[Peetwo]

Sandy Reith - Supplementary Submission 

I personally know that Sandy had struggles with the RRAT Committee Secretariat to get his supplementary submission published, Sandy had originally sent it through back in October 2021???   

However finally the Secretariat has come through and on the current GA industry status quo/context (ie. the last GA hearing debacle and the issues with the Angel Flight CASA embuggerance; plus the upcoming expiration of the CSF 09/19 legislative instrument; and the Comm Ombudsman review of the Glen Buckley CASA embuggerance; plus the possibility of a new/rewritten SOE direction to the CASA Board by Minister BJ) I believe the SR submission provides a perfect historical reference of where we are now at - see HERE.   

This bit in particular perked my interest:



The last response/recognition of the Forsyth ASSR recommendation 14 was published in 2017:

Completed – Implementation Ongoing
The tasks required by the Government response, such as issuing of a new SOE, have been completed.

CASA’s Regulatory Philosophy was published on 15 September 2015.

The SOE issued to the CASA Board in March 2017 requires that CASA implement its regulatory philosophy with the philosophy being reflected in relevant policies, procedures, manuals and where CASA personnel are carrying out their day-to-day operations. It is acknowledged that implementation of this response is ongoing across CASA.

 
And of course we all know how that ended up - 

Now ffwd to November 2019 to the preamble to yet another weasel worded Govt Response to the two Senate RRAT recommendations from the Angel Flight/ATSB performance inquiry (remember that this response came from the then DPM McDonaught's office): 

Introduction
The Australian Government welcomes the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee’s report on the inquiry into the Performance of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, and in particular its report on the June 2017 crash of a flight conducted on behalf of Angel Flight Australia (the report).
The Government is pleased that the Committee recognised the expert analysis conducted by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) in examining the Angel Flight operations. While the Committee provided comment on whether non-passenger carrying positioning flights should have been included in the ATSB’s main calculations of risk, the Government notes the ATSB’s focus on passenger carrying operations is consistent with the Government’s Statement of Expectations to the agency.
In providing this response to the Committee’s report, the Government reiterates the importance of the independence of regulatory bodies, such as the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA). CASA’s independence is set out in the Civil Aviation Safety Act 1988 which also allows CASA to issue legislative instruments relating to the safety operation and maintenance of aircraft where it deems necessary. For these reasons, the Government notes the two recommendations in the report.
The Government is committed to maintaining a safe aviation environment for all Australians. Passengers, whether fare paying or not, are generally less able to determine the level of risk involved in the service they are boarding and rely on the Government to ensure an appropriate level of aviation safety is maintained. The Government supports CASA, as Australia’s civil aviation safety regulator, using its expertise and professional judgement to fulfil that responsibility.

I have much more dot joining to do but again in the context of that last RRAT GA inquiry hearing and past statement's like this from 'the now defacto CEO' Dr Aleck:



Plus: 

Dr Aleck : The ambiguity issue can be readily addressed, as I said. In the meantime, as we're the interpreter and applier of that rule et cetera, I might mention too that, in addition to the analysis that Mr Monahan referred to, as Mr Crawford indicated, we did look at what was going on elsewhere. Of the 10 criteria that the FAA applies when assessing exemptions for the purpose of Angel Flight—public benefit flights, as they're called in the US—one is imposing higher aircraft airworthiness requirements. We looked at the kinds of considerations that that authority took into account, and that's amongst the others we've mentioned here.

..one has to carefully examine the timeline of the Angel Flight embuggerance from the initial 2014 NPRM consultation (which resulted in the former CEO Mark Skidmore rejecting the proposed CASA NPRM)...

CASA published a Discussion Paper in December 2014 that sought responses from the aviation community and public to assist CASA in its consideration of non-regulatory and regulatory options for enhancing the safety of community service flights. CASA did not proceed to publish a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking at that time, but decided to continue to monitor the operation of community service flights.

Ref: https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/F...ement/Text

...to the initiation of the ATSB investigation into the Mount Gambier fatal accident (https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/inv...-2017-069/) and the obligations of the ATSB to CASA for providing information about their investigation as per the ATSB/CASA 2015 MOU, then leading up to the DIP (External Review) process coupled with the ATSB request to how CASA were going to respond to the ATSB identified safety issue addressed to CASA: https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/inv...069-si-04/

Safety issue description

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority did not have a system to differentiate between community service flights and other private operations, which limited its ability to identify risks. This hindered the Civil Aviation Safety Authority's ability to manage risks associated with community service flights.

Action number: AO-2017-069-NSA-020
Action organisation: Civil Aviation Safety Authority
Date: 13 August 2019
Action status: Closed
Safety action taken: A legislative instrument imposing conditions on pilots conducting certain non-emergency medical community service flights arranged by third party organisations (CASA 09/19 — Civil Aviation (Community Service Flights — Conditions on Flight Crew Licences) Instrument 2019) was made on 12 February 2019 and came into force on 19 March 2019.

The instrument sets out new minimum licence, experience and recency standards for pilots operating community service flights that are conducted by volunteer pilots free of charge and coordinated by a charity or for a charitable or community service.

The instrument includes, among other things, the following requirements for pilots conducting community service flights:

• submit a flight notification including identifying the flight as community service flight
  
• make a record in pilot’s personal logbook when a flight is a community service flight.
  

 
Much..much MTF..P2