[Peetwo]

Day 7 - Dick v Pinocchio

Well it would appear that Peter Gibson - after a poor showing last weekend  - has found his mojo & is continuing to relegate the industry to purgatory & damnation FFS... 

“The Australian public rightly expects high levels of aviation safety and CASA is committed to delivering safe skies for all,” Mr Gibson said.

...; yeah by decimation of the industry, smug bugger...

Strangely PG (read Skidmore) still seems to be out of step with Boyd & the Board, here is the full article from the Oz & that man again :

CASA regulations ‘crippling aviators’  

• by: EAN HIGGINS
  
• From: The Australian
  
• July 17, 2015 12:00AM
  

Reporter
Sydney




Dick Smith with his Cessna Citation plane at Ballina Airport. Source: News Corp Australia
 
Staff numbers at the aviation safety watchdog blew out 40 per cent in just seven years while the general aviation industry declined under a myriad of pressures.  

According to a study by businessman and aviator Dick Smith, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority has been employing ever more public servants to come up with and enforce increasingly severe rules that financially cripple smaller operators.

“They seem to be getting more and more people to write more rules for general aviation,” Mr Smith said. “It’s an industry in self-destruction mode.”

CASA denies the accusations, saying its workload has increased in part due to an increase in domestic airline activity of 28 per cent over the time period in question, with 47 million passengers carried in 2007 compared with 60 million in 2014.

Spokesman Peter Gibson also said a range of new safety programs, and the introduction of new responsibilities, had demanded more staff in recent years, but that those numbers were now declining.

Mr Gibson said the authority “has an appropriate level of staff numbers to manage the many aspects of the regulation of Australian aviation safety”.

“The Australian public rightly expects high levels of aviation safety and CASA is committed to delivering safe skies for all,” Mr Gibson said.

But small business aviators have told The Australian a series of very expensive regulatory programs introduced by CASA in recent years, including a new air navigation system and a compulsory inspection program for older Cessna light aircraft, is costing them dearly.

Total CASA staff rose from 621 in 2007 to 871 in 2014, an increase of 40 per cent, while the full-time equivalent increased from 612 to 853.

In the past year, total staff fell by 41 to 830, while full-time equivalent numbers fell by 42 to 811.

In recent years private general aviation flying hours were steady, rising slightly from 222,700 hours in 2007 to 232,600 in 2012, the ­latest year for which figures are available.
But business general aviation flying hours between those years fell from 153,400 to 130,400, a decline of 15 per cent. Even harder hit, training flying hours plummeted from 455,400 in 2007 to 360,900 in 2012, a collapse of 21 per cent.

One of the key complaints of the general aviation industry is CASA’s insistence on pressing ahead with the rollout of Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, a new satellite GPS navigation system in which positioning data is relayed from aircraft to air traffic controllers via ground stations. Because it is being introduced in Australia several years ahead of the US, aircraft owners are being forced to pay between $16,500 and $125,000 for ADS-B installations because of first-of-type engineering costs and the fact that economies of scale have not yet been reached.

The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association has called for a moratorium on further compulsory ADS-B installations until a year after the program is completed in the US.
New CASA chairman Jeff Boyd told The Australian the program was too far down the track for a moratorium, with 83 per cent of affected aircraft already fitted with the equipment.

But he said CASA was prepared to be flexible on a case-by-case basis.

For example, CASA would grant an exemption to a regional airline that in three or four months will renew some of its fleet and sell overseas or retire altogether some older aircraft, so that those departing aircraft do not have to fit ADS-B equipment, although the new ones will.

Similarly, Mr Boyd said, CASA would consider individual applications for exemptions or extensions when it came to the Cessna compliance program known as Supplementary Inspection Documents.

Slight change of subject but a brief mention (& confirmation) from Hitch on the Fort Fumble GWM purging, as reported by Gobbles:

Aviation House: CASA's headquarters in the Canberra suburb of Woden. (Bidgee)


More Management Changes at CASA
16 Jul 2015

CASA has confirmed that Executive Manager, Industry Permission, Peter Fereday, will leave the regulator today.

According to the announcement, CASA has made no permanent replacement for Fereday pending wider changes.

Fereday's departure comes less than a week after former Deputy Director Terry Farquharson was scheduled to also leave CASA.

Fereday becomes the third senior manager to leave CASA since the tenure of John McCormick ended, behind Farquharson and Principle Medical Officer Pooshan Navathe.
CASA has given no reason why Fereday is leaving.

While they are at it, Gobbles has a request for Gollum to be expunged & personally I'd like to see the PG rated, weasel-worded spin puppet and that Part61 clown sent down the Green Mile. And that is just for starters with the executive trough dwellers - Ferryman any suggestions? 

MTF..P2

Ps Perhaps we could start an IOS wish list?