Feb 2010 Brd Meeting - CASA Deed of Agreement

[Admin]

On the Sunday of the board meeting the Deed of Agreement between CASA and RAAus was formally signed.

 

This secures our relationship with and funding from CASA for another year

 

 

[Guest watto]

Just as a matter of interest Ian, is CASA happy with our little operation? we here a lot of negative stuff but what are some of the positives that they mention?

 

 

[Admin]

CASA I believe are very happy with our Association in comparison to the other 9 recreational aviation bodies.

 

For those that don't know CASA has established a dedicated recreational aviation department headed by Jim Coine. Jim came to the meeting to address the board members and I will post his slides up here when I can.

 

At the end of his presentation I asked him 2 questions:

 

1. With flying cars and 3 wheel motor bikes coming next year which will cause impact on RAAus with not only having to deal with CASA but also 7 other State Government departments of RTA - how has CASA prepared itself for this. Jim said, in short, that they would be treated like any other aircraft.

 

I mentally noted the answer skipped around the impacts this will have in RAAus not only having to work with CASA but also trying to work with many other government departments.

 

Personally I see this as the next biggest impact on us within the next 10,15 or 20 years. Imagine all the rich folk in suburbia who trade in their trendy 4 wheel drives that have never been off road for a flying car. They find they have to drive an hour just to find somewhere to take off - the whole closing down airfields debate gets hotter. Imagine the 15k service - motor mechanic or Level 2 or LAME - RTA registration and RAAus registration - rich people move in different circles so can you imagine the influence this will have on our industry. In my humble opinion I think there will be a lot of work needed by RAAus in this area when considering a 10 year strategic plan and what the RAAus will look like in the future so we can start subtly preparing by creating relationships etc to ensure we are being proactive and shaping our own future instead of always being reactive.

 

Imagine Mrs Rudd driving down the main street in the city and her flying car breaks down from a blown hose - she can't call the RACV because it is LSA registered - imagine the changes to our industry that will happen then

 

2. This was a very cheeky question to see if I would get any "read between the lines" type of answer, however I didn't - the question was "Is there any other recreational aviation body that he thinks would benefit from joining with the RAAus?"

 

His answer and again not verbatim and only my own interpretation was that RAAus is one of the more "matured" organisations in the recreational aviation sector and many of the others could learn a lot from us. Perhaps there was opportunity for us to assist others as a type of "mentor" to them and in many ways we have set the standard.

 

So in general terms CASA, I believe, are very happy with the way that RAAus is performing especially against the other 9 or so recreational aviation bodies and whilst we have been bombarded with so much more reporting requirements, risk mitigation actions, new processes and more, all from CASA, we have still been able to try and protect our basic objective of fun and affordable flying without being sucked into the huge CASA bureaucracy - some things we can fight for and others we simply can not.