10-22-2020, 06:13 PM
It is extraordinary that the message of the General Aviation (GA) disaster has not got through to the Senators in Committee in the measure or fullness that it deserves. I can only postulate that what has transpired to the GA industry, and to numerous individuals within GA, has been so devastating and extreme that Members of Parliament find it hard to believe that the well paid servants (so called) of the People of Australia could create such mayhem, individual suffering, colossal job losses, business closures and a virtually complete loss of faith in our Commonwealth Government in regard to anything aviation. The wreckage of a once growing and lively GA industry can’t be apparent to the outside observer because there’s no present day comparison. Even to newcomers in GA they can have no experience of yesteryear therefore there’s a lack of appreciation that cannot be overcome without study and seeking out knowledge.
Importantly, MPs could move us towards some real reform, and start a track towards growth for jobs, businesses and services in GA but first they must realise that an independent corporate like the Civil Aviation Safety Authority will never own up to the disaster or what is causing it. They have no incentives to jeopardise their tremendous salary packages and cushy working conditions, quite apart from the all too obvious factors of hubris and ego.
To rationalise just one area of CASA’s monumental regulatory failure, Part 61, would entail losing the ability to charge swinging fees for all sorts of unnecessary permissions. In the area of Recreational Aviation Australia (RAAUS), the private company that the Commonwealth has given monopoly control in the low weight category, this outrageous move some years ago has created a very bad distortion in the GA industry and the light aircraft market. This low weight category should never have been split off from the rest of GA, it should be part of a graduated system with a common pathway. The very notion of inducing aviators into these tiny aircraft is wrong. Induced by way of a sensible personal medical fitness to fly standard as opposed to the costly, intimidating and extreme private pilot medical regime of the standard CASA examination, that which is required to fly a VH registered aircraft. Many RAAUS aircraft are built hard up against the artificial limit of all up weight of 600kg, an engineering wrong because aircraft should be engineered to a purpose, not a weight. Moving more people into such small aircraft beggars belief, and proof of it’s unviability the fact that RAAUS wants to up the weight limit to 750 kg now and maybe 1500kg in the future.
The MPs would do well to investigate the ability to set up particular GA functions, take flying training as the backbone of GA here is a very good example, the permission to operate a flying school. Applicants have been forced, by the monopolistic behemoth CASA, to pay upwards of $100,000 and wait months or years to achieve a permit. In the USA a fresh instructor can start training immediately with an official book that costs $15.99.
There’s one other stumbling block, all of CASA’s main suit of regulations have been passed by Parliament and the Parliament has been either too trusting, naive, or hopelessly ignorant depending on your point of view. Personally it would be a most welcome starting point for Parliamentarians to consider that over many years that Parliament has actually been negligent in this area because it always has the final responsibility.
Will the present Senate inquiry under Chair Senator McDonald make the slightest difference?
Watching a video of proceedings yesterday with CASA CEO Mr. Carmody fielding a few critical questions, but questions so broad to be then easily batted, makes me doubt that any good will come from this inquiry. Well intentioned certainly, but without a real plan of inquiry informed by the GA community in detail this will be simply a repetition of the comprehensive but discarded Forsyth report of 2014.
This present Senate Committee will find that there’s little to be gained by asking CASA anything, it will be far better employed looking at the regulatory environment of the USA by way of comparison. It may then be able to make a rational recommendation to completely change the current unworkable, costly and thoroughly unfit model of governance that we’ve been saddled with since 1988.
Importantly, MPs could move us towards some real reform, and start a track towards growth for jobs, businesses and services in GA but first they must realise that an independent corporate like the Civil Aviation Safety Authority will never own up to the disaster or what is causing it. They have no incentives to jeopardise their tremendous salary packages and cushy working conditions, quite apart from the all too obvious factors of hubris and ego.
To rationalise just one area of CASA’s monumental regulatory failure, Part 61, would entail losing the ability to charge swinging fees for all sorts of unnecessary permissions. In the area of Recreational Aviation Australia (RAAUS), the private company that the Commonwealth has given monopoly control in the low weight category, this outrageous move some years ago has created a very bad distortion in the GA industry and the light aircraft market. This low weight category should never have been split off from the rest of GA, it should be part of a graduated system with a common pathway. The very notion of inducing aviators into these tiny aircraft is wrong. Induced by way of a sensible personal medical fitness to fly standard as opposed to the costly, intimidating and extreme private pilot medical regime of the standard CASA examination, that which is required to fly a VH registered aircraft. Many RAAUS aircraft are built hard up against the artificial limit of all up weight of 600kg, an engineering wrong because aircraft should be engineered to a purpose, not a weight. Moving more people into such small aircraft beggars belief, and proof of it’s unviability the fact that RAAUS wants to up the weight limit to 750 kg now and maybe 1500kg in the future.
The MPs would do well to investigate the ability to set up particular GA functions, take flying training as the backbone of GA here is a very good example, the permission to operate a flying school. Applicants have been forced, by the monopolistic behemoth CASA, to pay upwards of $100,000 and wait months or years to achieve a permit. In the USA a fresh instructor can start training immediately with an official book that costs $15.99.
There’s one other stumbling block, all of CASA’s main suit of regulations have been passed by Parliament and the Parliament has been either too trusting, naive, or hopelessly ignorant depending on your point of view. Personally it would be a most welcome starting point for Parliamentarians to consider that over many years that Parliament has actually been negligent in this area because it always has the final responsibility.
Will the present Senate inquiry under Chair Senator McDonald make the slightest difference?
Watching a video of proceedings yesterday with CASA CEO Mr. Carmody fielding a few critical questions, but questions so broad to be then easily batted, makes me doubt that any good will come from this inquiry. Well intentioned certainly, but without a real plan of inquiry informed by the GA community in detail this will be simply a repetition of the comprehensive but discarded Forsyth report of 2014.
This present Senate Committee will find that there’s little to be gained by asking CASA anything, it will be far better employed looking at the regulatory environment of the USA by way of comparison. It may then be able to make a rational recommendation to completely change the current unworkable, costly and thoroughly unfit model of governance that we’ve been saddled with since 1988.