[Peetwo]

Oct '22 - Su_Spence spin'n'bollocks

Via Fort Fumble: (CAUTION BUCKET MAY BE REQUIRED - )

Director of Aviation Safety, Pip Spence

Getting young people interested in aviation and developing the expertise of those already in the industry is crucial to the wellbeing of our sector.

Every incentive helps so I was pleased to be able to announce at the recent Safeskies conference in Canberra that we are offering a new scholarship program for safety managers.

These are people who play a crucial role in maintaining our safety record and we will be offering 3 scholarships worth up to $5000 each to help them increase their knowledge and skills through professional development.

We are encouraging safety managers who are committed to the development of a healthy aviation safety culture to apply.

More specifically, we are looking for people with a minimum of 2 years' industry experience who use their initiative and display a high standard of aptitude and leadership.

They must also be working in a key aviation position, or have worked in one previously, and if you're in this category I would encourage you to apply.

We believe this this a great opportunity to help successful individuals build their aviation expertise in the same way our engineering scholarships have benefitted promising Aircraft Maintenance Engineers (AMEs).

We announced 5 recipients of the engineering scholarship at the Rotortech Conference in May this year. We received more than 100 high-quality applications and the winners from Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia demonstrated a commitment to achieving the highest professional standards in their chosen fields.

This is one way we can encourage people to develop what we all know will be interesting and worthwhile careers in an exciting and challenging industry.

While these initiatives may not seem momentous individually, if enough organisations take a similar route their efforts will quickly add up to a significant effort.

Some are already on this track and earlier this year I took part in a Q&A session with students going through Aviation Australia’s Female Aircraft Maintenance Engineer (FAME) program.

This initiative provides female aircraft maintenance engineers with mentorships, work experience opportunities and a professional support network.

It was great to see an organisation take it upon itself to not only address a skills shortage but to also focus on lifting the numbers of women in the industry.

The number of women in the industry is still low and they account for only 1 per cent of Licensed Aircraft Maintenance Engineers and less than 7 percent of pilots.

The figures are more encouraging for remotely piloted licence holders — some 11 per cent are women — suggesting that technology may help redress the imbalance.

We expect to see meaningful growth in areas such as uncrewed aircraft, space launch and advanced air mobility that could benefit from tapping into this deep well of potential.

In the shorter term, the aviation skills shortage has made headlines lately because of its impact on the flying public but many of us know it runs deeper than the COVID crisis.

CASA’s General Aviation Workplan has elements that aim to address the longer-term issue by improving the pilot licensing rules, simplifying health arrangements, making training more accessible and maintenance easier to obtain.

By reducing the regulatory burden on general aviation, we hope to also lower the barriers to entry to our industry without, of course, compromising safety.

We all know what a great industry this is and the important role it plays in Australia.

Our job now is to convince the next generation of would-be pilots, technicians and others that it is a terrific and accessible career choice.


All the best

Pip

Sandy's comment in reply, via AP email chains:

"..Not one word about any reform that might indicate that the CASA CEO has the requisite understanding of the actions that are needed to halt the CASA induced destruction of General Aviation (GA).

Two items from the ‘briefing’ stand out.

Firstly CASA is promoting the colossal number of no less than three aviation scholarships. Immediately one thinks for some young people to learn to fly, but no, not. These scholarships are for “safety managers.”

Who will employ these three lucky young people?

A small flying school, if there’s one left, in a regional town? Hardly.
More realistically there might be a job with a regional airline but they are few and far between. Such employment will do nothing for GA.

Secondly, the oh so interesting news that their medical review consultation received more than 600 submissions. Isn’t that great?

No headline statement that CASA is going to make the medical standard reforms that are so obviously necessary and supported by all the relevant information about the risk (there isn’t any) of adopting the car driver standard, similar to the successful RAAUS (c. 30 years experience) and similar USA and UK reforms in the last several years. But wait there’s more!
In the ‘read on’ link you’ll find that this consultation is to be followed by, wait for it, yet another consultation in perhaps nine months time. Gosh, the speed of reform is making one dizzy.

In other words all is fine in the well heated make work salary factory that is the Can’tberra offices of Aviation Hearse/House.."

MTF...P2