASA has (and has had) a significant number of highly motivated, well educated, and highly capable people, of high personal probity and good intent, who find themselves virtually paralysed in any attempt to reform or improve, due to the pervasive nature of the post-Anderson culture. CASA firmly believes that it has a near-divine responsibility to tell people what they can't do in the interests of safety, and that appointment to a position in CASA automatically imbues the appointee with moral authority, irrespective of the actual expertise. Within this culture, the few persons I have experienced who are persuing personal agendas have virtually no limits on their ability to negate the positive efforts of the most of CASA, most of the time.

 

*The structure and methodologies of CASA do not allow the officers any discretion to speak of, in allowing their personal probity to inform them in matters of regulatory judgement; I have a letter stating that CASA has a team of lawers to guide officers in making each regulatory judgement. it's not a lawer's bloody job to make engineering judgements, but this is the outcome of Paul Keating's all-embracing comprehension of the economics of management of hardware.

 

Now, CASA is - pointlessly, because Australia is very much not the US, OR the EEC - trying to emulate those NAAs, but at the same time do not have the corporate guts to recognise that the bulk of aeronautical expertise in Australia is in private industry, and can be used as a resourse to fulfil our ICAO obligations. because, as a member of CASA Engineering Services said to me (in personal conversation), "you can't trust pilots". John McCormack said to me, personally, face to face, in a room full of the operators of Approved Aircraft Maintenance organisations (LAMEs to a person), "what do these guys know about airworthiness? Nothing!". He was a fighter pilot (Mirages), so he knows.

 

We have a few career politicians, who have been exposed to CASA for so long, that they realise that the furphy of CASA's untouchable expertise is a Furphy; and we have a few relatively young, generally independent MPs, who are sufficiently iconoclastic to consider that CASA may, indeed, be somewhat less than perfect. Well, if they fix the frigging laws, so that CASA people can do their bloody jobs without looking over their shoulders all the time; admit that Australia deserves an aviation industry, and include "foster" as a prime directive in the CAAct; allow the reformers in CASA to work, under a director who (like Byron) was never a fighter pilot; and outsource airworthiness as the FAA so successfully has to DERs (who are members of the FAA when DERing, even if not employed by the FAA - make THAT work in Australia!)... then, in about3-5 years, our industry might start to recover.

 

Otherwise, we need to really work the trans-tasman bilateral, and move our industry to New Zealand.

 

 

[Dafydd Llewellyn]

Firstly: We are the only ICAO signatory in the world, whose National Airworthiness Authority DOES NOT have immunity from prosecution in the course of their normal affairs - thank you the Balmain pig PM, Paul Keating. As a result, CASA has had a degree of ****-covering since 1988. Secondly, the several attempts to introduce "and foster" into the Act have all failed, thanks to luddite fools in parliament or the senate. This is a matter of record. Thirdly, Dick Smith did (and still, I suspect, does not) understand the link between "airworthiness" and engineering judgement; so Keating - via Brereton - used him to gut CASA of most of its engineering heritage. Since then, with the exception of Byron, Ministers have been appointing fighter pilots to direct CASA. In parallel, since Anderson's era, our NAA has abused its discretionary authority, flouted the constitution, and exhibited a culture of arrogance that began to lose the credibility of supporting expertise in the late 1970s.Currently, CASA officers are trained in their responsibilities under the Administrative Decisions Judicial Review Act 1988, but completely ignore their KNOWN responsibility towards natural justice, when directed by the head fighter pilot. There is no system of internal checks and balances, because CASA has neither the economic resources nor, it would appear, the moral resources* to successfully implement systemic change to the culture. It must be made clear that, at any point in time, CASA has (and has had) a significant number of highly motivated, well educated, and highly capable people, of high personal probity and good intent, who find themselves virtually paralysed in any attempt to reform or improve, due to the pervasive nature of the post-Anderson culture. CASA firmly believes that it has a near-divine responsibility to tell people what they can't do in the interests of safety, and that appointment to a position in CASA automatically imbues the appointee with moral authority, irrespective of the actual expertise. Within this culture, the few persons I have experienced who are persuing personal agendas have virtually no limits on their ability to negate the positive efforts of the most of CASA, most of the time.

*The structure and methodologies of CASA do not allow the officers any discretion to speak of, in allowing their personal probity to inform them in matters of regulatory judgement; I have a letter stating that CASA has a team of lawers to guide officers in making each regulatory judgement. it's not a lawer's bloody job to make engineering judgements, but this is the outcome of Paul Keating's all-embracing comprehension of the economics of management of hardware.

 

Now, CASA is - pointlessly, because Australia is very much not the US, OR the EEC - trying to emulate those NAAs, but at the same time do not have the corporate guts to recognise that the bulk of aeronautical expertise in Australia is in private industry, and can be used as a resourse to fulfil our ICAO obligations. because, as a member of CASA Engineering Services said to me (in personal conversation), "you can't trust pilots". John McCormack said to me, personally, face to face, in a room full of the operators of Approved Aircraft Maintenance organisations (LAMEs to a person), "what do these guys know about airworthiness? Nothing!". He was a fighter pilot (Mirages), so he knows.

 

We have a few career politicians, who have been exposed to CASA for so long, that they realise that the furphy of CASA's untouchable expertise is a Furphy; and we have a few relatively young, generally independent MPs, who are sufficiently iconoclastic to consider that CASA may, indeed, be somewhat less than perfect. Well, if they fix the frigging laws, so that CASA people can do their bloody jobs without looking over their shoulders all the time; admit that Australia deserves an aviation industry, and include "foster" as a prime directive in the CAAct; allow the reformers in CASA to work, under a director who (like Byron) was never a fighter pilot; and outsource airworthiness as the FAA so successfully has to DERs (who are members of the FAA when DERing, even if not employed by the FAA - make THAT work in Australia!)... then, in about3-5 years, our industry might start to recover.

 

Otherwise, we need to really work the trans-tasman bilateral, and move our industry to New Zealand.

"By the ring around his eyeball, you can tell the bombardier;

 

you can tell a bomber pilot by the flatness of his rear;

 

you can tell a navigator by his sextant, charts and such;

 

you can tell a fighter pilot - but you cannot tell him much."

 

 

[Yenn]

You should see the AOPA submission to the enquiry. It was nowhere near as good a submission as those here and I am embarrased to say I contributed to it and they represented me.

 

 

[Bob Llewellyn]

You should see the AOPA submission to the enquiry. It was nowhere near as good a submission as those here and I am embarrased to say I contributed to it and they represented me.

AOPA are a sector of industry, and have their own perspective. The more historical one's perspective becomes, and the greater the understanding of the legal principles, the more irate one becomes. For example, CASA's authority is enforced by bullying, to wit deprivation of livelyhood. This is unconsciable, and an affront to common (constitutional) law, yet remains a holy writ. Perhaps AOPA don't want to be bullied...

 

 

[soilmaster]

I left AOPAA as a member in the early 2000's when they ceased representing my interests, basically they "lost the plot".

 

Further to that, when AOPA started taking money from CASA for "Safety Seminars", AOPA became compromised and

 

How can their President [Phillip Reiss] be directly involved in the ASRR [Aviation Safety Regulatory Review] - Truss Review and maintain proper representation for his members, when they represent such a small number of members within the industry??.

 

 

[Yenn]

AOPA's perspective is whingeing about how GA is declining and they are not happy that Recreational Flying is going ahead. From their attitude I can see why it is happening. Have a look at the AOPA site and you should be able to read their submission. It is interesting in that it demonstrates very poor proffessionalism.