[Peetwo]

Dear Mr McCormick

I refer to our earlier correspondence and our telephone conversation of nearly a year ago.  If you recall you made it quite clear that in your opinion I had operated my helicopter dangerously, and that I most certainly should not have the authority to conduct maintenance work on it.

The Senate Estimates Committee has taken some interest in these matters, and for your information I have attached a copy of a recent press article that summarises the outcome of the AAT’s detailed investigation.

After careful consideration Mike Hart had recommended an apology from CASA in relation to the former matter which, I am sure you will remember, you refused to issue. As you will be able to see from the article, perhaps an additional second apology from CASA is now in order.

What is far more important than apologies is the way in which CASA directs its efforts and public resources. CASA’s mandate is essentially to ensure safety for the travelling public.  Is it really good allocation of these resources to expend perhaps a half a million dollars of taxpayers’ funds chasing after one private pilot, who flies only about 100 hours a year and almost exclusively in wilderness areas?

I look forward to hearing your views.

Sincerely

Richard Green

As predicted from @smh:

The experienced pilot had his license suspended for six months in 2013 over four incidents in one year where he almost collided with other aircraft and one incident in which he struck powerlines and tore off part of his helicopter.

In a submission to an air safety inquiry in 2013, Mr Green had demanded the sacking of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) board and other officials.

The submission reveals that Mr Green had been the first to import the high-performance Eurocopter into Australia and had immediately struggled to find qualified technicians to keep the machine flying. As a result he maintained it himself.

He complained bitterly about being investigated by CASA as far back in 2006 after he hit a tree branch while flying in Cape York in far north Queensland and how the incident had severely affected his authority to maintain the machine.

"I had a minor blade strike on a tree branch in a wilderness area in Cape York. In order to get the helicopter out of that location, I made a repair to the rotor blades," he wrote in the submission to the federal government's Aviation Safety Regulation Review.

"CASA's concern was not the fact I had a blade strike but what happened afterwards.

"My wife and I were stranded in the Cape York wilderness. Drawing on my training and an experienced-based evaluation, I made the sensible decision to effect a temporary repair that would permit a safe two hour flight to Cairns."

Mr Green said his alternative was to leave it "stuck in the wilderness" where it would have been difficult to repair and recover.

He said when he reported his actions to CASA an airworthiness inspector tried to revoke his pilot's licence, deeming the flight "dangerous and illegal".

He said CASA had "dramatically embellished the incident by listing a whole slew of alleged technical breaches of the regulations that flowed on from this primary incident".

Mr Green said he was required to show cause why his licence should not be revoked.

He then appealed to CASA's then head of aviation Greg Vaughan who instead increased Mr Green's authorities to conduct and certify maintenance on his helicopter.

However when the authority required renewal two years later, CASA refused to renew it.

Mr Green then successfully appealed through the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. He also said he faced further allegations of safety breaches as a result of his dispute with CASA.

He lashed out at CASA, saying "in my case alone well over 1000 man hours have been expended in trying to clip the wings of one private pilot who flies his own private helicopter about 100 hours a year and almost exclusively in wilderness areas of Australia".

He finished his submission by calling for "all the senior management in CASA ... to be replaced and the CASA board disbanded".

For those interested here is the Richard Green submission to the 'Pilot training' Senate Inquiry:

Dear Sirs

I write in relation to paras.(f) and (g) of this inquiry.

(f) the capacity of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority to appropriately oversee and update safety regulations given the ongoing and rapid development of new technologies and skills shortages in the aviation sector;

Various communications of mine with the Director of Aviation Safety were copied to members of the Committee some months ago. These no doubt formed the basis of a question to Mr McCormick at the sitting on 21 October about a proposed apology to me. This in turn led into questions to McCormick about his dealings with the ex Industry Complaints Commissioner for CASA.

Mr McCormick’s misdirection of the Authority since he took charge has been scandalous and his untruthful answers to Senate questions are par for the course.

I had an AAT appeal running the same day as the referenced sitting. At this the McCormick supported personal attack on me by CASA was thoroughly discredited and my position fully vindicated. My own experiences with CASA provide an indication of the rot within, and can be multiplied many, many times over by the organisation's interaction with the wider aviation community.

CASA will not be capable of effectively overseeing any safety regulation until its current senior management is removed and replaced by balanced, informed and experienced individuals.

(g) the need to provide legislative immunity to pilots and other flight crew who report on safety matters and whether the United States and European approaches would be appropriate in the Australian aviation environment;

Unless there is legislative immunity safety matters will remain un-reported.
CASA has already frittered an estimated $250,000,000 on its attempt to rewrite archaic aviation regulations – all with no result. Its current management policy is for more complex unworkable legislation which maximises the number of personnel that the agency can employ.

A sweep with a completely new brush is required. The USA has a very effective and working set of regulations in place - there is absolutely no reason why we should not copy these.

Sincerely

Richard Green

 
And this was Mr Green's submission to the Forsyth (ASRR) review to which the SMH article refers:

21 Mr Richard Green - PDF: 141 KB

..As mentioned at the beginning of this submission, there have been many reports similar to mine of CASA’s misuse of its power. Most of the victims, unlike me, are dependent upon their aviation activities for their livelihoods. They therefore are intimidated into not speaking up. I have personal experience of this through my attempts to get expert witness statements to support me in my own defence. The individuals support my position, however, are not prepared to go into writing for fear of subsequent CASA retribution.

It is my firm opinion that major changes need to be made to CASA. It must be made accountable for its actions. Its focus must be changed to promoting a safety ethos within the industry, rather than merely being a short-sighted policeman only interested in chasing after regulatory infringements. It is not until these changes are apparent that the body will gain the respect that it should have within the industry.

In order for this to come about, I believe all the senior management in CASA need to be replaced and the CASA board disbanded. I believe it is critical and urgent that the chief executive needs to be replaced by an individual who can command the respect of the industry. And the Board should be reconstituted with a group of individuals who have real in-depth experience of all the major areas of the aviation industry.

A new ethos within the body driven by a strong but fair minded CEO should weed out those inspectors who have been misusing their power in order to satisfy their own personal whims.

These changes need to go hand in hand with the scrapping of Australia’s ridiculously convoluted aviation legislation. It should be replaced by legislation modelled upon a system that already works perfectly well – either from New Zealand or from the United States. Further the basic role of CASA needs to be changed to promote the aviation industry in Australia as well as ensuring its safety. CASA’s current charter, just to ensure aviation safety, is being achieved by grounding aircraft and closing down aviation businesses...

Remembrance Day 2015 - Hung strung & quartered

Update - Absolutely disgraceful from Creepy... - Courtesy the Oz with no fanfare, no pics, just barebones filthy journalism:

Pilot Richard Green’s final, fatal outing had no flight plan

The 74-year-old helicopter pilot involved in a fatal crash near the NSW Hunter Valley once flew his damaged aircraft from the Northern Territory to Sydney after fixing the main rotor blades with Araldite and was viewed by authorities as a maverick who flouted the rules.  

Millionaire businessman and photographer Richard Green was regarded as an eccentric who ­believed that he was being persecuted by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority.
Mr Green and his wife, Carolyn, 71, were also remembered yesterday as a “dynamic duo” who were “Green by name and green by nature”.
“They flew to the remotest of remote places like the Kimberly or in Tasmania to document these pristine wilderness places in the hope that people would recognise that these things are worth protecting,” National Library of Australia curator Nat Williams said.
The Greens and their friend and documentary-maker John Davis, 72, died on Saturday when Mr Green’s Eurocopter crashed in rugged NSW bushland south of the Hunter Valley. The trio were on their way back to Terrey Hills, in Sydney’s north, after attending an anti-mining rally south of Tamworth.
They were flying in bad weather and Mr Green did not have an instrument flight rules rating ­allowing him to fly in low visibility using cockpit instruments. He also failed to send a notification to authorities outlining his intentions for the flight.
The millionaire was known to dislike bureaucracy and had his private pilot’s licence suspended for six months in 2013 after CASA accused him flying dangerously near several aircraft and flying his helicopter in an unsafe condition after he clipped powerlines.
He had been on the regulator’s radar for several years before its attempts to rein in his behaviour were successful.
He came under the spotlight in 2007 based on an incident in the Northern Territory where he damaged his main rotor blades when he clipped some trees while landing. He failed to report the damage and allegedly used Araldite glue to make an on-the-spot repair before flying to Cairns and then on to Sydney.
In 2010, the regulator refused to give him an authority to perform wide-ranging maintenance on the Eurocopter but was later forced to partly back down by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
CASA had more success in 2013 after Mr Green had struck power lines the previous year and ripped off the top part of a component on the tail.
Helicopter veteran Dick Smith knew all three victims and said yesterday he was appalled that Mr Green had not sent a flight notification and did not appear to have a real-time aircraft tracker installed in the helicopter.
“I don’t have one friend with a helicopter who does not have one,” Mr Smith said. Keen flyer Joe Lorincz told his wife that the pilot of the missing helicopter must have been “bloody insane” to fly in such bad weather before he even knew his friend of 43 years Mr Davis was also aboard the chopper.
“I feel very angry about it because if that helicopter was flying under the instrument flight rules, he would have lodged a flight plan and been given a responder code to track him the whole way,” he said. “Anyone who thinks they can meddle with bad weather is completely insane.”
Mr Williams, however, said Mr Green was “utterly fastidious” about safety aboard his chopper.
“I remember him telling me about fixing the blade with Aral­dite and it was a hairline crack; the guy was a physicist, not a risk-taker,” he said.

  
Remember this??

 If you needed any further proof that the toxic culture of persecution & embuggerance by CASA continues unabated, go no further than the above - UFB!

In one foul, disgusting, swoop, CASA have effectively made any 'real', unbiased, independent investigation of this tragic accident by the ATSB, NSW Police & Coroner's office - nugatory, null, void, zip, zero..   

It should be remembered that under the ICAO SARPs (Annex 13&19) the Minister of the State & Crown (& his moribund Department), has certain obligations to protect the integrity and credibility of any active AAI. 

The following is a quote from 'John Goglia' off this - 7K-9268 - thread post:

..The highly unusual comments Monday from senior officials of Metrojet that the crash of one of its jets Saturday morning in the Sinai Peninsula was definitely caused by “external factors” does not bode well for the proper and thorough investigation of what brought down the airliner.

By already ruling out “technical fault of the plane or pilot error,” the airline violated one of the cardinal rules of accident investigation, which is to keep an open mind as all the facts are gathered and analyzed. By concluding mere days after the accident, that the fault was outside the airliner’s control, it is making a mockery of the investigative process, which should be based on factual data and appropriate conclusions from that data...

...In the United States, the NTSB has on more than one occasion excluded technical representatives from an accident investigation for making public comments that could be construed as interfering with the proper and impartial conduct of the investigation... 

..This would be a small but significant step in reassuring the families of the victims of the impartiality of the investigative process.

Do you think this Miniscule, this (Dolan led) ATSB will now have the balls (like the NTSB) to exclude the morally corrupt regulator as a DIP to investigation AO-2015-131

Remember this??- The current CASA smear/embuggerance campaign is occurring under DAS Skidmore's tenure. This means that he is either endorsing this pre-emptive character assassination before the facts  ('A priori'), or he is not in control and being blindly guided by Dr A & the Iron Ring...


MTF...P2