[Peetwo]

FASA control cable AD back down...    

Via the UP.. :

Control cables for rent or sale or gifted to some poor Casarooted aircraft owner

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"An airworthiness directive issued in early 2015 - AD/GENERAL/87 Primary Flight Control Cable Assembly Retirement – put in place the mandatory replacement regime.

The directive covered primary flight control cable assemblies with terminals constructed of SAE-AISI 303 Se or SAE-AISI 304 stainless steel with a total time in service of 15 years or more.

The requirements of this airworthiness directive take effect from 1 January 2018."

If you care to read the full official version it pretty much means everyone had to throw out all their cables and install all new, practically speaking.

But now the idiots who are bent on destroying a once good industry are showing a glimmer of sense, and are saying that inspections are ok after all, so wonderful, won't that save us lots of dollars?

Except that some of us have already paid out several thousands because we had all the area concerned opened up and it was therefore logical to proceed earlier than the 1st. Jan '18. 

So thanks so much you half witted clowns, what a total shambles we have for a regulator, and a totally hopeless Minister who wouldn't tie his shoelaces without the say so of his bosses, those that are supposed to be under his control, but, as is so plain, are the real power. 

This is completely predictable because we have an 'independent' Commonwealth corporation run by the "Director of Air Safety" ( could you devise a more fatuous title? There he is up on cloud 9 with his baton...) who gets near twice the salary of the Minister. Same for Dept head Mr M, it's all back to front and GA continues to slide. 

For all that; too late for me but it would be good to know who precipitated this welcome change, has the Iron Ring got a rust hole in it? Has someone with a brain moved to a position of influence?

Sandy's GAS submission to miniscule Chester... :

Project Leader,
General Aviation Study,
Dept. of Infrastructure 

Dear Glen Malam,

I understand that your Minister wants to look at why General Aviation is not growing as it should. To those of us that have been involved for many years it's more surprising that there's enough GA activity left to gain the Minister's attention.

This is an industry that has been worked over, over regulated and taxed with fees for all sorts of non essential permissions with little relief for some twenty nine years.

This is an industry that was supposed to have a new set of rules as per the Minister's directive from 1988, still not finished, after hundreds of $millions, and the latest 2014 tranche of strict liability criminal sanction rules have proven unworkable hence they are being reworked to this day.

There are some of these strict liability rules that would not have even a minor counter part in the US. Would not be considered a transgression of any sort. Let alone the reverse onus of proof provisions, all of this amounts to GA looking like a very unfriendly field of activity for any outsider. 

As for business opportunities, there's virtually no freehold on airports anywhere and operators like those at Bankstown would never invest again as they did with assurances (false or at best misleading) from the then Federal Airports Commission before so called privatisation.

One recent example of the regulator's incompetence;  the reversal of it's 2015 Airworthiness Directive regarding the replacement of primary control cables. 

While the change back to inspection is welcome, there's many of us who have already complied. Why? because often it will be most efficient to do this work when the aircraft has already been flown to a maintenance base and opened up for other maintenance. In my case I spent several thousand dollars removing  perfectly serviceable cables and replacing same with new cables in view of the then requirement to complete a total swap to new cables (irrespective of condition) by 1st Jan 2018. 

The wasted money and time in this case is one of many mistakes made by CASA which is killing GA. Maybe a case for a class action, just for the cables, to recover what might well be several million dollars wasted?

Regards,

Sandy Reith

MTF...P2