[Peetwo]

Dear Taaaf,

While your heart and recommendations are in the right place, your requests are mild, to say the least. To ask  for yet another 'task force' to look at amendments and exemptions will have the inhabitants of fortress CASA gleefully preparing more meetings in cooler parts of Australia this summer moving to northern parts for winter seminars. They will book their usual salubrious accommodations;  all the while 'user pays' and the Part 61 steamroller will kill off more hundreds of GA jobs.

The only hope for GA is action. These demands to be met before any cooperation:-

1. Suspend and replace Part 61 with simple rules immediately (you say propose urgent amendments, that will take years).
2. Take immediate steps to repeal criminal sanctions on the majority of the rules, and remove the strict liability provisions.
3. Allow individual instructors to teach, as in USA, without our super expensive AOC system.

It should be made crystal clear that no amount of talking, engaging, being available, or discussions is acceptable before some action.

Action is demanded now and realise that CASA and Mr. Skidmore have given us nothing except more grief and we do not accept platitudes like "that was the previous administrators" or we are working on "cultural change". Working on change? Don't we pay these people to do as asked and what is good for Australia? No more pussy footing.

CAA (before name change) wrote to me in April 1989....."CAA..objectives...more business-like procedures in its regulation of the industry, with a view to reducing requirements, and their associated costs, to a minimum."

That lie is still standing twenty-six years later with no apology forthcoming. There's no "engaging" and no quarter given unless and until CASA accedes to our reasonable demands, and that's just the start.

Second that motion Sandy & I totally agree we should not broker any compromise, not an inch or even a millimetre...

Naughty Gobbles...   One thing I thought when it comes to Herr Russell, is he would certainly know where most of the skeletons & pots of gold are buried in Cant'berra...  

Anyway Gobbles better grab your ankles & that bucket again 'cause here is the latest from GT's mob :

Industry expresses concern with slow pace of change at CASA


October 29, 2015 by australianaviation.com.au
(Photo credit: CASA)

The peak bodies representing the aviation sector in Australia say they are concerned with the slow pace of change at the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) and cost of compliance with new regulations.

The Australian Aviation Associations’ Forum (TAAAF), which comprise the peak representative bodies in the local industry, says although there is some good work being done at CASA, the organisation “is being swamped by the damage being caused by legacy regulations only now coming into force”.

“New CASA regulations are threatening the viability of industry and especially general aviation operations, with millions of dollars required to be invested for no commensurate safety gains,” TAAAF said in a statement on Thursday.

“TAAAF encouraged the CASA Board to persevere with their clear, Government- mandated cultural change agenda.”

TAAAF has called on CASA to abolish Civil Aviation Order (CAO) 48.1, which covers fatigue risk management, arguing that “industry rejects the limited science it is based on, the ignoring of decades of safe operations, the massive costs it will impose and the complexity that will inevitably lead to non-compliance”.

Also, it called for an industry task force to be established to look at “urgent exemptions and amendments” to Part 61, 141 and 142. Moreover, there was a need for “revised transitional arrangements to allow the industry to function , especially for firefighting operations and ATPL licences”, TAAAF said.

Finally, TAAAF said Australian aviation manufacturing regulations needed to “copy the modernised US FAR system and undo the damage caused by the loss of three TAFE skill providers”.

“At a meeting of peak aviation representative bodies, the TAAAF expressed considerable concern at the a slow pace of reform of CASA and the ongoing cost impositions from new regulations,” TAAAF said.

CASA Director of Aviation Safety Mark Skidmore told the Regional Aviation Association of Australia (RAAA) national convention in the NSW Hunter Valley on Friday he has been working to set “fresh tone” across the activities of CASA to face the demands of what was a “complex and ever changing aviation environment within which we operate”.

“Open communication with mutual respect would provide a breath of fresh air to all of us,” Skidmore said.

“I do want to lead CASA to be a trusted regulator.

“In any relationship trust must be earned and if it is to be maintained the basis on which it rests must be respected and protected and I am going to work hard in regards to doing that.”

Skidmore said the Aviation Safety Regulatory Review, and the government’s response to the 37 recommendations, had set a clear agenda for CASA to follow in 2015 and the years ahead and was a key priority.

“Our implementation schedule to the government’s response is fully embedded within out corporate plan for 2015/16 to 2018/19 and it articulates what we will do to deliver the government’s aviation safety objectives, how we intend to do that and the associated performance measures,” Skidmore said.

CASA is currently conducting a tour of Australia seeking feedback from the aviation community on its Flight Plan 2030, a statement of the organisation’s long term strategic intent that is due to be published by the end of the 2015/16 financial year.

Skidmore said 43 of CASA’s 55 parts that cover civil aviation safety regulations have been made, with 12 outstanding and eight parts currently going through drafting. He said Part 129 was currently being finalised.

Meanwhile, Parts 119, 133 and 135 had been finalised, but we currently being revised to simplify and remove some requirements not considered necessary “and hopefully reduce the cost”, Skidmore said.

On Part 61, which covers pilot ratings, licences and endorsements, Skidmore told the RAAA national convention he was “conscious of the impact of the change and your concerns about the new rules”.

“I am working hard to address and rectify these problems as expeditiously as possible and I acknowledge we could have managed the implementation of the flight crew licensing regulations better,” Skidmore said.

“I am listening to your feedback.”

Skidmore said he had established a “cross-divisional team” to review the development and implementation of the flight crew licensing suite of regulations and CASA was currently drafting instructions to address problem issues and amendments to Part 61.

“I need the Australian aviation community’s support to manage today’s safety issues and to plan effectively for the future,” Skidmore said.

“I firmly believe that by collaborating we will get the right safety outcomes from our regulations and regulatory practices and support a vibrant and strong Australian aviation community.

“It doesn’t mean you are always going to be happy with what we say and do but it does mean that our regulatory considerations must be, and must be seen to be, open and transparent, appropriately responsive to demonstrable safety concerns, fairly executed and consistently applied with a view to the achievement of legitimate safety-related objectives.”

CASA published its new regulatory philosophy, which sets out 10 key principles that guid and direct its approach to regulation, in September.

To quote from the ventus post - "..Fade to black .."

I parked, got out, and stood, and looked around. I saw nothing, and I heard nothing, aviation. No aircraft, no engine sounds, nothing, just the wind.


And then, suddenly, the sound, of …… I presume, a V8 screaming it’s head off, on the dyno.

Not a Gypsy major or minor, or anything that could ever turn a prop. It may sound spooky, but it reminded me of a movie I once saw.  I can not remember the name of it, but it was a war movie. It opened with an old man, standing in a English field, with the remnants of an old control tower to one side, and as the credits rolled up the screen, the camera slowly panned vertically up to the clouds, and as it panned back down slowly, the music and the credits ended, and the scene was now of a vibrant WW2 bomber base – and the movie went on.

At the end, the reverse occurred the credits rolled by, the scence went to the clouds, and then back to the old man in the field.

He then slowly walked away, off camera, stage right, and fadeout to black – “The End” – in white. As I looked around, all I saw, was what is now a toxic aviation wasteland.

Toxic in every way, chemically, commercially, financially, politically, legally, ethically, …….. lots of “lly’s”.

Too many “lly’s”.YSBK is indeed now riddled with those zillion ailments, but unlike years past, they are now real, not imaginary, and, tragically, they are incureable.Just like the ailments once beatable by antibiotics, like rampant staff infections in our hospitals, that now easily defeat the antibiotics, a situation brought about by the inappropriate and gross overuse of same by an all knowing self richeous and unaccountable medical clique, YSBK as the hospital, and GA as the patients, are being decimated by aviation’s plague of inappropriate, illogical, unreasonable, nonsensical regulations, and worse, the gross, purile, and zealously vindictive overuse of same, by another unaccountable “aviation clique” – CASA.The prognosis is grave.

GA is at death’s door.

YSBK will soon be “condemned” as an empty graveyard, ripe for redevelopment.

One must ask.

Was that not the “game plan” from the beginning ?

Schofields, Hoxton, done and dusted.

YSBK soon ? YSCN next ?

Perfect political subterfuge ?
Who remembers ?
Who sees ?
Who knows ?
Who cares ?
Who will write the epitaph?
Will anyone bother ?
Will anyone read it, even if anyone does bother to write it ?


Senator Fawcett, Heff, or Zeno ?

Perhaps, it should really rank a Ministerial ?

The Miniscule could ask Mrdak to get Beaker to draft it for him……. perhaps….. ?



Was it not he, before he entered the ATSB, who gleefully wielded the syringe, by his own hand, that injected the infection – (sic) correction – the toxic immunisation inoculation, that is so successfully, slowly but surely destroying the hospital and turning it into a graveyard ?

Is it not also he, who as head of the ATSB, has been shown to willingly and deceptively assist the prime “aviation clique” in it’s selective and vindictive prosecution and persecution of certain GA targets, by ensuring that his supposedly ICAO compliant “independent” reports have been “spiced” with a certain flavour, most paletable to the “aviation clique” ?

After all, he knows best…… does he not ?
Surely he must ?
He is always telling the good Senators he does, does he not ?
Remember his retort to Heff’s remark about him climbing his own water tower ?

I am not a patch on Yoda. I am more of an elephant type.

But reality is, I am now Just an old man, standing on a rise, looking down on an old control tower.

Fade to black.

The End.

IMO 'fade to black' is exactly what will happen if we allow Skidmore & co to continue with gabfests, taskforces & tiger teams - led by a NFI Muppet called Wodger, who was largely responsible for dreaming up Part61 - FFS!   

Nope Sandy's motion gets my nod..


MTF...P2