[Peetwo]

AMROBA newsletter; Part 43 & Air Taxi regulation concern - 

Via AMROBA: Volume 19 Issue 2 (February 2022) 

And via the AP email chains:

To all members

With so much talk about regarding Air Taxi services by Drones and other new ideas it is a wonder why CASA won’t adopt the term “Air Taxi” like the FAA.

Association News 3-22 covers this subject and lists FAA, Canada & Australia (2004) figure of Air Taxi involvement

There is almost a fixation within CASA to not get with the future and accept globally accepted terms.

We know this won’t happen until Sect 98 of the Civil Aviation Act is amended to adopt the words from the Air Navigation Act that developed the regulations up to the creation of the CAA/CASA.

Civil Aviation Act Section 98 – Amend to include Air Navigation Act Section 26

“(b) for the purpose of carrying out and giving effect to the Chicago Convention, as amended by the Protocols referred to in subsection 3A(2), any Annex to the Convention relating to international standards and recommended practices (being an Annex adopted in accordance with the Convention) and the Air Transit Agreement”.

Only the government can fix

Regards

Finally courtesy of Oz Flying, via the Yaffa:

AMTC 4 Proposal to decrease Safety: AMROBA

11 March 2022

The Aviation Maintenance Repair and Overhaul Business Association (AMROBA) says that CASA's Part 43 proposal for an Aircraft Maintenance Technician Certificate will decrease aviation safety. 

The AMTC 4 concept applies only to maintenance on Light Sport Aircraft (LSA) as is based on the USA's Repairman Certificate model. It enables people without a Part 66 licence to do maintenance provided they have completed a 120-hour course of instruction.

CASR 43 will cover maintenance of general aviation aircraft operated in only the private and air work categories, which includes CASA-registered LSAs.

An AMTC 4 would be permited to:

• approve and return to service an aircraft that has been issued a special airworthiness certificate in the LSA category after performing or inspecting maintenance including the annual and the 100-hour inspection, do preventive maintenance and modifications not considered a major repair or modification on a product produced under a CASA approval
  
• perform the annual condition inspection on LSAs that have been issued an experimental certificate
  
• only perform maintenance, preventive maintenance, and a modification on an LSA that is in the same class for which the holder has completed the training.
  

AMROBA CEO Ken Cannane told Australian Flying today that the flaw in the AMTC 4 proposal is that the proper training for the qualification has not been put in place.

"We believe safety will decrease unless you get the skill training properly built into the Australian Vocational Education Training (VET) system, so people can get the proper training by the proper establishments," Cannane said.

"They're just going to adopt these positions and put in place what they see as the training standards, yet there is no-one to provide the training at this current moment.

"There's no confidence in the industry that they can get this right and get the education system on board with that training."
Cannane believes that CASA is repeating a mistake made when the EASA-based CASR Part 66 was introduced covering continuing airworthiness engineer licences.

"We're trying to make sure that all training is done under the VET system, but CASA, just as they did with Part 66, have not met with the education department and brought about the VET courses to cover this type of training."

AMROBA will not support CASA's Part 43 proposal as presented, although they have recommended the FAA Part 43 provided it is adopted directly from the FAA, including the training requirements and inspection authorities.

Cannane said that CASA was trying to create an administrative mess by adopting part of the EASA and part of the FAA standards, despite EASA setting down licencing authorisations in their Part 66 to cover the sort of maintenance envisaged by the AMTC 4 proposal.

"We're ending up with a complete mess in the system because we're adopting figuratively the legislation of Part 43, but not the administrative supports behind it to do the education. We've got Part 66, which has all the licences in there to cover  those types of aircraft, yet they won't adopt those parts.

"So we've got a situation with a half-adopted Part 66 and they're implementing a system out of the United States without all the education systems in place to support it.

"That, to us, only puts more people in the field that actually are lower skilled, and from our point of view it all seems to be about writing something of low cost for these types of aircraft.

"There seems to be no safety approach."

CASA is expected to release the draft proposals for CASR Part 43 in the first half of this year.

MTF...P2