[thorn bird]

"For the sake of regional harmonisation why isn't the now 23+yr firmly imbedded and regionally adopted CAANZ Part 61 - see HERE - an acceptable rule set for the Australian aviation industry... Huh"

Not enough pages P2

[Sandy Reith]

"Closure"report, reminds one of that condition sort by the recently bereaved. How appropriate for Aussie GA.

The one outstanding feature of the report is talk about outcome based regulation. Obviously we don't speak the same language because any objective view of our current super prescriptive strict liability criminal aviation law could not plausibly call it "outcome based regulation". Unless of course the desired outcome (unspecified) is the continued decline of GA in Australia.

The question must be put to Parliament how can it be that after 29 years and hundreds of millions of dollars the rewrite of the "regulations" is still not finished and GA is in steep decline?

The government corporate body style of governance (much vaunted independent umpire), ostensibly for efficiency and reduce costs to the public purse has failed. How is it that the CEOs of these bodies are paid more than their Ministers? Is it because Ministers have less responsibility? AusPost boss gets ten times more than the PM. Presumably Carmody is being paid well above Chester.


The system is truly broke and if it were possible to calculate the lost opportunity costs they would be way in excess of the monster direct costs of running our aviation regulators.

[Kharon]

61 – Used for designed purposes.

Just a note, to those who rely on ‘their’ reading of Part 61 to keep their operation running. Read the Falcon Air story closely;or, better still, have a ‘chat’ with the operator. You have the right to remain hopeful – but Part 61 can and will be used against you – should the need arise. Be careful, be very, very careful; 61 is a legal minefield, laid under the trees which all have a cunningly concealed noose, waiting to trap the unwary.

There is a tested defense - HERE - still a valid precedent. No value in the AAT but in other 'courts' it would have gotten Falcon airborne and clear. Would have taken a little longer - but it would be very effective.


Just saying. That’s all.

[Kharon]

Unintended consequences.

Mr McMillan : We categorise it not as a pilot shortage but as a pilot training blockage. That might sound like a euphemism, but, at the end of the day, we've got to roll back five years. We've had aviation regulatory reform that's been going on for 23 years and it's not finished. Some of its been okay; some of it's been appalling. In the pilot training area, it's been an absolute disaster. There's a whole heap fewer pilot training centres in Australia than there used to be. Many of them are foreign owned and they're only training pilots for their own operations elsewhere and the number of training establishments has shrunk considerably. Australia's population is growing. You could only think that the same percentage of people want to be pilots. I think what's happening is that the sausage machine has shrunk so small that it's very hard to get a training place.

We would say that, from Alliance's perspective, as many people are out there wanting to be pilots. As a company, we are always training ahead. We train eight pilots at a time. We bring them in. We seem to be a good place to work. There are all the different places around Australia to go and live. There is a whole range of different training techniques and things have come in that are far smarter than they were 10 years ago.

Some of the regulatory requirements that we have to meet in this country are absurd. That's a separate argument for a separate place. There were no safety issues; there wasn't a number of accidents or anything. But the unintended consequence of what CASA have done with some of their regulations has caused this issue, particularly in Australia.

The tree of CASA lunacy finally bears fruit. Bitter, inedible and another mess left behind for industry to clean up. Stellar, absolutely, mind bending, stomach aching ducking stellar..

[Kharon]

Reality in a nutshell.

Anon - "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."

Can't say fairer than that - no wonder the Chinese students shake off the minimum requirements so they can get on with real training. Honestly - Weeks needs to be tarred and feathered and made to unpick his knitting. What a shambles.

Toot - toot.

[Choppagirl]

There's an interesting 'Quick Poll' running on pprune at the moment. It's asking whether CASA have achieved clear and concise aviation standards as per the Act. There are some interesting responses as you can imagine!

https://www.pprune.org/pacific-general-a...iated.html

[P7_TOM]

Been there – done that.

- HERE -

[Choppagirl]

What was the response to the 2012 submission P7_TOM?

[Kharon]

Huge, we taped it.

[Choppagirl]

Haha. You are so funny!

[Kharon]

New Chum – Old story.

I’m certain that this sort of tale is not uncommon. There I was sat at the bar with time to kill, waiting for my flight to be called. Young fellahin parked on the next stool and, as you do, got chatting, turns out he was a pilot. Heading home on a break and glad of it, he’d had a catastrophic engine failure in the single he was flying. It all turned out very well indeed; we did discuss ‘luck' – unlucky that he was only a few miles short of a very remote airfield, but where it happened was, luckily, in a good place for a forced landing. So much for fate.

But what of ‘training for such a situation? There was oil all over the windscreen which reduced forward visibility to practically zero and smoke in the cabin, tough stuff for a young dog to chew. I asked about the forced landing training he’d had, sure enough two, I believe  essential elements had never been raised during that time.

The reliability of aircraft engines is fantastic to the point where a sudden, catastrophic failure is indeed a very rare event – but they happen. Back in the day my first instructor had learned his trade when failures were ‘uncommon’ but always a consideration; he passed that knowledge along to me as part and parcel of routine learning. Part of this involved taking away forward visibility – simulated oil on the windscreen. This followed by using the DV (side) windows to evacuate smoke, (noise) and learning to arrange a glide path using this technique; additionally how to ‘side-slip’ the aircraft to get a better appreciation of the landing area and obstacles which may be avoided, early in the piece, so as not to further spoil a bad day.

I asked the young fellah about this stuff – a blank stare, followed by a small light going on was the result. Never heard of nor trained in that level of operational safety. It seems that despite to unbelievable amount of ‘tick-a-box’ training CASA have foisted on industry through Part 61, there are many gaping holes in the CASA slice of training cheese. There are many examples of where the training regime is divorced from the realities of operational flying, this is but one.

Part 61 does not ensure world best training, it is however an example of an amateurish attempt to create the impression that the writer actually understands the realities of aircraft operations and how they should be managed. No one was hurt this time, but it leaves one wondering when neat, tidy, compliant ‘tick-a-box’ training will be the radical cause of an accident.

Aye, all’s well that ends well; no bodies to recover – this time.

Toot – toot.

[Kharon]

Airmanship; common sense and sound advice.

I've cribbed the post below, complete, from Pprune. Well worth reading, writ by a chap who actually 'knows his onions'. It highlights one of the many, (IMO dangerous) 'unintended consequences the lunatic Part 61 invokes. Thank you Centaurus.  (Can't change the formatting - sorry).

Centaurus - Inducing a wing drop to meet a Part 61 requirement



Regarding the new proposed rules on spinning and wing drops at the point of stall.



A contributor to the recent CASA discussion panel mentioned wing drop recovery or induced wing drop recovery training. Presumably the term ”induced” covers the situation where a wing drop at the point of stall does not occur naturally because the design of the aircraft is such that stall behaviour is benign.



To induce a significant wing drop in aircraft that have benign stall characteristics, instructors are prone fake the manoeuvre by deliberately mishandling the aircraft into an unusual attitude which in itself is not only extremely unlikely but has the potential to weaken the aircraft structure in the long term. For example, by pulling the nose high with power applied then applying significant rudder to skid the aircraft into dropping a wing while it is not stalled but pretending to be stalled for the purpose of the exercise. Side loads can be significant and not considered by the aircraft designer.



Some instructors including those on ultralights are known to be quite violent with the flight controls as they attempt to force a wing drop in an aircraft that has already benign (by design) stall characteristics. Inducing a fake wing drop by deliberately placing an aircraft into an undesirable state but not actually stalled, is stretching the friendship a little too far merely to tick the box.



CASA needs to address this problem. Brief the actions to counter a wing drop at the point of stall by all means; but avoid playing silly buggers in the air.



Certification flight tests by qualified test pilots are not “rigged” to induce a wing drop at the point of stall if the aircraft already exhibits benign stall characteristics.